ただいま！ I'm home!

(英語が得意な私は英語の勉強を頑張っている日本人のために英語でも書かないともったいない、と思ったのでこれからのブログを英訳付きで書いてみたいと思いますのでどうぞ参考にしてください☆)

 (As long as I pride myself on my English ability I figured it's a waste not to write these blog entries in English, too, for the sake of Japanese who are doing their best to study it. I'll try writing my blog entries from here on out in both English in Japanese so I hope you can use it as a referral.)

 

昨日の夜、先週ぎりぎり取れた連休末の夜便で帰りました。やっぱり今日の仕事がきつい… しかも職場の健康診断もあって、採血で余計にだるい(汗)

Last night I returned home on the post-three-day-weekend evening flight I barely managed to snatch at the last second last week. Work today is as tough as I was expecting it to be... And on top of that I had my annual health check-up at work today so I'm even MORE exhausted from the blood test.

 

最初に九州へ出発した時、さすがの国内線で機内などのアナウンスは全部日本語だけでした。(というのは問題ないんですけど、ひどく響く時は全然分からなくなってしまいます。どんなに日本語が分かっても、はっきり聞こえないとダメなんです…)

 When I first went to Kyushu, the announcements on the plane and stuff were all in Japanese, as one would expect for a domestic flight. (Which isn't a problem but once Japanese is spoken with an echo, I lose all ability to understand it. No matter how well I can understand Japanese, it's useless if I can't hear it clearly...)

 

でも帰りはなぜか違いました。外国人は私一人でしたのに、機内にはいきなりフライトアテンダントはすごく苦労して英語のアナウンスも入れました。(日本人が英語のスクリプトを読んでいる時、話すスピードやトーンによって英語が話せるか全く話せないかがなんとなく区別できます。1人目のアテンダントは英語:まあまあOK。2人目は英語:不可。という予想でした。)

 But it was different on the way home. Even though I was the one and only foreigner, suddenly the flight attendants struggled to tack on English to the announcements as well. (When the Japanese read scripts in English, I can kind of get an idea by the speed and tone of their speech whether they actually know English or not. The first attendant pretty much had it covered. The second one did not. That's how it came across to me, anyway.)

 

でも気になったのはなぜ今回英語でもアナウンスすることになったのか。もしかして…私1人のためなのか。ちっと変な気分でした。優しいけど「そんなに苦労しなくていいんですよ」と言ってあげたくなりました。(笑)

 But what intrigued me was why they decided to add English announcements this time around. Could it be that it was for my sake in particular? It felt pretty weird. It was kind of them, but I almost wanted to tell them that they didn't need to go out of their way on my account, haha.

 

以上、今日の「外人専用ハプニング」でした。

 And that, Ladies and Gentleman, is today's episode of Things That Only Happen to Gaijin.