Japan’s Prime Minister Abe is searching for ways to achieve a bilateral agreement with South Korea about the so-called comfort women. This report did mention the statement of the President Abe about this issue – and it was clear that this was the official position of the Japanese government. I am sure that there are listeners who don’t know the complete background of this issue – so it was very helpful that NHK presented some additional background information as well as the explanation of the South Korean position. It was interesting to hear that these diplomatic activities were taken during the Winter Olympics in South Korea’s city of Pyeongchang.
In the main segment, the presenters provided the listeners sufficient background information. For example, I was able to see why Keiko Ogura had given a 10 day-series lectures in Syracuse to discuss diverse issues associated with the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. As a result, I can feel deeply her frustration as for nuclear weapons since they have not been abolished yet. I could observe that the program contained abundant information to convey Ogura’s tireless effort. First of all, Ogura’s experience on August 6th in 1945 was unforgettable. The presentation format was especially effective as she directly spoke in English to her audience through NHK World. In particular, her explanations were very specific. For example, I could visualize how atomic bomb victims were asking for others some water with low voice. In other words, every listener must have been able to feel a tragic scene near the hypocenter shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
One of the intentions in this program was to tell the listeners about how rapidly “Bunny Island” would be getting people’s attention, and I noticed the whole argument was objective. For example, we were told that the island had 380,000 visitors including 18,000 of them from overseas recently compare to approximately 60 visitors in 2013. In my opinion, such the comparison technique was the most effective approach to show the listeners an evidence of the number of increasing visitors. Further, I wanted to know what caused a huge jump in terms of the visitors, and Mike answered clearly that the video posted on YouTube by the woman in Hong Kong triggered the number. I greatly appreciate the detailed fact based explanations. However, I was curious whether Phuong Ha was one of those who saw the video since she did not tell us why she wanted to visit this island.