Since English is the lingua franca of the international business community, it follows that anyone who really wants to make a global impression should be able to communicate in English.
Harumi Kurihara, a "charisma housewife" whose recipes and cooking advice are well-known here in Japan, wanted to convey her knowledge to people abroad, and so she studied English assiduously and wrote a cookbook, "Harumi's Japanese Cooking," in English. It went on to win the award for best cookbook at the 2005 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. Kurihara's idea was that non-Japanese tend to think that Japanese cooking is very difficult. What she did was show how it is actually very easy.
On this week's edition of NHK's English language-learning variety show, "Eigo de Shabera-Naito" (NHK-G, Monday, 11:15 p.m.), Kurihara will talk about her experience learning a foreign language from scratch, and also show us a recipe described in English.