I Met Mr. Matsuno in Tokyo

I met Mr. Matsuno in Tokyo the day before yesterday for the first time in 16 years. He is my former English teacher. He is a great teacher for me. I had not been able to communicate in English before I met him. But, after learning with him for a few years, everything was changed.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration that thanks to his help I can now write in English, not perfect though, and speak in English.

When I was working in Tokyo abut 20 years ago, I decided to learn English at an English conversation school. I asked some of my friends about schools, “Which school is good?” and “Which school is reasonable tuition?” One of friends recommended ECC English Conversation School in Shibuya, Tokyo. So, I went to the school, about 30 minutes from my office by train, and asked the school staff about their educational system, price, classes and teachers. While listening the staff’s explanation, I gradually liked the atmosphere at the school. Then, I decided to study there in the night class after work two days a week. Mr. Matsuno is one of the teachers at ECC Shibuya school.

At first, Mr. Matsuno’s class was very tough for me. He used live radio English news programs as teaching materials in his class. He sometimes translated English news simultaneously into Japanese and asked students to do the same way. We should carefully prepare the class beforehand otherwise we could not catch up with the class.
He is a rare perfect bilingual teacher at that time. He sometimes explained subtle differences of the meaning of English sentences in Japanese to make the beginners easily understand between the lines.

After talking for three and half hours in Nishinippori with him, I felt he was as young as he was 20 years ago and was still very ambitious for everything. I was impressed by his energy even we are in the different walks of life: he publishes books and teaches English, on the other hand I’m an engineer working for CANON. When I was leaving Nishinippori for Tabata where my parents-in-law live , he was standing outside of the wicket and kept shaking his hand till I was out of his sight. We promised to see each other soon. I had a really wonderful time with him in the middle of Golden Week.

Golden Week: Golden week refers to the period from April 29th to May 5th when there are four national holidays.