Echizen Washi

I don't know why people give too much pressure on Japanese people that we should speak and use more English. That causes some parents to force their kids to study English in their early age. I'm totally against that idea.

I started studying English when I was twelve and now I use English to communicate, and sometimes Chinese too ( attention ! Chinese and Japanese are very different, not like French and Spanish or Italian ).

I always tell my students to study Japanese very hard before English. We have to study kanji first. And we also have to use hiragana and katakana ( the photo shows notebooks of my student who was studying kanji in front of me ).

It really takes time to study kanji and you would have to practice every day very hard. I always think it's very important to study your mother tougue very well at first to have your clear ideas watching every day life in the scene. For example, I've heard when you see cherry blossoms in Japan, the suitable word is ` sakura`, not `cherry blossom` ending `m`.

I hope the Japanese government encourages children to study kanji very well, not English.