Monday, May 19, 2008

An article about my country in the English speaking press

I have chosen an article "Cheaper Honda hybrids" from New Zealand Herald, because I am interested in environment and the price of petrol nowadays. For example, all over the world, we have a serious problem of global warming environmentally, and it is caused by carbon which is from electrical fittings, factories and car's exhaust gas. Furthermore, the posted price of crude oil is increasing substantially, so people who have cars are hard pressed to pay the petrol costs.
For the future, we should choose environment-friendly cars such hybrid cars. Hybrid cars use two or more different powers, very fuel-efficient and lower emissions than conventional cars. However, this kinds of cars have the disadvantages like expensive and charging time problems compare with between a hybrid and a gas car such as Chrysler, Ford, and GM. The above disadvantages, this Honda hybrid cars have improved and developed the cost and performance, as a result, US consumers is shifting to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. The cost will about US$1900 which is the difference between the hybrid and a standard gas car model, and it is coming out in the US, Europe and Japan in early 2009. The price gaps between this hybrids and their comparable standard models are from $2543 to $38145. As recently, consumers of buying hybrids moved from concern for environment to high fuel prices.

Monday, May 5, 2008

Globalisation and food

In Japan, globalisation has increased and effected every aspects such as society, culture and economy, and it also has brought an economic growth. Whether to progress of globalisation or not has been debating from every branch of areas. Japanese food has been affected by globalisation but the food in other countries has also been affected by the globalisation of sushi. Japanese globalisation could be called often "Americanisation". For instance, when I would like to eat something, there is the large range of choice from various ethnic restaurants. However, these mainly seems to be distinguished the American companies. So I am going to talk about the globalisation's effects of importing and exporting foods.

Globalisation of import food might be one of positive side from considering the large range of choice in my country. It seems as if we are in another countries without travelling. Some people believe that "fast food chains" typify the globalisation of food in Japan. For example, McDonald's, KFC, SUBWAY, Wendy's, Quiznos Sub and Burger King, also these are mainly from American companies. Although, if we go to a big city we could eat more diverse kinds of fast foods such as Indian, Mexican and so on. When I was a child, the fast food chains had been already coming in and taking root in our lifestyle, so I sometimes ate such as a burger. But my grandparents generation might not imagine to be changed from traditional food style to the other countries styles.

On the other hand, Japanese has also popular and traditional fast food, it is sushi. It is famous among not only Japanese but also another countries people. People think that such as burgers are generally unhealthy, but sushi is healthy food, so it may have gained acceptance even the other countries. In negative aspects, young people's taste has changed and they prefer western fast foods rather than traditional foods. It might be hard for Japanese food industry. Futhermore, older people are apprehensive that younger people might be effected life-style related disease by western fast foods. Nowadays, we can get the large range of foods choice, therefore whether or not you agree with globalisation the choice is yours.