I am fond of English language. My history of English language studying dates back when I was in night-time high school. I was obliged to give up higher education because of my father's early death right after the Hiroshima atomic bomb drop.

The followings are the one I am proud of being able to make recitation of in good memory in a way as a native speaker or even better(laugh). This　is the one I could be proud of and being able to make better than the natives, yes!. You will be astonished when hear it!

Oh I remember back in Japan some years ago, I happened to watch the CNN on the Day 11-9 ceremony, an American politician made that recitation as good as I!(laugh again)

At the end of this top page, let me introduce something about my personal hobby for English language learning and practices. The following five English notes are the ones I love to make recitation of with loud voice as good as the native English speakers.

The motivation  for this habit is very interesting, and let me explain;
Back in Japan when I was 40-year-old or so, I began to take a morning nice and hot bath after more than an-hour-physical exercises until good amount of perspiration, which, I thought, was good for a person who cannot enjoy the shower after playing the golf.

Good amount of perspiration after exercises and more in hot bath tub brought me splendid feeling, so that I hit upon an idea of using the time in the bathtub in a more efficient way, and that is to make recitations of English speech or the poem or the like while enjoying nice and hot tub!

By the way, dipping into nice and hot bathtub is no more needed for me in this tropical country. My style all through the day and night is "Suteteko(middle-long light pants) & short shirts style" from morning through night.

Well, let me explain my English recitation hobbies. The first one is "The Lord's Prayer", and continued on with such as; "Lord's Prayer", "The Lion's Code of Ethics", "Lincoln's Gettysburg's Address", "Youth", "My Way". This takes about 8-minute, which I found it was good enough time before the perspiration came out(In Japan with nice and hot bath tub, but no more here in a tropical country, though.)

My recitation items and the motivations are as follow;

1. "Lord's Prayer "
I was born in a Buddist family. When I was in high school(Night time one because of my destiny of abandoning higher education after my father's early death after the A-bomb, to take care of my family.

It happened that I won the first prize in the English speech contest for Hiroshima prefecture high school. The title was "How I've fought my way out." This was the beginning of my long way of life benefited by my English knowledge and human relationship brought by that.

The biggest one was my experience with an American lady missionary and English teacher in Hiroshima Mission school, Miss Anderson by the name, who came to me at the contest with her student girl, saying "Congratulations, Mr.Yoshida. May I introduce my student?...". That was  the beginning of my association with the missionary and her student, Miss Murakami.....

The former, Miss Anderson, to my way to become a Christian with "The Lord's Prayer" close to my life, and the latter, in later years, become my life benefactor.

One of the great lessons I learned from Miss Anderson was that "The polio is the greatest gift given me by God who wants me to show people how a man can be that strong if he has faith in God. This was the beginning of my lifelong association with the Lord's Prayer.

By the way this happening brought another life-valued opportunity of getting associated with her student, Miss Yoshino Murakami, who in later years, became my life-long, unforgettable and precious friend girl I ever knew. She happened to be a daughter of Hiroshima University professor and later year became the president of the Mission high and university, and more, becoming the go-between for my wedding, which ended in separation years later(Ha).

Continuing to write about her(Miss Murakami) more, let me tell the visitors about my essay contest winner article titled "My eternal platonic sweetheart and benefactor in my life". If you click the link, there comes the copy of that Article (though in Japanese), which was the one I got the prize for "one of the 55 items selected as "good works" among 717 applied. The contest was sponsored by a publishing company in Tokyo under the title of "My first love, first HE and first HER". The applicants were from teenagers to eightieth. The below far the right is the cover opened backside, in which my essay appears on P.235.

Well, sorry for getting off the line in my writing about how I got to be closely associated with the Lord's Prayer.