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2011/12/14 17:31
<ヤング先生インタヴュー(3)>
(聞き手:小島基洋<英語圏文学専攻教員>)
KOJIMA: What was something that shocked you when you first came to Japan?
YOUNG: I guess one thing that really stuck in my mind in the beginning, and I could not understand for the life of me, was the time I watched a news program on T.V. and saw that someone had just committed suicide by jumping in front of a JR train. Now, of course, as unfortunate as it is, this kind of thing happens in Australia too. However, what surprised me was not the fact that someone had taken their own life, but the fact that JR was then planning on suing the family of the dead person for the costs incurred due to the delay.
When I first heard this my immediate reaction was to think that JR must be a very heartless company. I could not imagine anyone wanting to do such a thing to a family who had just lost a loved one. In Australia, the public would protest fiercely against it and the company would soon become very unpopular.
A Japanese friend, however, explained to me that the railway system in Japan is extremely important and such incidents can leave millions of people stranded and cost the companies billions in revenue. That is why JR must take extreme measures to try and deter people from using the train lines as an instrument to kill themselves. While this does make some sense to me now, I still to this day find it hard to accept such a policy.

[小島] 初めて日本に来た時に衝撃的だったことはありますか?
[ヤング] 最初、とてもショックで、どうしても理解できなかったことがあります。それはTVのニュースを見ていた時でした。JR線に飛び込んで自殺をした(committed suicide)人がいたんです。もちろん、オーストラリアでもそういうことはあるんです。不幸なことではありますが。でも、僕が驚いたのは、誰かが自殺したということではなくて、JRが電車の遅れによって生じた損害(costs incurred due to the delay)を遺族に請求しようとしていたことです。
最初にこれを聞いた時は、JRはなんて冷たい会社(heartless company)なんだろうと思いました。大切な人を喪った家族にそんなことをするなんて想像もできなかったんです。もしこんなことがオーストラリアで起これば、人々は猛烈に抗議するでしょうし、会社は信用を失うでしょう。
でも、日本の友達が説明してくれたんです。鉄道のシステムは日本ではとても重要で、そんなことが起これば、何百万人という人が足止めを食らってしまい、企業に何億円もの損失が出てしまう。だから鉄道自殺を防止するために、JRは極端な手段(extreme measures)に出なくてはならないんだとね。それを聞いて、今では何となく理解できる気もするんですが、やっぱり受け入れがたい感じは残りますね。
<次回の質問>
From your experience of studying Japanese, what advice would you give our students studying foreign languages?
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