Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Fixed Charge for i-mode

[Notice:注意]
The English edition doesn't necessarily correspond to the Japanese one.
必ずしも英語版と日本語版は、一致しません。(^^♪

As some of my friends know, I often host private English conversation classes, like NOVA's VOICE, from the end of last year. For that purpose, I have to use my cell phone more often than before, especially i-mode, which is the packet-switching service presented by NTT-Docomo and which allows users to connect the Web.
This month I decided to change my way of payment to fixed charge, that's called "Pake Hodai" and that costs about 4000 yen, in order to surf the Internet anytime anywhere without worrying about the charge. Since I bought the current cell phone about two years ago, it might be about time to get a new one.

Speaking of my cell phone, I saw a new word for me, that didn't look a new word at first, in an email newsletter with the gadget when working in my factory yesterday. The word is "stationary", that's an adjective. I knew a noun similar to it, that's "stationery". Then I emailed my PC's email address about those words to check them out after I get home. Actually, I often send emails to myself with the phone while I'm out, so that I don't forget things to do later. Anyway, I studied them with my dictionary after yesterday's dinner. Holy cow! The pronunciations of those words sound exactly the same, but the meanings are totally different! (ToT)


友人の何人かは、ご承知でしょうけど、昨年末から、英会話喫茶(NOVEのVOICEのようなもの)を開催しております。そのため、以前よりも携帯電話を使うことが多いです、特にiモードを。
今月あら、支払いプランを『パケホーダイ』に変更しました。これで、料金を気にすることなく、いつでもどこでも、ネットに接続することができます。(^^♪ そういや、携帯電話も2年前に買ったのだから、そろそろ変え時かな?最近、調子悪いし・・・・

携帯電話と言えば、昨日仕事している時に、新しい単語(というか、最初は新しい単語とは思えなかった)を携帯電話で読んでいるメールマガジンで見ました。それは、"stationary"という形容詞。それによく似た"stationery"という名詞は知っていたのですが・・・帰宅してから、ゆっくり調べようと思って、それらの単語について、私のパソコンのメールアドレスに、携帯電話からメール送信。実は、後でやらなくちゃいけないことを忘れないように、外出先で自分自身に、しばしばメールを送るんです。とにかく、昨日の夕食の後、それらの単語を辞書で調べてみました。なにぃ!発音は全く同じやんけぇ!!!でも、意味は全く違う。(ToT)

2 comments:

yukki said...

I doubt that this word is familiar to many of native speakers of English. When I read this post, I remembered something---one day "stationary" was in one of the English sentences to be translated to Japanese on the exam. One student thought it was misspelling and corrected to "stationEry"...

plow7010 said...

Hello yukki san,
I'm really excited to get your comment here! Thank you so much.

Apparently, the word is often used with other words to express technical words-such as "stationary weather satellite."