Chizu to Tegami to Koi no Uta - 21.04.2007

Wow, this is probably the most active this blog has been since forever! Here's another full Chizu to Tegami to Koi no Uta translation - this time it's the third show from way back in 2007. So we've had the first three broadcasts in full translated now. If you want to go back and read the first one then please look back in the archived entries. The last story Maaya told about her school teacher got a little tricky so I may have lost a few vital points but the jist is there!

Chizu to Tegami to Koi no Uta - 21.04.2007

Good evening this is Maaya Sakamoto, for the next fifteen minutes please get together with me, Maaya Sakamoto, for Chizu to Tegami to Koi no Uta. Today is the third broadcast of this show, is everyone already attached to it? We’ve been receiving a lot of mails as well so I’m really happy, if you send in a mail about your thoughts anytime from now it’d be great.

Well, the 22nd of April is Earth Day, every year this word is often said on the radio and everywhere. It’s a day where in order to protect the environment all over the world everyone should take action. What sort of things are all of you doing? It’s a problem that we can no longer ignore. There are a lot of people who think ‘let’s do something about it’ but this has been a pressing question for a while and there are people who think ‘well, there’s only one of me so whatever I do is meaningless’ but even a small action is important. One by one losing the unnecessary things and thinking about it seriously.

I actually have a fan club, the name of it is ‘Idling Stop’, and it’s a club that has collected a lot of different people from all over the country. It has a kind of theme of “If each member takes the time to do something kind for the Earth…” and that’s why it has the name Idling Stop. For example, recycling used food containers or something. Also, the fan club goods are things like shopping bags you can use for shopping, mugs and stuff. If everyone makes a small effort like that to take care over one thing I think it would really help the Earth’s environment. Everyone, definitely take part in Earth Day, the 22nd of April from today!

Well, this program, Chizu to Tegami to Koi no Uta, takes a theme of a certain word and collects together messages that the listeners send in about it. April’s theme is ‘Thank you’ and we’ve received a lot of mails so I’d like to introduce more and more.

Let’s get started, first up is radio name Macchan-san.

Hello it’s nice to meet you, Maaya-san. I know the word ‘thank you’ very well thanks to using it at work - a restaurant. Waiting on people and then the short moment when I hear ‘thank you’ from a customer. However, instead of feeling glad when a customer says that to me, completely oppositely I get really embarrassed. I still haven’t gotten used to it. By the way, I’m from the Kansai part of Japan and there we use ‘ookini’ instead of ‘arigato’ for thank you. Where I work really suits me as the boss of the restaurant uses ‘ookini, arigato!’ at the same time. When the customer goes home saying ‘Thank you, it was really delicious!’, the moment when these words are exchanged I feel great. More than ‘thank you’, ‘it was really delicious’ is the phrase which has no equal. In a shop where the food isn’t good it’s almost never said. Restaurant work is pretty hard on the body but a ‘Thank you, it was really delicious’ from a customer takes all the tiredness away.

That was Macchan’s wonderful message, thank you very much! Oh, that was it, I just said thank you. This month’s theme is ‘thank you’ and there’s definitely this kind of thank you included, isn’t there? By the way, I really like eating and recently I like cooking as well but really, going with friends in your free time to your favourite restaurant, being introduced to restaurants by your friends, and eating out is what I tend to do.

When you eat something really delicious it’s quite moving, isn’t it. That there is a line of work which gives this kind of happiness to someone directly is a little vexing. I sing, act and write things and related to that I can send people away thinking ‘oh, that was a good song’, ‘that was a great show’ but making delicious things that directly go into someone’s mouth and fill their stomachs, directly helping them to live – I think this kind of work is amazing. I both look up to and am jealous of people working in restaurants and the food industry.

When you eat at a place where you can see the chefs and you can say directly to them ‘it was delicious’ I really want to say it. I always say ‘It was truly delicious’ before going home, the people behind the counter are also waiting to hear the words – I’m sure they’re thinking ‘gotta work hard!’. A mutual understanding so both sides feel good. I think it’s a wonderful moment. Please work hard to continue making great food Macchan!

Moving on, I’d like to introduce one more message relating to ‘thank you’. Radio name Second Stage-san from Saitama Prefecture.

Good evening Maaya-chan! Turning on the radio I was caught by your beautiful voice and listened right to the end of the show, I’m going to listen every week from now on. My thank you is for my teacher at school. Right now I’m enjoying life as a high school student but at one time in middle school I really hated school and I played truant a lot. At that time my homeroom teacher came to my home every day and tried to convince me to go to school. However, I still didn’t go to school. My teacher even brought the work from the classes I missed to my home saying ‘just so you can come back at any time’. Luckily I wasn’t behind in my studies and in the end I came back to school. I’m really grateful to my teacher, thank you so much!

…and that’s it. That’s really beautiful. If you can say that directly to your teacher I think they will be delighted. I really think that being a teacher is a difficult job. When I recently met one person at a reunion type event who is my age, an old classmate, and they said that they were a middle school teacher - because they were my age (27) even though they were a great person, I personally thought they were too young and to be actually teaching someone something would be absolutely impossible for them. The same generation as me, teaching children? I was really surprised. And the teachers who taught us were also taught by amazing adults…but if I think about it now, if a teacher is still quite young they still teach us even though there are lots of things they don’t understand themselves.

I also have a lot of teachers that I remember but particularly the homeroom teacher I had in my 5th and 6th grades at school who became our homeroom teacher straight after graduating university. They were really young and it was their first job but they were really warm-blooded and taught P.E. It was really fun and became good friends with all the students, never seemed to be bothered by them and was just really fun.

Back then I was really clumsy and I never did my homework on time or anything with essays etc. For Home-economics homework one time we had to make a wallet and I wasn’t even close to finishing it, I didn’t hand it in and I didn’t tell anyone that I hadn’t even finished half of it. I showed my homeroom teacher going “What should I do, I’ve only done this much” and my teacher took it from me going “Well, it can’t be helped” and worked until late at night to finish it for me, even though he was a male teacher he sewed all of it. I was just stood next to him going ‘wow’. And then because it was late at night and he was worried he took me back to my house and even now when I do a stage show he always comes to see me. He’s now a veteran teacher but I really think he’s a great teacher. Well, even though there are a lot of teachers I remember well that was one meeting I really think of! When you meet a good teacher it really is something you receive many words that you can remember your whole life. All the teachers in Japan are people who are remembered in the hearts of the children they have taught – kind words, good memories.

Well, with this, I’d like to continue receiving everyone’s messages and introducing them on this month’s theme of ‘thank you’. Now you’ve entered your new lives and are probably calming down now, in the many meetings and partings in the recent days if there’s a moment when you said ‘thank you’ then please let me know! I’m waiting!

And with that, the third Maaya Sakamoto: Chizu to Tegami to Koi no Uta has been broadcasted. It’s almost time to say goodbye for this week. I’d like to introduce your messages of ‘thank you’ and we’re receiving more and more so I’ll be back to do the same again next week.

Also, any opinions or thoughts and normal messages about this show outside of ‘thank you’ are also very welcome! The address for letters is [address], the email address for the show is maaya@tbs.co.jp Maaya is spelt M A A Y A. I’m looking forward to when we meet again next week, see you next week – bye bye!