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Brooklyn
Memoir (9)
Newspaper
I love reading the newspaper. I started reading one when I was 9 years old. I was the kind of kid who could keep reading it for an hour if left alone. I continued this habit in the US too. The newspaper to read was ofcourse New York Times. New York Times is famous for its many pages. The paper consists of many sections like politics, economy, sports etc. There also are a lots of advertisements between articles. Sometimes an article is split by an advertisement and the latter part of the article is found several pages beyond. I heard it is designed that way to make one read advertisements in between.
The English written was said to be rather difficult for average. American people. However, it was easy to read for me as a foreigner, because the sentences were short and the specific facts were written with standard English. Tabloids were much more popular among New Yorkers. They might be easier to read for them. But for foreigners articles full of slang were rather hard to understand.
The Sunday Times was something special. It weighed about one kilogram. Sunday Times consists of each independent section paper and Times Magazine which is a photo-magazine. It contains more advertisements than the weekday paper. One of my pleasures on Sunday was getting up late in the morning and going to my favorite cafe´ in the neighborhood carrying a heavy Sunday Times.
I used to read it for at least an hour while eating Sunday brunch along with a complimentary glass of champagne.
Compared to Japanese papers, New York Times is written much more specifically and directly. Another part I enjoy is that almost all articles are signed. I learned a lot about how to write articles from reading New York Times for those 3 years.
Returning to Japan, I missed the New York Times. Meanwhile, I came to know that International Herald Tribune was available in Japan, which contained articles reprinted from New York Times. Since then I’ve been reading International Herald Tribune in Japan. This paper is printed in Paris, even though it is written in English. Therefore, I was reading Herald in addition to Le Monde while living in Paris for 2 years starting 1995.
I really love newspapers.