My mother's new electronic dictionary

The other day, the electronic dictionary which my mother had used for a long time was broken. She had to buy a new one. She looked for the dictionary which was fit for her on the internet, and compared the prices at some mass home electronics retails.

The new dictionary contains 100 dictionaries! We can listen to the pronunciation by sound or we can input the words by writing on the touch pad with an attached pen. There are four colors: silver, white, black and red. She bought the red one. She says “It is cute, isn’t it?” she is satisfied with it.


(103 words / total 5295 words)

A kitchen garden

My aunt (my father’s older sister) lives in a suburb of Kumamoto City. She has a kitchen garden and her husband grows various flowers and vegetables there. Sometimes my aunt brings crops to my house.

The other day, she brought a cabbage, garlic, and some onions. One of the onions was very big. She said “this is as big as my granddaughter’s head!” My mother can not decide how to cook it. We will keep it and enjoy looking at it for the time being.


(85 words / total 5192 words)

Mahjong

I love mahjong very much. I play it with my friends. I started to play it when I was a junior high school student. At first, I only played with the computer game. One day, one of my friends found a set of mahjong tiles at my home. It was my grandmother’s. She played with her children. My friend asked me “Do you play mahjong?” “No, but I want to play it.” Then, he said “Why don’t you play with me?” This was the beginning of my mahjong life.

Mahjong is intellectual game. So, it is good to prevent people becoming senile.

Let’s play mahjong with me!


(107 words / total 5107 words)

Book review #8 (Gulliver's travels)

Lemuel Gulliver loved to travel and adventures. This is the story of his strange adventure.

Once Gulliver boarded a ship for the Far East, it was a difficult and dangerous one. The ship was sank and all the passengers drawn except for Gulliver. He swam and could get to island. When he woke up after a deep asleep, he found he was tied to the ground. There were a lot of tiny men around him. The name of the country was Lilliput. At first, Gulliver could not understand the language there, and the people scared him. But soon Gulliver learned the language and people became friendly. Lilliput had some problems. First, there were two groups of the people in Lilliput. One group wear high heels and the other group wear low ones. They are bitter enemies. There was possible the civil war would break out. Secondly, there was an island Blefescu near Lilliput. Lilliput had a law that said “Eggs always had to be eaten from the smaller end”. Some people who did not want to obey this law fled to Blefescu. Then the war broke out between two countries. The emperor asked Gulliver to help Lilliput, and Gulliver did. Thanks to Gulliver Lilliput won. The people pleased. But the man who was in charge of the emperor’s money did not like Gulliver because, Gulliver cost too much. So, the man tried to kill him and Gulliver left Lilliput. He found a full-sized boat was floating upside down in the sea. He fixed it and rowed it. Then a big ship picked him up and took him home.


Feeling
This story is very famous and everyone knows the title. But no one knew the contents in exactly. If I ask someone “Do you know Gulliver’s Travels?”, he or she might answer. “Yes, of course. Gulliver visited the country of very small people or something, right?” I did not know the story in detail as well as them.

Actually, Gulliver draft ashore to the island of small people. But, this story is not only a fantasy. The small people went to war with trivial causes. And after the war, they tried to kill Gulliver even though they were helped by him. It is a satire of the human society. It was a very interesting.



(383 words / total 5000 words)

Dictionaries

At my home, there are various kinds of dictionaries. There are some English-Japanese dictionaries, some Japanese-English dictionaries, Japanese dictionaries, Kanji dictionary, a proverb dictionary, a French-Japanese dictionary, a history dictionary and so on. Some of them are in the dining room. When my parents hear the unfamiliar words on TV, they use the dictionaries to know the meaning of the words or their origin.

I have an electronic dictionary. Usually I use it to study English, but sometimes my parents want to use it. It covers about 20 kinds of dictionaries. Especially an encyclopedia is useful to look up the people or places.

My mother also has an electronic dictionary. It covers only three dictionaries (an English-Japanese, a Japanese-English and an English-English). She has used it regularly for a long time. A few days ago, it was broken suddenly. She pushed the power button as usual. But, she could see only some black lines on the screen. At first, she thought it was caused by shortage of the battery. So, she changed the batteries. But, it did not work. She could not give up using it, and she tried to turn on the switch or changed the batteries again and again. Even now, it did not work. Finally, she gave up and decided to buy a new one.


(218 words / total 4617 words)