August 15th is the day that World War II ended. There are quite a few Japanese children books that talk about the war. "Kawaisouna zou," which was published in 1970, is a long selling book. It is a true story about three elephants at the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo during World War II. I read it when I was at elementary school. I remember it was very sad and I strongly hoped that war never happens again. I haven’t read it for a quite a long time, but I recently read news that a CD of this book was released with both Japanese and English on one disk. The American singer, Cindy Lauper, reads the English version of the story. I hope it will help to spread an antiwar message. Japanese translation

Are you watching the Beijing Olympics? The Japanese word for "Olympics" is "gorin," which is written with the kanji character for "five" and "ring". Japan hosted three Olympics in the past: Tokyo Summer Olympics in 1964, Sapporo Winter Olympics in 1972 and Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998. Beijing is the fifth Asian city (the other one was Seoul in 1988) to host the Olympics. I was quite excited about the Nagano Olympics and proud to be a host country. I am sure the Chinese feel the same way. By the way, Tokyo is one of the cities (Chicago, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro) that bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. Japanese translation