Whenever I go abroad, I put three simple questions to people I meet there. I originally did it for my educational material when I had joined a radio show as an English teacher on a local channel for one and a half years. I got a good response to the show from some listeners. Although the radio show finished two years ago, I have continued it on my trips and written the results on our homepage. Of course in the U.K I asked the British people three questions plus an extra question for my own English study on English accents.

   Three questions are:   1  Where are you from?    2  When you think of Japan, what do you think of first?   3  About your country, what are you most proud of?   (4  How do you describe your English accent?)

 I would like to write about the sixteen British people’s answers I got this time.
   The answers to Question No2:   Mt. Fuji, friendly and hard working people, bullet train, cars, cameras, food(rice, sushi, noodles, udon, etc), girls with pretty face and beautiful hair, marvellous scenery, everything done properly, clean, very different culture, skyscrapers, modern buildings, rivers, blossoms, etc.
   The answers to Question No3:  history, legacy, Queen and her royal family, weather including rain, multiracial, multicultural, multi-religious, strong tie with family, beautiful countryside, innovation, invention, architecture, Roman buildings, ruins, museum, football, shops, different music coming out, English language, actors, dramas, and Shakespeare!

  The Question No3 is my favorite. Whenever I try to ask it, everybody pauses for a moment seemingly trying to find an appropriate answer. I am always excited waiting for their answers because they reflect their values. Some how, from their answers I can see their personalities or national character.

　The most impressive answer about what they are proud of about the U.K is “history”. That would be natural for them as people from a country with such a long and magnificent history. Japan also has a long history, but I wonder how many Japanese people would reply “Japanese history”. I think we have recently lost some of our pride in our history.

Many people said “countryside”. I can relate to them, because I realized on this trip how beautiful the British countryside is. An unexpected answer was “Queen and the royal family”. Many British people, if not most, seem to be proud of the Queen and her family. Queen’s English spoken by the queen seems to be their role model as the perfect English spoken by a well-educated person. Few Japanese might answer the same way in terms of the language used by the Emperor. The distance between the Queen and British citizens and the Emperor and Japanese citizens might be quite different. The Queen seems to be much closer to British people than the Emperor is to Japanese people. “What a shame it is that only one person said Shakespeare!” an ardent fan of his like me would say.