NEWS FLASH: Kumamoto International editor Hari Devkota is really smart!!!
Actually, this isn’t news – I think just about everyone who knows Hari is already aware of the fact. But, it seems to have been news to those who watched him on the Abema NEWS segment. Here are some comments on the YouTube page:
— start ChatGPT translations of YouTube comments — @711akikoo Hari-san is very proficient in Japanese. I also live abroad, so I often don’t know what year of Reiwa it currently is, and it’s troublesome when I have to fill in documents during my occasional visits back to Japan. 30 likes
@user-sg3yu9xr1f I think it’s admirable how this person from Nepal can speak so logically and coherently. 50 likes
@HM-ql7nc I thought it was impressive how this Nepalese person spoke in very fluent Japanese and made very sensible remarks, to the point that even Pakkun was left with nothing much to say. It seems like he’s really thought deeply about Japan. 14 likes — end of translation (which was tweaked by Kirk) —
The video is about the flap over the “demand” that the Japanese government do away with year names like Reiwa 5. Of course, this was a mostly a misunderstanding – the person who brought up the issue in the meeting with the mayor the other day was merely asking that dates be displayed in “2023” format IN ADDITION TO “令和5年” format. As you can see from the comments I translated and others on the YouTube page, that’s a position that lots of Japanese folks support.
Hari did a great job (as expected) but I was not very impressed with others on the show. The university professor who was supposed to enlighten us regarding the “foreigner as shimin [市民]” controversy didn’t even seem to understand the issue very well. And the MC tried to get some debate going by positing an extreme interpretation of foreigners overrunning the country that I didn’t find to be particularly helpful. But, even faced with rather weird questions from the host, Hari continued to speak reasonably and wound up winning fans on the show. Good job, Hari!
