Thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback and encouraging words. I was especially happy to hear that you found my reasoning convincing and my expressions natural. Your explanation of hedging was also very helpful. I particularly appreciated your example of changing "most brands" to "many brands" when you realized that the stronger claim wasn't fully supported by evidence. It was a great reminder that the strength of our language should match the strength of our evidence. As for your question about Uniqlo, I was half joking and half serious! I do find my current job rewarding in many ways, so I don't genuinely regret the career path I've chosen. Still, there are times when my work leaves me feeling rather frustrated or unfulfilled. I suppose this brings us back to the gap between ideals and reality that we discussed in one of my recent essays. At moments like those, I sometimes find myself wondering what my life might have been like if I'd joined Uniqlo as a full-time employee. After all, during one of their fleece promotions, I achieved the highest sales in the store and even received an award for it! So perhaps I might have had a promising career there. Who knows? But then again, I suppose it's just a case of the grass always being greener on the other side! I also enjoyed reading about your experience working at Hudson's Bay. I can imagine how awkward you must have felt wearing that oversized white ribbon, but it sounds like a lovely memory to look back on. Thank you again for your kindness and encouragement. I always look forward to learning from you.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback. I was particularly pleased that you liked my conclusion, especially since I had put a lot of thought into bringing my argument full circle. Your comment really encouraged me. I also learned a lot from your explanation of hedging. I hadn't thought of expressions like "often" and "at first glance" as ways of leaving room for other possibilities, so that was a useful insight. What I found especially valuable was your comment on "useless." I now see that saying something has no value is quite different from saying its value isn't immediately apparent. As a non-native speaker, it's not always easy to appreciate how a particular word sounds to native speakers or how strong an impression it makes. That's why I find this kind of feedback so helpful. It's something I might never fully pick up from studying vocabulary alone. I also really appreciate the time you took to look into the science behind my example, particularly the connection between quantum mechanics and GPS. And I liked the quote about humility you shared at the end. It was a lovely way to finish your feedback. Thank you again for taking such care with my writing. I always come away from your feedback having learned something new.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and encouraging feedback. I was especially delighted that you appreciated the philosophical side of my essay. Your comment that I might be a philosopher at heart made me smile! I was also impressed by how deeply you understood what I was trying to express, particularly the idea that persistent effort can change our perception of what is possible. Your explanation of why my original sentence worked better than the alternative was especially insightful. As for your question about whether I am a dreamer or a pragmatist, I would say I am both. I believe that the bigger the dream, the more pragmatic we need to be to make it come true. To me, being realistic doesn't mean giving up on dreams. It means working hard enough to bring them within our reach. I also appreciated your advice about rhetorical questions. I now understand that they can be effective in personal reflections but should be used more selectively in academic writing. Thank you again for taking my ideas so seriously and engaging with them so thoughtfully. I always learn so much from your feedback!
You really do see right through me, don't you? Your feedback made me realize that my uncertainty about the topic was reflected in the overall structure of my essay. The truth is, I knew very little about the background of this issue, so I wrote my essay largely based on assumptions. After reading your comments, I did some research and was genuinely surprised to discover that some works of art are deliberately created to provoke or offend people. That made me realize how valuable hedging can be when writing about topics like this, just as you pointed out. The same principle applies to writing in Japanese, too. Once again, I was deeply impressed by your insight, the depth of your thinking, and your genuine commitment to helping your students grow as writers and thinkers. I'm truly grateful for the care and thought you put into your feedback. Thank you so much, as always!
> While we understand what you mean by “I don't work in that kind of job” it is a bit unnatural. Thank you for pointing out that “I don't work in that kind of job” sounds a little unnatural. I think I made the mistake of combining the common pattern “work in + a field or industry” too mechanically with the perfectly natural phrase “that kind of job.” Your explanation was very helpful because it reminded me that even if two expressions are natural on their own, their combination may not necessarily sound natural. > Are Japanese staff trained to accommodate the customer's every whim? I think that may be part of the problem. For a long time in Japan, there has been a widespread saying, “The customer is God.” It originally came from a famous Japanese singer, but his words were widely misunderstood. What he actually meant was that a performer should clear his mind and go on stage with the same pure state of mind as when praying to God or Buddha. It was about the performer's attitude, not about customers being entitled to whatever they want. However, I think this misunderstanding may have helped create customers who think, “I'm the customer! I'm God! How dare you treat me like this!” > Are Japanese teachers also subjected to rude behavior by parents? Yes, unfortunately, teachers can face similar problems with parents. One of my childhood friends is an elementary school teacher, and he has told me that dealing with some extremely unreasonable parents has left him completely worn down. When I was younger, there was fairly strong competition for public-school teaching positions, but now some areas struggle to attract enough applicants. It seems that teaching is no longer as attractive a career choice to young people as it once was. > Handling rude customers is like playing a game of chess with a pigeon – no matter how well you play, they'll just knock over the pieces and strut around like they won. I could really relate to this quote. That's such a great analogy. Thank you for teaching me that one. I'll definitely use it sometime!
Thank you very much for your thoughtful feedback. I was especially glad that you liked "inherent limits" and "the unauthorized commercial use of people's voices and creative works." I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to make the final point concrete rather than simply saying that we need "realistic rules," so your comments were very encouraging. I also really liked "an exercise in futility" and "there is no turning back." They express what I was trying to say much more vividly. At the same time, your phrase "wishful thinking" helped me see the distinction more clearly: completely stopping the misuse of AI may be unrealistic, but controlling specific abuses one by one may still be manageable. As for what scares me most about AI, it is not AI itself so much as the possibility that we may gradually give up thinking for ourselves. AI is extremely useful, and I use it every day, but that convenience can easily become dependence. Your comment about not letting technology "mess around with your mind" really resonated with me for that reason. I also agree with your final point. Technological progress can weaken human interaction, but paradoxically, it can also create new kinds of human interaction—including exchanges like this one. Perhaps the important thing is not to reject technology, but to make sure that we remain the ones using it, rather than allowing it to shape us without our noticing. Thank you again. I always enjoy not only your corrections but also the exchange of ideas that follows them.
Thank you very much for the detailed feedback. Your explanation of "kind of knew" and "somehow knew" was exactly what I wanted to understand. I especially liked the expression "felt it in my bones." I can now see that "kind of" makes the degree of certainty vaguer, while "somehow" suggests that I knew something intuitively without being able to explain exactly why. It was also reassuring to learn that "somehow knew" works better in semi-formal or formal writing. Your comments on "being with companions" and "them" were also very helpful. I had been trying to avoid repeating "blood sugar levels," but your feedback reminded me that clarity is more important than avoiding repetition. I also found your explanation of the backshifting from "may" to "might" very useful. Thank you for taking the time to elaborate on it. Your explanation of "I lived" versus "I had been living" was also particularly helpful. What I learned from it was that choosing a tense is not simply a matter of whether a sentence is grammatically correct. What also matters is what kind of scene or timeline the reader pictures from the tense you choose. "I lived" is grammatically possible, but "I had been living" allows the reader to picture a situation that had continued for some time and then came to an end when my circumstances changed. Japanese does not have grammatical forms that directly correspond to the English present perfect or past perfect, so these distinctions can be difficult for Japanese learners to grasp intuitively. Advice like yours helps me understand these tenses not just as grammatical rules, but as ways of shaping how a reader sees the sequence of events. I found that extremely helpful. And thank you for your kind words about my "refueling a car" metaphor. That image came directly from how I actually felt during those three years, so I was especially happy that it worked for you as a reader. Thank you again, and I look forward to learning from you next time.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful feedback. I was especially happy to hear that you liked “Being needed by others gives me a sense of purpose” and “Humans are social creatures.” I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to express these two ideas in English, so your comments were very encouraging. Your suggestion to add “Having said that” before “Work is not everything in my life” also made a lot of sense to me. I can see how it makes the shift in my argument smoother. I was also glad that you noticed the slight humor in “at least I hope they will.” And thank you for sharing your story about “The proof is in the pudding.” It was fascinating to hear how an idiom actually helped you in a real job interview. I genuinely enjoy putting my thoughts into words and exchanging ideas with you. That kind of intellectual exchange is one of the things I value most about your lessons. Thank you again for your detailed and encouraging feedback.
> “I really like this contrast.” > “The comparison hits the nail on the head.” I was especially happy to hear that you liked the contrast between British and Japanese food cultures. I had been wondering whether the comparison might be a little too speculative, so your comment that “the comparison hits the nail on the head” was very encouraging. > “My experience with British cuisine could be summed up in a few words: nothing to write home about.” I also really enjoyed learning the expressions “nothing to write home about” and “My curiosity got the best of me.” They are expressions I would like to be able to use naturally myself. > “Maybe, to use a British expression, the proof is in the pudding. That is, Japanese food is light and healthy, and it is more unique than British food.” I found your answer to my question very interesting. I had been focusing mainly on the historical causes, but your comment made me realize that the characteristics of the food itself may also have influenced how it was received internationally. It gave me another perspective from which to explore this question. I also suspect that you deliberately chose “the proof is in the pudding” because our topic was food. I really enjoy this kind of witty and intellectually stimulating exchange with you, and I always learn a lot from it. Thank you for teaching me such a wonderful idiom! Thank you also for sharing your own experiences and thoughts!
Please don't apologize for nitpicking! That's exactly why I choose you every time. I value not only your grammatical corrections but also the back-and-forth exchange of ideas with you, which has become a real intellectual pleasure for me. As is usually the case with these assignments, I'm not particularly attached to my own position on the topic. I think a reasonable argument could be made for either side. When I decide which side to take, I usually choose the one that I think will be more challenging for me to express in English. So, for this assignment, although I can understand both the arguments for and against dual nationality, I chose to argue against it because I thought that position would be more challenging for me to write about in English. So I have absolutely no objection to your having played the "dual citizen card." In fact, I completely understand why you did so. Having said that, the first thing I want to make clear is that I thought your feedback was perfect, as always. I completely agree with your comment that it was a little confusing to see the same idea mentioned a second time. That was actually the one part I had some doubts about when I submitted the essay. Looking back, perhaps this was a topic I should have explored in 200 words rather than trying to squeeze everything into 100. You mentioned that nationality itself would cease to exist, and that is actually exactly what I was trying to say. A world in which everyone held multiple nationalities would effectively be a world in which nationality itself had lost much of its meaning. That said, I am not opposed to such a world; in some ways, I even think it might be ideal. I wanted to emphasize this idea by approaching it from two different directions: first, if our rights and obligations were the same regardless of which country we lived in, national borders would effectively cease to exist; and second, even if national borders remained, if everyone held multiple nationalities, those borders would effectively lose their meaning. Looking back, though, I think I needed at least one more sentence between those two ideas to make the logical connection clearer. As for your question about how it might be possible for someone not to fulfill their obligations, the clearest example I can think of is compulsory military service. Suppose someone held citizenship in a country with conscription as well as citizenship in another country. If the former were to go to war, that person might be able to move to the latter and thereby avoid taking part in the war. This is the kind of situation I had in mind when I wrote "while avoiding some of the obligations." On the other hand, there is certainly a counterargument to what I have just said. Even Israel, a country facing serious security threats, allows its citizens to hold additional nationalities while still imposing military obligations on them. So, perhaps this is putting it too strongly, but holding only one nationality may not necessarily have a strong connection with one's loyalty to one's country. I look forward to continuing to learn from your guidance and to many more intellectually stimulating exchanges with you.
> These are fine on their own, but together they create a staccato rhythm — too many stops, not enough development. Thank you so much for your feedback! I was especially happy with your comments on the conversational parts of my writing. I had deliberately used expressions like “though” and “you know” to give those sentences a more conversational tone, so I really appreciated that you did not simply discourage me from using them. Instead, you looked at the writing from a different angle and pointed out how the three short sentences together created a staccato rhythm. That was a perspective I had not considered at all. It was really helpful to learn that an expression can work perfectly well on its own, yet still affect the rhythm of the paragraph when combined with the sentences around it. This kind of feedback is exactly what I find most valuable. Thank you!
Thank you for your feedback. As you mentioned, some Japanese companies have stopped transferring their employees unless they agree to relocate. Such companies are still rare, though. Perhaps I would be forced to relocate from Tokyo within a couple of years. It would be my fifth time of transfer. I’m thinking I will leave the company before that. As always, tour detailed explanations were easy to follow, and the alternative sentences you offered me were very useful. In particular, “be considered the norm” and “be regarded as a natural progression into adulthood” were interesting phrases.
> I used 'step in' which is less formal. Thank you! I did not know that “step in” could be used this way. It is useful to know not only the expression itself, but also that it is less formal than “provide subsidies” or similar expressions. I would like to become more conscious of differences in register. > Excellent wrap up of your argument! I was especially happy to read this comment. In my previous essay, you pointed out that the connection between my last two sentences needed to be clearer. So this time, I deliberately tried to make the argument progress step by step and then return to my main point in the final sentence. I’m glad that this worked better! > You would make a worthy 'opponent!' What perfect timing! I had just been reviewing the differences between “worth,” “worthwhile,” and “worthy,” including the expression “worthy of respect.” Then I found “worthy opponent” in your message! Seeing a word I have just studied used naturally like this really helps it stick in my mind. > I'd like to know where you became fluent in English. Actually, I have never lived in an English-speaking country. Most of my English has been learned in Japan through studying, reading, listening, and, more recently, writing every day. I still don’t consider myself fluent, especially when speaking, but your comment was very encouraging. Thank you!
> It was kind of interesting to see your way of taking the reader on a little roundabout by expressing a strong liking for natto from the very first; going on to say that you would eat it even if it didn't have the cognitive benefits it is claimed to have. Thank you! I was very happy that you noticed the way I structured the essay. I did not consciously intend to create suspense, but looking back, I can see how withholding the real reason I eat natto until the end makes the reader curious. Your comments about “a cliffhanger” and “keeping a card up your sleeve” were especially interesting to me. > However, your last two sentences needed a bit of a boost; saying that stretching and avoiding greasy foods is connected to natto how? I see exactly what you mean. What I wanted to say was that getting older has made me more conscious of my health in general. Stretching and not being able to eat as much greasy food as before were meant to be examples of that change, and eating natto is another example. I now realize that I left that connection entirely up to the reader. Adding just one sentence such as “As I get older, I’ve become more conscious of my health” would make the logic much clearer. > Also, in your conclusion, you say that you eat it for health reasons, but in one sentence you claim that you'd eat it even if it weren't for that. This comment made me think carefully about what I actually meant. I did not mean that I would eat natto even if it had no health benefits at all. I meant that I would keep eating it even if its specific effect on preventing cognitive decline were never proven. I still believe that natto is generally good for my health. I can now see that my wording did not make that distinction clear enough. Thank you for being so picky—I really appreciate the fact that you leave no stone unturned!
> I like the idiom “roll out.” For a more formal tone, you can use “expand.” Thank you! I was glad to learn that “roll out” works well here, and it was also useful to learn that “expand” is a better choice when I want a more formal tone. I would like to become more conscious of this difference in register. > I like the way you connect the dots without giving away all the information at once. I was especially happy to read this comment. I had deliberately tried to move from Nihon Kotsu’s political clout to Japan’s restrictions on ridesharing without explaining everything immediately, so your comment helped me realize that this kind of progression can make an argument more engaging. > It is interesting to read that Nihon Kotsu was dead set against ridesharing but is now joining forces with Waymo. I learned two very useful expressions from this sentence: “be dead set against” and “join forces with.” Both are vivid and much more natural than the expressions I would probably have chosen myself. Thank you also for looking up Nihon Kotsu after reading my message!
