In this podcast, I will pick up one of the news in Canada this week, let me introduce and talk about it. 

Let’s start with this news of 1st week of June 2023.

Patisserie Le Pont: French-Japanese pastry shop opens in West Van

According to Daily Hive on June 2nd, Last fall, Dished shared the news that Patisserie Le Pont had just launched in Vancouver as an online-only pastry shop. The French-Japanese-inspired patisserie has now opened its very own brick-and-mortar space at 230 15th Street in West Vancouver. Freshly opened on May 30, this spot offers a selection of the finely crafted sweets that the brand has become known for. From Japanese tea-flavoured Croquants (a crunchy eclair) to petit Croquants (somewhere between a crunchy eclair and a cream puff), Le Pont’s offerings are all made with quality ingredients.

With Le Pont’s mix of French technique with Japanese flavour profiles, patrons can expect options like Matcha, Hojicha, classic custard, seasonal fruit, and coconut yuzu. Patisserie Le Pont’s new West Vancouver storefront is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 7 pm.

Took a look at the pastry’s website, which looks delicious and the Executive Pâtissière is an experienced Japanese professional Makoto Yanaguchi.  Their website says the signature menu appears as éclairs and uses Japanese tea leaves in some desserts. They named Patisserie Le Pont after their desire to be the bridge between Canadian and Japanese cultures.

I am proud and respect that one Japanese person has such a big conviction. I hope everyone in Vancouver will enjoy that pastry. 

Speaking of Japanese food in Canada, the thing I wanna mention is there are so many Japanese restaurants in Vancouver. Surprisingly, according to another article, there were over 600 sushi restaurants in Metro Vancouver as of 2022 and acknowledged as The Most Sushi-crazed City in the World outside of Japan. We can find Sushi restaurants back and forth, what’s more, Not only Japanese living in Canada but various people in Vancouver seem obsessed with Sushi. 

It is kind of controversial if these are authentic Japanese Sushi, for me I love to eat Canadian Sushi truly which mainly tends to be various kinds of California roles, which has become a go-to sushi dish for many, was actually created in the city of Vancouver — not California. So California role is Canadian thing. If you want to try NIGIRI in Vancouver, obviously NETA is limited but at least anywhere you can find Tuna, Salmon, boiled Shrimp, Squid and Octopus. like basic ones. 

Why is sushi so popular in Vancouver? One of the reasons is it's on the West Coast, the accessibility the city has to fresh seafood makes the sushi that much more mouthwatering. The other reason is because People in Vancouver are known for their health-conscious lifestyle and emphasis on fresh, nutritious food. Sushi offers a balanced and healthy meal option. I am not sure what the truth is, but these are worth to believe it as a reason for Sushi’s reputation here in Vancouver.  I do recommend for the Japanese try some Canadian Concepts of Sushi, but watch out for the price which is definitely much more expensive than in Japan. How was today’s episode? Hope you enjoy new French Japanese pastry shop and Canadian Sushi in the future. Thank you for listening today. See you next time.  Have a great day 

French-Japanese pastry shop opens in Vancouver

シーズン1終了！なんやかんやバンクーバー良き

Transcript↓

It is a commemorable 50th episode. Today I will talk about what I like about Vancouver. I had the same title on my first episode since I started my podcast. As 1 year and 6 months passed since I came to Canada, It is going to be a good opportunity for me to look back and summarize my life so far. 

Let’s get started.  Firstly, the thing I love the most in Vancouver is to enjoy a beer at the beach in the summer. No matter what you say, that is the best thing in Vancouver. because the bright daytime lasts until around 10 pm in summer. Enjoy long-lasting sunset, not so many crowds unlike Tokyo, comfortable temperatures like 25 degrees or something, a beautiful beach and generous regulations which allow beer person to grab some beer at some beaches only in summer. Although we Japanese sometimes go BBQ with colleagues or relatives on the riverside in summer, for me going to the beach and chilling in Vancouver is a more personal, flexible, casual and usual thing, just more enjoy the sun and beer than chatting with friends or being social. It is one of the reasons now I am living here.  

The second thing, I remember last time I talked about this topic, at that moment, I said a lot of parks for free with basket goals. Today I would say, to be more specific, Stanley Park it is too beautiful to jog around the park which has 12 km for the perimeter. Stanley Park is the best place to run ever all over the world. It is, of course, beautiful more than words and what‘s more, the scenery changes every 2 km, we can see some wharves with boats on sea shore, a few minutes later, we can be surprised by the big bridge called lions gate bridge, 10 min later we can find the horizon of the Endless Pacific Ocean, finally we can end up the beautiful beach called English Bay. I couldn’t believe sometimes local people are saying we are living to enjoy the summer in Vancouver until I enjoy the Stanley park in summer.

The last thing is going to be more personal and internal changes which is kind of the feeling, I can say, “Free from others, focus on me.”  To be more specific, personally, I think we Japanese too judge other people, and also we were too judged by them. I always cared about “how other people see me” and also I was always thinking “Why people are not working so hard even though I am working hard.” Almost subconsciously, I was trying to find others’ weaknesses and failures on a daily basis, trying to judge that I like this person, I don’t like that person. That made me mad at someone. Always resulted in stressing out. On the other hand, I realized I don’t know much about me. Since always worked for the sake of someone, because of someone, I ended up losing myself. I was kind of in the race of how much we do but I’ve forgotten what is more important is what I do and for what. Here. No one cares about me, no one interests me. We can see various people from all over the world who have manifold backgrounds, and cultural preferences, whatever. And indeed just busy we don’t have time and money to care about others. I finally started focusing on my ability, my preference and whenever need to change my life, focus on what I can do, where I am, what I want to do and what I would like to be. 

That is basically tough and difficult but sometimes easygoing and exciting. At the end of the day, I like to live here, because I can feel  “Free from others, but just Focus on myself.”

How do you see life in Vancouver from your perspective? Love to hear your impression.

1年以上住んでて首相の名前すら知らんかった低所得者です！こんにちは！

As an international student with no voting rights and still limited English skills, I found myself less interested in politics and economics than I had been in Japan and knew little about them in Canada. Ultimately, I hesitate to say that but during the online English lesson, I regret myself because I don’t know even who the current prime minister of Canada is. I was blamed by my best friend, he was like “That is too awkward.” I felt I need to learn basic knowledge of Canadian Politics at least as an adult living in that country. So today let me look up some info about really basic fundamental knowledge of Canadian politics.

Let's start with this. The current Prime Minister of Canada is Justin Trudeau. Canada's 23rd Prime Minister. He has been in office since 2015. He was re-elected in 2019 for a second term. Trudeau was born on December 25, 1971, in Ottawa, Canada, and is the son of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. That means he is just 51 years old. Quite young. 

Before entering politics, Trudeau worked as a teacher and also had a successful career as a public speaker. He entered politics in 2008 ,was later elected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in 2013.

As Prime Minister, Trudeau has pursued a progressive agenda focused on issues such as climate change, social justice, and economic growth. His government has implemented policies such as the legalization of recreational cannabis, the introduction of a carbon pricing system, and the expansion of social programs such as the Canada Child Benefit. Trudeau's progressive social policy included strong advocacy for feminism and abortion rights and introduced the right to medically assisted dying. Everything seems controversial and I can not even imagine that the right to medically assisted dying is on the table. If we try to treat these issues in Japan, there should be a manifold defiant. 

The biggest difference is referred to the party system. Japan has a multi-party system with several political parties, but the dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been a defining feature of Japanese politics for decades. The LDP has held power for most of Japan's post-World War II history. In lieu of that, Canada has a more diverse party system, with multiple major parties that have formed governments at different times, such as the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the New Democratic Party (NDP), and the Bloc Québécois. what is interesting is that In Canada, individual councillors seem to have a lot of discretion, which is quite different from Japan, where it is difficult for a councillor to change the system by himself/herself. Sounds nice and that has to motivate people to vote in the election.

Today’s pick-up new vocals are “in lieu of”, “manifold” and “defiant”. “In lieu of” L-I-E-U sounds interesting like French, that means similarly “instead of”. For example, we decided to go shopping in lieu of watching a movie. The next one is ‘manifold’ which is an adjective meaning “many” For example, the implications of this decision were manifold.

The last one is “defiant” similarly meaning “resilient” to be specific, proudly refusing to obey authority. interestingly you can use this word to express someone’s personality, like “You're very defiant”. 

How was the episode today? Hope you get interested in Canadian politics.

joke するってボケるよりハードル下がる気がする

Transcript ↓

I have one update today. Since today’s episode, I will put at least the new 2 vocabularies in each episode that especially seem useful in the daily conversation taking you to the next stage and introducing the meaning at the end of the episode going forward. Hope you enjoy your input with me.  

Recently I went to watch a Canadian stand-up comedy show for the first time in Canada. Since I was in my twentieth, I have been into watching Japanese comedies, even in Canada. but finally gave up keeping stick myself to the Japanese one, and finally dived into a new world. Shortly, that was so difficult to understand because they speak with many slang that I had never heard, on top of that, their talking speed was extraordinary. But it was a good opportunity, so today I will talk about how Canadian Stand-up comedy was like from my point of view.

Speaking of the structure, in the case of the show that we watched, around 5 comedians showed up one after another, and each person seemed to have around 10 to 15min which was really similar to the Japanese comedy show style. Besides, I am not sure if it is common or not but basically, it was not likely to be a theatre and we could literally dine in a restaurant-like. Eating and Laughing. It was better than the Japanese one because we are basically not allowed to eat something during any entertainment show in Japan. That’s fun. 

On top of that, the most interesting thing was comedians tend to talk to specific audiences directly, hence, the show was more interactive than Japanese ones. The audience who was pointed out react directly to the comedian, and based on their reaction, the comedian kept stages. We sometimes have these situations in Japan but it didn’t point out certain people or groups but talks to the whole audience and try to get some reactions by clapping hands and  some aloud practices.

The main topics were dating apps, drugs and racism. Some of these topics were difficult to understand from my point of view, especially as long as they were joking about drugs and racism, I couldn’t understand and laugh at all. Probably I need a more cultural understanding behind the jokes.

Having said that, after all, it was exciting, I was over the moon. One of the comedians made me a big fan of him. It was because he was the only person who was not talking about the drugs and racism but mainly talking about the Suffering and Challenges of an unpopular man with passion. It sounds like one of the common topics in Japanese Comedy, right?  After his show, I spoke to him “I loved your joke! You were the best!” Promise to watch it again, I strongly recommend you guys as well. You gotta go. 

At the end of the episode, picking up vocabs are ‘“On top of that” and “be over the moon”

The phrase “On top of that” is a useful conjunction and is a similar meaning to “In addition”. For example, you can use it as follows. I have a lot of work to do today, and on top of that, I'm feeling sick.  

The other one is “over the moon”, which is an idiomatic expression that means to be extremely happy. The example sentence is “I was over the moon when I won the lottery.”

Both phrases are extremely useful and easy to remember. Let's try to use it in a daily conversation.

お世話になっております、チャーリーです。ご確認のほど、よろしくお願いいたします。

Transcript↓

Almost 1 month passed since I joined the new company. As you can imagine, we have a  lot of things to learn in the first couple of months. Recently, I found out we have different ways of telling thank you in business emails. By the way, Unlike Japan, we seldom say “sorry” unless it is completely our fault and seems to be requested to show some apologies. Surprisingly, we Japanese are really famous for too- much sorry culture, we tend to be told, “Don’t be sorry so much” by Canadians. I am not saying sorry so much now. Instead, dare to be confident and dare to explain the reason why I was doing that way instead of saying sorry.

Anyways, generally speaking, we need to use several ways properly to express our gratitude in the Business world, specifically in Emails. So today let me introduce 3 ways to express thank you that I have learned.

Firstly, let me introduce this sentence, “Thank you for your assistance”. This is useful on various occasions and sounds casual but respectful. I use it a lot not only for co-workers but also for suppliers and clients. Whenever you want someone to help you or teach you something, you can put this sentence at the end of your emails. Furthermore, the funny thing is that you can also put “in advance” ahead of asking someone for help, like thank you in advance for your assistance, even when you didn’t receive assistance yet. This is interesting because for me it sounds like it is a kind of force for someone to assist me. 

Second, the sentence “Thank you for your attention to this matter” comes in handy. I love to use it and this is truly practical. What is interesting is that this expression shows that the request you have made is totally important and we can imply that the recipient should pay special attention to it. instead of saying “Please pay attention to this matter!”  

The last one is “Thank you for your understanding.” Actually, this sentence isn’t to congratulate the reader on understanding the words you have written. As some of you might be able to imagine, you can use this sentence when you need to say something unfortunate to the client or customer. So this sentence always comes with some apologies. We use this sentence to say “Thank you” in advance if we have done something or requested something that may cause inconvenience to the recipient. 

In the Japanese language, we have a complicated structure to say thank you because it depends on to whom we wanna say it, especially carefully thinking about ages and hierarchy. On the other hand, it is relatively easy to tell thank you in English because we only need to think about thanks to what, not to whom.

リスとウサギが国道でくつろぐ国カナダ