実践ビジネス英語ディクテーション (10/27,28ほか)

こんにちは。NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。
Lesson 14のテーマは、‘Making Friends After 30’（30歳からの友達づくり）でした。Vignetteでは、友人を交通事故で亡くしたという主人公へのさまざまなお悔みの表現や、友情に関する賢人の言葉もポイントだったように思います。親しい友達をつくるための3つの要因も話題になりました。
“Talk the Talk”では後半でHeatherさんの友人関係について話されています。

Making Friends After 30（S: 杉田敏先生　H: Heather Howardさん）

S: Now, our current vignette starts with Ueda talking about a personal tragedy: the loss of his good friend, Shuzo, in a traffic accident.
Have you ever lost someone close to you, Heather?

H: No, I haven’t. I’ve known people who passed away, but they’ve almost all been friends of friends or relatives of friends or just acquaintances―no one that I’ve personally been close to.
Must be terrible. I suppose no one can really know until it happens to them.

S: One source of Ueda’s grief is his belief that people don’t really make close friends after thirty.
And therefore, Shuzo was one of his last true friends.
Would you agree with that?

H: Well, there are so many factors involved in making friends, it’s hard to say.
Two of my closest friends are people I met in college: a Japanese woman who I did a language exchange with, and the younger sister of my college boyfriend.
We’ve kept in touch all these years, about 25 years now.
But I have made a few close friends here in Japan, and some of them I met from my 30s on.
That may be partly due to the atmosphere conducive to confiding in each other that Salmans talks about.
They’re also foreigners living in Japan, which supports a bond between us.
We understand and can share the various benefits and concerns of living in a foreign country.

S: Are there any factors that work against friendships in the expat community?

H: There is the tendency for people to leave after a certain while.
I’ve heard it said that foreigners in Japan tend to stay here five years, 10 years or forever.
I’ve had to say goodbye to a number of people over the years, and though we keep up somewhat through social media, it’s just not the same as regularly going shopping together or meeting for lunch or drinks….

S: Nurturing a friendship is very important, isn’t it?

H: Yes. I will confess to losing a couple of friends because I didn’t take the time to nurture our relationship.
It wasn’t their fault, it was mine; I let emails go unanswered too long, or didn’t return phone calls promptly, and they moved on.
We’re all busy, but if we value a friendship, we have to devote some time to it.
It’s what we do not what we say that matters and I didn’t walk the walk.

S: The group also talks about how friendship can benefit your health.

H: Absolutely true. No doubt about it.
I just had evidence of this a few days before our recording this conversation.
A work friend of mine and I went out shopping together during our lunch hour.
We visited some baking goods stores and had a great time, looking at different cookie cutters, cake pans…
By the time we finished and returned to the office, we both felt wonderfully refreshed and happy despite the blazing heat of the day.
Now, baking itself was surly part of that; I really enjoy baking and it was fun to look at all the different items in the stores.
But I think what really made the day was spending it with each other―sharing the joy of finding new things and showing them to each other, talking about the different cakes and cookies we wanted to make.

お疲れさまでした♪