English For Wizards

What is your hobby?

By John Moore

"What is your hobby?" You rarely hear this question in the United States but often in Japan. Maybe Japanese people really love hobbies, or this might just be a handy ice-breaker in Japan's ESL classrooms. Most Americans don't even have a hobby.

I myself just recently started one - collecting art. And thanks to the Internet, this is a really easy hobby to pursue. Already I have acquired over $1 billion worth of Impressionist paintings for my private collection. That's right, I now have over 5,000 masterpieces, including almost all of Van Gogh and Monet. I'm rich!

Admittedly, I do not own the originals of these paintings. I just have a great collection of high-resolution JPEG images saved on my hard drive and nicely organized with an HTML index. My favorite Web site these days is Olga's Gallery (www.abcgallery.com). It's superb!

But even a virtual art collection still gives me a proud sense of ownership. I'm just like my son Peter, who collects Yugioh game cards and eagerly trades them among his friends. Now when he shows me his Black Magician and other "super rare" cards, I can fight back with "Starry Night" and "Sunflowers."

The Internet is indeed a great help to collectors. You have probably heard the legendary rags-to-riches story of eBay, the auction site (www.ebay.com), which is one of the greatest successes of the 1997-2000 Internet bubble period. Hey, if you want to see some really weird stuff, just do a search on eBay for "Japan." Where did those people get all that junk!?

There are official eBay sites in many countries, including Korea, but not in Japan. Does that mean Japanese people don't like auctions? Hmm. There is a different Japanese site at www.bidders.co.jp.

But you don't need to actually buy anything to be a collector. Like me, you can download free things and keep them in digital format. If you are studying English, I might recommend you start your own library to collect all your favorite English e-books and stories.

Many people also collect music on their computers. The best way to do this is with the Kazaa Lite peer-to-peer file-sharing software (see www.klitesite.com), although there is a controversy now about whether it's legal to download copyrighted songs like this.

Next week, we'll talk about another great hobby, photography, which has recently entered the digital age. Computer technology has blurred the border between photography and graphic design, creating something entirely new.

Shukan ST: Nov. 14, 2003

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