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Friday, June 15, 2007
MOTTAINAI
Do you know Ms. Wangari Muta Maathai? She is a former vice-Minister for environment in Kenya, and received Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. When she went to Japan, she was impressed by MOTTAINAI, a Japanese word. Because MOTTAINAI, only one word means reduce, reuse, recycle, and respect for resource in our earth. She said that there was not a word like MOTTAINAI in any other country, and she would spread MOTTAINAI all over the world. I'm Japanese, so I'm glad to spread our word all over the world. And when she said that she had been impressed by MOTTAINAI, I was proud of our having MOTTAINAI. Our ancestor had the spirit of MOTTAINAI. We Japanese should succeed to the spirit, and I will try to live with having the spirit of MOTTAINAI.
It sounds strange that Mottainai is the special word. But indeed it contains a lot of meaning I ever think about it.
ReplyDeleteI know Ms,Wangari Muta Maathai. "Mottainai" is Japanese. So I think that Japanese people should treasure this word and MOTTAINAI spirit!
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