■

  2 - English grammar and feminism

  They say misfortunes never come alone. Indeed, what made me feel yet badder was the school I worked part-time for as a Japanese teacher of English sacked me due solely to my having reached the 70th of age.  Oh my!  No more income, small as it was, to make up for my pension shortage. I was downtrodden. Hxxx with 古希, I cursed inwardly. 

  But I shouldn't have.  "No one can receive anything unless it is given to him from heaven." So says St. John. As it turned out, he is right.

  A translation company in Tokyo I visited for the first time gave me a job almost then and there. The person in charge, a woman in her early thirties, who happened to share `alma mater` with me, had too much on her plate. She was in a position to outsource her work. Before hiring me, however, she needed to test my ability as I had anticipated. I produced one `TIME` magazine issued a year earlier in which they had picked my contribution among others about a Japanese female politician who was involved in a scandal and was later reduced to resigning - Quote "I wanted to see Obuchi fight back and maneuver her way out of this plight, which would've at least helped show the potent woman power (that will be) indispensable for changing the culture of male dominance in Japan" Unquote. The three letters in the parenthesis were added by the Weekly. I wondered why and discussed it briefly with her. She also specialized in English as I did. Being non-native speakers, we don't know if we are speaking the language in a correct natural way. We Just try our best to be grammatically correct. Politics aside, English grammar and how to pursue and improve the language dominated our conversation. This seemed to impress her along with my feminism. Finally, she said, "Help me do part of my translation work, will you?"