KFC, Trump, and Terrace House: more international conversations

Three more conversations with ordinary people in Japan.

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I just attended my second Ohanasi Kagawa Japan–U.S. online conversation event, in which I spoke with a kindergarten teacher, IT professional, and big-data entrepreneur from Osaka, Tokyo, and Yokohama. In each one-on-one session, we spoke for ten minutes in English and ten minutes in Japanese. Topics discussed included:

• Terrace House

• COVID-19: Apparently, only 0.5% of people in Japan have been vaccinated. That doesn’t bode well for our plans to visit Japan in July.

• Kentucky Fried Chicken’s rise, through an ingenious marketing campaign, into Japan’s go-to Christmas meal.

• The fact that Trump visited Japan in 2019 and refused to eat Japanese food, choosing to go with a well-done burger instead.

• Plato, my cat, who jumped into my lap during one of the conversations.

I’m a big fan of this event and its structure. It’s pretty remarkable to be able to have face-to-face conversations with ordinary people across the ocean who are working to improve their English skills. International exchanges of this kind are rare but so important, and I want to seek out more of them.

Relatedly, I’m attending my first Esperanto event via Zoom tomorrow.

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Ryan McCarl (LinkedIn | Twitter | Blog) is an attorney and educator in Los Angeles who is committed to lifelong learning and growth. If you’d like to receive my new posts by email, please click the button below to subscribe. Subscriptions are free unless you choose to pay:

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