先日の”arranged marriage”に続いて、英会話教室AEONの英作文課題として、”Online dating”について書きました。両方が関連あるトピックです。今回教師による修正箇所は6箇所でした。下記は修正済みのものです。
Topic: Online dating
Style: Formal
(Please refer to my previous essay about “arranged marriage”, since two topics are quite closely linked each other.)
As we have seen in my previous essay about “arranged marriage”, there has been a quite drastic shift in the form of marriage from traditional arranged marriage to love marriage in just 70 years. The problem that we should carefully watch is whether people in Japan could smoothly adjust to this rapid change. From my personal experiences, there are many not pure “boy/girl-meets-girl/boy” type love-marriages in the high dominance of love marriage as 87.7% in years from 2010 to 2014. It is difficult to know exactly how much is the pure type, because most married couples might be reluctant to tell the truth of their first encounter if it was not a genuine type of love affair.
As collateral evidences, some statistics by IBJ, an organization of collected dating services in Japan, are introduced here. The number of the service companies under IBJ is 1,771, and collectively they have more than 59,000 customers. IBJ estimates the number of potential customers (namely the unmarried) as 6 million and the market size as 200 billion JPY ($1.8 billion). The service they offer is practically an Omiai itself. The difference between old and new Omiai is just who takes care of combining unmarried couple: the relatives or some acquaintances (in the past) or a service company (now).
In Japan, we call marriage related activities “Konkatsu”, being derived from the word “Shukatsu” (activities trying to get a job). It means that it is quite difficult for many young people to find a good counterpart and they need some special activities. In the past, Gokon, a matchmaking party, was popular as an example of such activities. It seems, however, online dating services operated by the companies under IBJ have replaced Gokon. There were some negative images for such services in Japan, since there was a service called Terekura (telephone club) that was often abused for prostitution by amateurs in the late 1980’s. It can be observed, however, that popularization of smartphones and SNS services might have improved the negative image of online dating services at a rapid pace.
「謎の円盤UFO」の”Reflections in the water”を観ました。終わりが近づくにつれ、脚本のレベルが上がって来ているように思います。今回はエイリアンはいつものちまちました攻撃ではなく、とうとう50機という大編隊で地球を襲おうとします。更にはその準備として凝っているのが、火山島の中にUFOを潜ませておく基地を作り、さらにはその近くの海底にドームを作り、その中に何とSHADO本部とまったく一緒の設備を作り、そこで働くスタッフもストレイカー司令官を含め全員そっくりさんを揃えています。で、その目的はムーンベースとインターセプター、そしてスカイダイバーに対して、UFOが襲来しても攻撃するなという嘘の指令を出すことでした。しかしよく考えると本物のSHADO本部の方が機能しないようにしている訳ではないんですから、発信場所からすぐばれそうなものですが…今回またもストレイカーは司令官にあるまじき行為で、フォスター大佐と一緒に海底ドームの調査に乗り出し、あわや、ということになります。