日本語リスニング：会計のミーティング

This past week I attended a meeting held by the Big Four accounting firm, KPMG, about their Japanese practice. The hour and a half presentation described what functions the firm fulfills, the positions available for their Japanese practice, and the requirements for each of the positions. Further, as many of the attendees were prospective interns and employees who live in Japan currently, they also described the processes KPMG has to help facilitate getting a visa to work in the U.S. 

They described that a business-level knowledge of the Japanese language and the English language would be prerequisites to working with the Japanese practice teams in the American offices. They talked about the industry clients that each office serves, with examples being finance in New York City, automotive in Detroit, and technology services in their San Francisco office. Overall, I was shocked with how much katakana-English was used in relation to various business terms they used. Many times, they said the katakana-English word and then said the Japanese equivalent, which helped me pick up a few new terms.

During the presentation, I wrote down a number of new words that I heard as I can assume that I will need to know these vocabulary words if I intend to work with accounting in Japanese. Here are a few:

新しいたんご：

金融（きんゆう）ー finance

理解（りかい）ー　understanding, comprehension

先ほど（さきほど）ー some time ago, a moment ago

可能（かのう）ー possible, feasible

国際（こくさい）ーinternational

私の友達

 私のルームメイトの家族はポーランドから来て、ポーランド語が話せます。そして、少しだけポーランド語を私に教えましたけど、私はぜんぜん読めません。ルームメイトのせんこうはコンピューターサイエンスなので、パソコンのことがたくさん分かれます。そして、上手にサッカーが出来ます。私は上手に出来ません。

去年、ルームメイトが三人でした。一人は運転手で、きょうそうします。車はとても好きですから、いろいろな車のことについて知っていて、なおせます。

あのルームメイトの中で、一人は映画が好きで、たくさんはいゆうについて知っています。そして、その人のふたごははいゆうです。高校生の時、アメフトして、今上手にアメフトが出来ます。一緒にビデオゲームして、さいきんたっしゃになって、上手に出来ます。

日本語リスニング: 歌

For the listening blog, I chose the song "Dead End" by the group Kolokol. This Jpop song falls into a style often similar of other idol groups, featuring a symphonic background and parts of the song that feature the different singers with frequent solos. Among their other works, I like this song because of the heavier use of guitar, giving it more of a rock/metal feeling rather than a typical idol-eqsue song. This song features English lines mixed throughout the Japanese lyrics. I discovered this group unintentionally after I incidentally attended one of their live concerts, and I have listened to their discography since then.

単語

現状 (げんじょう)- present condition/ status quo

栄 (えい)- honor/ glory

映る (うつる）- [u-verb] to be reflected, to harmonize with