AELP 1 – Laundry in Japan

Well, hello again, everyone, this is Drew Badger, the Co-Founder of englishanyone.com.

It’s been a while since I’ve produced something new for YouTube, and I’m excited to come back and do that.

I’ve been thinking for quite a while about producing a new kind of video series that’s really not anything innovative,

uh, like creating a new kind of lesson.

I really just want to speak with you in the same way that a native speaker would,

so speaking normally with a regular native speed, and just talking about whatever.

So I’m going to start creating those and you’re going to kind of help me design them and let me know if they’re more helpful for you.

So what I do for Master English Conversation is I’m talking with people at my regular native speed,

and you can see some of these videos on the Master English Conversation playlist,

uh, right here on YouTube, as well as if you’re a member of the program.

But what I want to do is kind of create something in the middle where I’m talking to you at native speed.

So right now I’m still giving you my kind of teaching voice,

and trying to be a bit more clear and a bit more,

um, easy to understand for people, but when I speak at native speed I’m still

not really difficult to understand, but it’s going to be a step up from what you’re used to.

So that’s what I’d like to do in this video series.

And I’ll just be talking about whatever, it might be English related, or not, uh, so I’ve thought for,

uh, this episode, or this first one, I was just going to talk about some interesting things about Japan,

uh, that maybe I haven’t spoken of, uh, about before and maybe you’re not familiar with.

So, right now I’m going to kick into,

I’m going to get into my native, fast native speed.

And, uh, I’ll still try to explain a few words as I go, but uh, I really want to give you the exposure,

uh, since, especially, uh, if you’ve been following me for a while you’ve had a lot of practice listening to my native voice,

uh, but at a slower speed.

So now you’ll get lots of practice, uh, listening to that, if you go back and watch all the videos.

If you are new to my channel, I recommend you do not watch this video.

I recommend you go back and watch some of the previous videos I’ve made, so that way you can train your listening ability with my voice

and you’ll be ready to understand it at native speed.

But for all of you who have been following my channel for a long time,

number one, thank you very much, and then number two,

let’s get into some faster English.

So, let’s begin.

Well, this is kind of an interesting thing, uh, I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while, and again,

you can try to listen to me, I’m speaking a little bit faster.

But this is the way I speak, and especially when I get excited

I really start speaking more quickly, and even though I try to be clear

it still can be a little bit difficult for, uh, maybe some people to understand what I’m saying.

Anyway, I’m a little bit excited today because this is my first video that I’m making in a while.

So, let me see, some interesting things about Japan.

Now, this is just kind of one thing I noticed, uh, you know, I’m trying to be at home, and because I work from home I want to be able to give my wife a little bit extra help.

Uh, and so one of the things I’m trying to do more of is like doing some cleaning around the house,

so I’ll be doing maybe a little bit of like cleaning the bathroom, and actually getting in there and scrubbing everything, so getting in there.

I really want to get into the bathroom.

I’m cleaning the shower, and wiping the walls, and that kind of thing.

But the most confusing thing for me thus far has been doing the laundry.

And now this is a little bit weird, because the way kind of like the laundry culture,

uh, things like that, are a little bit different, because, uh,

in Japan, in America, for one thing, uh, most people don’t use a dryer here in Japan.

So in America we often have a dryer,

and a washer, or maybe something that’s a combination of the two,

but in Japan most people hang uh, a lot of their stuff out to dry.

So to hang something out to dry.

But what’s been interesting for me, uh, is, you know, in addition to this not having a washer is a washer bag.

So, excuse me, we do have a washer but I don’t have a dryer here;

we hang all of our things outside.

Uh, so sometimes when the weather is, you know, not very good we get to keep everything inside and it gets kind of humid, and, you know, it gets, you know, kind of bad when we got the, uh, the rainy weather.

But for today, uh, it’s actually, uh, a nice day out.

But so this interesting thing here, I’ve got some of them with me,

uh, this is something that we don’t have in America, or at least I’m not familiar with, and these are laundry bags.

I wanted to have a little bit of show and tell,

so to show and to tell something,

so show and tell.

So, uh, my wife has been teaching me about these, and they’re actually pretty interesting.

You know, you can separate different clothes and you put everything into one, uh, you know, laundry bag, I guess they’re called.

Laundry bags.

Uh, but they’ve got different size mesh.

So mesh is, uh, kind of a way of explaining or describing the tiny holes in something,

so like on a screen for a window you would have mesh for that.

So this is a, uh, kind of a mesh, uh, kind of thing, it’s like woven fabric, but you’re using this for a laundry bag.

Now, this seems like a pretty easy thing, and you would put clothes in here to make sure they don’t get, uh, messed up.

So this is to, uh, become damaged, to become messed up.

So you’d put them in there to, uh, not get them messed up when you’re putting them in the washing machine.

But the thing that’s confusing for me

is that there are multiple bags, and I’m trying to figure out what the different uses of them are.

So this is one with, uh,

pretty small holes,

uh, and then we also have one with larger holes in them.

So I’ll put these up here, you can take a look.

Pretty interesting.

So these ones with the bigger holes, these are for things like underwear and stuff.

I guess you really want to get more water in there and clean everything up, you know.

I do take a shower, though,

so I’m pretty nice and clean as it is, but, you know, I do work out, you know, and I get sweaty, and you got to, got to wash things.

So a kind of finer mesh, so you can talk about the size of the hole, the, uh, the fineness or the thickness of it.

So the fineness, uh, of this mesh over here, this is, uh, maybe just for reg, regular t-shirts that I would wear.

All right, so now I’m like, I’m going to kind of interrupt what I’m saying now because maybe in the background you can hear people yelling outside on loudspeakers.

Now, this is kind of an interlude, uh, like a little bit of just, uh,

something weird about Japan for me.

When it comes to election time,

uh, it’s funny to be actually talking about laundry and elections in the same video, but, hey, you never know where this, uh, series will go.

But, uh, so people are driving around in little trucks and they’re saying thank you to everyone, and vote for me, vote for me, and this is from about 8 in the morning

till 8 in the evening, for maybe like two weeks something like that.

And it depends on the various days so it’s hard for me to sit down and get nice, uh, silent recordings.

So, anyway, back to the laundry bags very quickly.

So we’ve got these, uh, the thicker, uh, or the, uh, the bigger holes over there, and then the more fine holes over here, so the smaller ones.

Now, we’ve also got something that’s a combination of the two,

and so my wife is trying to explain to me what goes in what, and why we put it in there, and how exactly to do it,

so it’s much more of like a fine art out here.

And it’s actually interesting for me when my wife, you know, travelled back with me to America, and so she’s bringing these laundry bags back to America.

Uh, and so when I was asking, uh, my mom, you know, I was, hey, can, uh, can we do some laundry here,

uh, and my wife pulls out all of these laundry bags and she brings them back to America with us.

And my mom just looked at them, and thinking, uh, like what, like what do you do with those, because, you know, she’d never seen them before and we don’t use anything like that in America really.

About the only thing we really do is we separate, you know, maybe whites and colors, or, you know, like

cold wash stuff and warm wash stuff.

I actually am like not very good at laundry;

I just kind of put everything in there and hope maybe I don’t, like, run stuff.

And, you know, actually, my clothes is pretty, um,

I don’t know, it’s pretty easy, actually.

I don’t really have to worry about, uh, changing so much because basically I wear like the same stuff all the time.

I’m very simple like that.

I don’t really want to think about fashion.

Uh, maybe I will in the future, but for now it’s not that big of a deal.

Anyway, I don’t want to overload you with too much information, but this is my native speaking voice, especially when I get excited and I want to talk about things quickly and I want to explain a lot.

You see how I can get into that and you can listen to the blending of the sounds.

Uh, but if you enjoyed this video, do let me know.

Feel free to comment down below.

You can tell me about your laundry as well,

and whether this video would be, uh, helpful for you or not.

Now, uh, maybe I’ll think about adding transcripts to these, and maybe I won’t.

I don’t know, it kind of depends.

Uh, the nice thing about this new series, uh, assuming you like it,

is that I can, um, maybe produce them a lot more quickly.

So I’m, you know, thinking about trying to make something.

Again, there won’t be any subtitles at the bottom of the videos.

You’ll just have to really focus on watching me and listening,

uh, and hopefully I can maybe like have something a bit more interesting, uh, to show you or talk to you about,

uh, and that way you can get more interested in that.

So, uh, I will let the video course kind of belong to you, and let you, the viewers out there,

dictate, uh, when the next video comes out.

So, number one, if you like it,

uh, and number two, if this video gets over 10,000 views,

which is really not that much by YouTube standards, or even by, uh, my channel standards, but,

uh, the sooner we can get it to 10,000 views,

uh, the sooner I will make a new version.

So, if you like this, and you like getting to listen to me speak at native speed, and speak a little bit faster and really get to improve your pronunciation and listening,

by kind of copying what I do, as well as listening, then let me know.

I hope this has been an enjoyable video for you, and I look forward to making more and to talking to you,

uh, in a faster way, and really helping you build your listening and speaking confidence as well.

If you’d like to listen to more of me speaking with other people to really get that conversational fluency down,

I invite you to check out Master English Conversation on our website,

and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.

Bye-bye.