Mr. Yagi of the Kumamoto International Foundation (KIF) has been a supporter of this network since its inception as a mailing list in 1999. In addition to supporting the mailing list and this page he has always listened quite carefully to me when I have made suggestions regarding the presentation of English information on the KIF website. One suggestion I made was to add a link to the original Japanese text when a translation of Japanese information is published on the site. My thought was that, if English speakers had access to the Japanese text, they could use it to double check the meaning (perhaps with the help of a Japanese friend) or to share with Japanese friends, etc.
Well, Mr. Yagi came through and now all of the English translations of Shisei Dayori (Kumamoto City News) articles on the website have links to the Japanese text. The image I have added to this post is of an article about the National Health Insurance Card but there are many other useful articles. To find them go to
http://www.kumamoto-if.or.jp/topics/topics_list.asp?LC=e&PageID=5
The Shisei Dayori articles are usually intended for Japanese readership. The English translations give us an idea of what kinds of information are being presented to the citizens of Kumamoto in Japanese.
The English translations may not always be perfect but I think they are good enough to get a basic idea of the original article etc. If you are interested in the topic of a post but a little puzzled by some of the English expressions, you may wish to print out the Japanese (if you don’t read Japanese yourself) to show a friend in order to get clarification.
At any rate, I’m very please with the addition of links to the original Japanese on this page and would like to thank Mr. Yagi for his help. :)
– KIrk