The Power of Words 言葉のチカラ

Today I shared this inspiring article about NBA star Yuta Watanabe with one of my students who is a basketball fanatic. It outlines Yuta Watanabe’s journey to the NBA and he shares with us how words can have a huge impact on how you approach life.

I was truly inspired by the words that Yuta lives by which are 謙虚 and 初心. It is one aspect of Japanese culture that has drawn me to settle into this country. It is also interesting how the term garbage time in basketball has a significantly different meaning from Japanese which is translated as a waste of time. Garbage time in basketball basically refers to the time bench players play when the game’s score has already been decided. However, in the mind of Yuta, there is no such thing as garbage time as any time in the NBA is an extremely rare opportunity. There are 450 million basketball players in the world and only 450 can play in the NBA so it is literally a 1 in a million chance.

If there’s anything to take away from this article, it is that that words have a powerful effect in shaping our mindsets. This also relates to English too. Instead of saying “It is too difficult”, you can try saying “It is challenging but I will try”. Instead of saying “If I can speak English, I can travel the world”, try saying “When I can speak English, I will travel the world”.

click here for the English article

click here for the Japanese translation.

First English Cafe

Today`s first ever English cafe was a success. We enjoyed some coffee and chocolate and answered some questions about us (Chapman and Drew). First, we talked about our life philosophy which can be found in our profile page.

The student was curious about our life philosophy, especially about Chapman`s which is “burn the boats”. Even Drew did`t know what that meant. To “burn the boats” basically means to not run away from your dreams even though there are many difficulties ahead. Since the boats are already burned, you cannot turn back.

Next, the student shared with us a very big problem that will affect our generations to come. It is climate change. He shared with us this article that he brought with him. We all agreed that this is a serious problem that we must all think about. The student`s life philosophy is to “think globally and to act locally”. We all agreed with it because it means that we must make changes at a local level (communities and cities) first before we can change the entire world.

We just had one of the hottest summers in history and yesterday was another sign that the climate has changed.

Until next time!