English Recordings

238. I like fall best.
Fall is the best season for me.
Fall is my favorite time of year.
239. The temperatures have started to drop.
It's progressively getting cold.
240. The temperature dropped suddenly.
The temperature fell suddenly.
241. I love a chilly wind.
242. It's cool today, isn’t it?
243. It's cooler.
244. This is the coolest day so far this fall.
This is the coolest day we've had this fall.
245. In October, humidity decreases.
246. The weather is unpredictable in fall.
The autumn weather is very inconsistent.
We're having unstable weather in the fall.
247. We have very fine, clear weather.

I recently started asking myself whether the "silent treatment" is universal or not.

A couple of days ago, while I was talking with a friend of mine, who is an American lady living in Japan, she brought up the topic of the "silent treatment."

She seemed to have been upset about her Japanese husband giving her the silent treatment for about a week. She also mentioned that two of her American friends had the same problems from time to time with their Japanese husbands. She asked me if it was common for Japanese people to do this when they got upset or angry.

I was at a loss for an answer. I was not sure if it happened just because their husbands were Japanese. However, I understood her feelings because I know that she is more direct and assertive than most Japanese people. She spells out her problems loud and clear most of the time.

Meanwhile, I've had some chances to talk with my Japanese friends about how they would behave or what they would do if they were upset at someone, like their spouse or a friend. Many of them seem to choose to not saying anything.

When you give someone the silent treatment, it means you ignore them, and it is a form of emotional abuse. The person you are snubbing will feel hurt and confused and the relationship will be worse in the end.

At this point in time, since I'm Japanese, I somehow understand why some of my Japanese friends tend to remain silent when they are upset.

There must be some reasons. For one, we are not used to expressing our opinions and feelings, and we don't know how to. Secondly, we tend to avoid arguments by being quiet and waiting for things to work themselves out. That way might look smarter than showing one's thoughts, emotions and feelings in the eyes of Japanese people.

Personally, I can't do this most of the time, especially when it affects people that are important to me and my relationships with them.

Do you think the "silent treatment" is universal?

1637. I'm sick and tired of the rain.
I'm really fed up with the rain.
1638. Even books get mildewed in the rainy season.
In the rainy season, mold grows even on books.
1646. A rainbow is over the river!
A rainbow appeared over the river.
1651. When summer comes, I think of him.
When summer comes, I think of the time I spent with him.
Summer makes me think of him.
1655. It's too soon to go swimming in the ocean.
It's too early to go swimming in the ocean.
1662. Watermelons are just coming into season.
1663. Watermelon season has come at last!
Watermelon season has arrived at last.
1692. Is the rainy season over yet?
Did the rainy season end?
Has the rainy season finished yet?
1693. I wish the rainy season would end soon.
I hope the rainy season ends soon.
1694. The rainy season dragged on until the end of July.
The rainy season continued till the end of July.

1627. What is teruterubozu?
What does teruterubozu mean?
Teruterubozu means what?
1628. When it rains, children make a teruterubozu.
1629. A teruterubozu is a paper doll.
1630. In the rainy season, everything feels slimy.
Everything is damp and sticky in the rainy season.
1631. I hate the rainy season.
I can't stand the rainy season.
1632. I hate the damp air.
I hate the moist air.
1633. It's unbearably muggy.
It's unbearably humid weather.
1634. It's uncomfortably muggy.
The humidity is high and it's uncomfortable.
1635. It's bad weather, isn't it?
It's uncomfortable weather.
1636. I can't wait for the rain to stop.

Similarly, MOVO Mobile, based in Sarasota, Florida, ran a spring-break promotion for Gillette, a maker of grooming products, in which college kids could send flirty messages to a large screen at a night-club. Sending a message, of course, opens the door to follow-up messages from the event's sponsor.
Digital graffiti even have their religious uses. Teen Mania Ministries, an evangelical Christian group based in Garden Valley, Texas, sets up huge screens at its “Battle Cry” events, which are attended by tens of thousands of teenagers. Those attending can text personal messages to the screens, or use them to ask the preachers questions. The idea is to train teenagers to use technology “for a higher purpose,” says Tocquigny, the advertising agency involved.

But text-based campaigns are more widespread. Last year Nike, a maker of sports gear, used text messaging to allow people to conjure up images of customised shoes on a giant screen in New York's Times Square. Anyone who did so received a text message in return that contained the address of a website where the design could be confirmed and the shoes ordered. And in July this year Procter & Gamble invited women to text their secrets to Times Square's giant screens, as part of a promotion for its Secret deodorant. (“I cut my sister's hair when she was younger and told my parents that she did it herself,” ran a typical message.) The messages were also displayed on the secret.com website. “Brand awareness has increased dramatically,” says P&G.

As the photos on his TXTual Healing website reveal, most messages (“Where's my other sock?”) lack lyricism. But Mr Notzold expects gravitas will come with time. “The more I can get out there and do this, the more people are going to text politically and socially charged material,” he suggests. His text-message graffiti system gives people a way to stay engaged, he believes, “instead of just plugging into games or music on the phone, and disconnecting from society.”
Digital graffiti can have commercial as well as political uses. This summer Britvic, a British soft-drinks company, ran a “Court on Camera” promotion at the Wimbledon tennis tournament. Consumers who were queuing for tickets were encouraged to send photos from their phones to a giant screen adorned with branding for its Robinsons line of soft drinks. “It became a form of co-branding, where the consumers stamped their identity on the event,” says Daniel Conti, Britvic's new-media manager. VIP tickets to the centre court were awarded to the senders of the best pictures.

For others, public texting is a chance to cause a stir. Paul Notzold, a designer based in Brooklyn, has rigged up a system to project blank speech bubbles on to public walls. He generally sets up after sunset for better visibility and passes out leaflets explaining how to send text into the speech bubbles. “There is an element of empowerment in being able to post a message,” says Mr Notzold, who just finished a master's degree in design and technology at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. He has done a dozen or so “projections” on to buildings: in Brooklyn, along the canals in Amsterdam, in a public square in Hamburg and even on to the Millennium Museum in Beijing. “The police were around, and when they came over I thought they were going to shut it down,” says Mr Notzold. In fact, they just wanted to know the phone number to send messages to.

When Jason Hetherington, a 26-year-old exam instructor, was working in Dubai for six months, he often visited wiffiti.com to see what was up at Somerville's Someday Café in Somerville, Massachusetts, his old haunt. “It was a great way to get a taste of what was going on back home,” he says. Stephen Randall, the boss of LocaModa and one of the founders of Symbian, a company that makes software for smartphones, likens the result to a location-based blog. He plans to have sponsored screens capturing “the word on the street” in 10,000 places by 2009.
Some of the messages sent to the screens are remarkably banal, but things occasionally get spicy. In March one woman received a marriage proposal via the Wiffiti screen at Toscanini's café in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What is more, she accepted via Wiffiti—after a mere 29 minutes of contemplation. Although it might seem to make more sense to talk to, rather than text, the person sipping coffee nearby, “people are looking for a way to break the ice,” says Tamara Mendelsohn of Forrester, a consultancy. Furthermore, systems like Wiffiti are “noncommittal—you're not going to face rejection,” she adds.

The earliest examples of digital graffiti appeared in Europe, where text messaging took off years ago, unlike in America where it has only recently become popular. In 2001, for example, at the Speaker's Corner building in Huddersfield, England, a tickertape-like display showed the results of a text-message poetry contest. Sponsored by the Arts Council England, the contest elicited some 2,000 poems, 100 of which were displayed on the constantly scrolling screen.
The latest digital-graffiti systems are rather more elaborate, thanks to the efforts of companies such as LocaModa, a start-up based in Somerville, Massachusetts. It has installed eight “Wiffiti” screens (a name derived from “wireless graffiti”—it has no relation to Wi-Fi networking) in coffee-shops in several American cities, sometimes with the support of sponsors. Between double espressos, patrons send text messages to the 50-inch screens. What they write is also mirrored on the web, so that visitors to wiffiti.com can remotely observe what's going on at, say, the Hurricane Café in Seattle, the Filter Coffee Lounge in Chicago or Half Fast Subs in Boulder, Colorado.