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Fujimi High School (3) |
In our last installment, these girls laid into the boys something awful. We also heard the sense of dissatisfaction with the world being rougher on women than on men expressed. Now we're going to find out what their views are on two things that make us all conscious of being male or female: marriage and work. Let's see what the students of Fujimi High School think of marriage, and what sort of work they'd like to do.
Q. Do you admire your teachers, giving their all?
Mutoo: There are a lot of girls who want to put all their efforts into their jobs, it's true. They want to work, not get married, and have no interest in children.
Shibasaki: I want to get married.
Mutoo: Even if I did get married, I wouldn't stop working, you know? I'd want a fifty-fifty relationship with my partner.
Shibasaki: Marriage can wait until I get older.
Anno: After 30.
Shibasaki: Yeah.
Takahashi: Everybody talks like that.
"You Need Science and Math for Music Too"
Q. What would you like to be?
Suganuma: I'd like to work in something related to music.
Takahashi: Even though you're in science and math?
Suganuma: That's why I'm taking science and math: so I can get that kind of work. I figure I need to think of the whole picture even when it comes to music, like computers and the Internet. So I'm taking those courses.
Anno: When you say music, what do you mean?
Suganuma: I'm thinking of working with synthesizers, but I may take up guitar or something else.
Anno: Guitars are good, especially acoustic. Nowadays, though, you can make guitar sounds with a synthesizer.
Suganuma: But it feels different, somehow,to actually strum the guitar strings.
Anno: It's not even the same thing.
Suganuma: I think I'd still like it, though.
Mutoo: I'd like to work with animals, in animal protection. Watching animals relaxes me for some reason. Maybe it's the feeling of life I get.
Anno: More so than people?
Mutoo: Yes.
All: (laughter)
Shibasaki: Well, I like people. I feel so gloomy unless I talk to someone.
Takahashi: What about an animal that stays close to you?
Mutoo: They're nice to look at.
Takahashi: Does it make any difference what it happens to be?
Mutoo: Anything will do, since they're all animals.
Takahashi: Even fish?
Mutoo: I think I'd draw the line at fish. I want things that give off warmth.
All: (laughter)
Anno: Like mammals?
Mutoo: Those would do nicely.
Q. Do you dislike people?
Mutoo: Hmmm, people scare me. I guess it's because I don't know what they're thinking.
Anno: You'd be even less likely to understand what animals think.
Mutoo: I'm thinking of studying animal psychology, at a special college.
Q. Where?
Mutoo: Azabu University's Veterinary Department.
Q. So you're working toward that end?
Mutoo: Uh-huh.
Anno: You know, veterinarians, they, you know...
Mutoo: They torment animals, don't they.
Anno: Exactly. There's one hell of a contradiction there.
Mutoo: That's right. It's so awful that I've cried over it. To think they actually break an animal's bones on purpose.
Anno: A friend of mine quit because he couldn't handle that.
Mutoo: Right. And those people aren't veterinarians. It's not a question of trying to help these animals, but of studying their movements, and giving them an environment suited to those movements.
"I Like It So I Won't Do It For a Living"
Shibasaki: There are jobs that I wouldn't do for a living because I like them, and jobs that one is better off not taking. Being a grade-school teacher is like that. They say that people who love kids and are too soft-hearted, you shouldn't go into that line of work.
Takahashi: People who say they want to become teachers are dreaming, in a way. Why do they think they can be good teachers when they do nothing but badmouth other teachers?
Mutoo: I absolutely wouldn't want to work in childcare. I think children are terribly cruel.
Shibasaki: But sometimes, if you hang in there, they open up to you. My mother's a grade-school teacher, and at first, she didn't get along well with the students, but now they call her on the phone, things like that.
Mutoo: I can understand that, but not all of them like her, right? You'd have to be dreaming to believe that.
Shibasaki: You won't know if you don't try, though.
Mutoo: That's true too, but...
(From the Aug. 27, 1998 Mainichi Intermediate-School News)
