00:00
Welcome to Kevin's English Room Podcast!
The classic opening.
Because I'm not confident.
Okay, there's a message about confidence.
Oh, wow!
Whoa, what a topic! Nice!
So, I picked this up.
Okay.
This is from Misaki-san.
Misaki-san?
Yes. Thank you, Misaki-san.
Hello, Kevin-san, Yamachan-san.
I've been enjoying your podcast every day since the start.
Thank you.
What do you think about having confidence?
I think Kevin-san said that he was attracted to people who were confident.
I think it's important to have confidence when you watch American dramas.
When I went to study abroad for a short time about 10 years ago, I told my Brazilian friend, "You like yourself, don't you?"
I remember being shocked when I heard that.
I think people who are confident in Japan are not often liked.
I think people who are confident in Japan are nice these days.
On the other hand, I feel that if you have confidence, you will not be satisfied with the current situation and will not make any effort. What do you think?
Is the perception of confidence different in Japan and the United States / France?
In Japan, I feel that confidence is confidence.
In the United States, I feel that confidence is self-confidence.
It's been a long time, but I'd be happy to hear your opinions.
I will continue to support you.
Thank you.
Wow!
Wow!
Nice!
I like it.
Oh, you like it?
Yeah.
I do like confidence, but I like confidence that's not ego.
I like confidence.
Confidence with a non-over-extended ego.
Yeah.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yes.
Do you know how she said, "America is confidence equals self-confidence."
"Japan is confidence equals self-confidence."
I like that phrase right there.
I really like it. I opened my eyes for that.
I like confidence equals self-confidence.
It should never be confidence.
I don't know if that's a Japanese American thing. I'm not sure about that.
But I do agree that there are people with confidence that's clutched on to self-confidence and confidence clutched on to self-confidence.
03:00
I don't like the self-confidence part of the clutching.
You have to know who you are.
You have to be respectful to other people.
You have to not get carried away.
You have to not think that you're somebody.
But still be happy.
Yeah, happy.
Being happy is what I feel like would be maybe a different way of expressing confidence here in this context.
Being confident with who you are.
Being confident with what you do is right for you.
Being confident that you're making your own choices for yourself.
Being confident that what you're doing makes you yourself happy and not for anybody else is the kind of confidence that I like.
Whereas on the flip side, being confident in thinking that everybody else is wrong.
Being confident that you're always right.
Being confident that you're thinking that you're more important than other people.
Being confident that you think that you can judge people.
You think that you're in the position of judging people.
That's different, I feel like.
So that's two different kinds of self-confidence.
And I like the first one.
Yeah! Nice!
Great! That's a great topic.
Great question. Great message.
What do you think about that?
That's the same to you actually.
Know about yourself is what I like about confidence.
But basically that's the same to you. Know about yourself and respect yourself.
And responsibility.
Knowing that you can control yourself.
That's very nice confidence.
But not pretend to know everybody other people.
It's bad confidence.
You only know about yourself and being humble.
Right.
Right. That's really...
We're agreeing.
Yes, yes. Completely.
What was the question? Did she have a question?
So there's two questions.
One is, "In Japan and America, or in France, do you think that people have a different understanding of confidence?"
That was one question.
So that was like a, "I don't think so."
I think that two types of confidence I mentioned earlier.
06:00
I think Japan has both.
U.S. has both.
Within their own countries.
I don't think it's dependent on the country.
Of course.
There's always that two types of people.
And I don't think the ratio is different too.
There's just as much ratio of the prior and the latter one as much as the one you compare to the U.S.
Okay.
Well think about France.
I think the ratio is a little different compared to Japan.
Because French people are, you know, generally tend to be more confident about themselves and about their country or about their histories.
More pride, I guess.
Because we Japanese people, we don't actually, not many people have pride of our history.
Right. I agree.
We are sure that we have so great history and so many great cultures, but we don't, like not putting out to the world.
Like putting, you know.
So that's a little one different.
Like French people are very, very confident about their histories.
They are like, France is the best country in the world.
So they're coming from a historical angle?
Or like cultural.
Cultural angle, yeah.
Cultural angle I understand.
Like France, Paris, it's fashion, it's trend, it's legendary status.
But in terms of history, what, respectfully, like what are they known for?
Yeah, like that's the same story, but they have long history.
Like especially like, you know, European history is quite long compared to American history, you know.
So they are confident about long history itself.
And also building whole, like so many wars, so many...
Building wars?
War.
War.
Fighting wars.
And experiences, experienced all these through all the tough, you know, ages.
So they're saying that they've experienced that more than other countries.
Yeah.
Is there kind of...
Sometimes they, sometimes that go too much sometimes.
But they have confidence about the country.
So that's a little different, like compared to we Japanese people, we don't have that much confidence about our history.
Because we are also have long, long history, you know, like since Himiko-san was born.
09:03
You know, that's from the beginning and long history.
And we had a long peace, Edo, Heian era.
And that's quite great things.
I think like, do you think that the conversation would change a little bit when you're comparing versus countries?
Or when you're comparing versus people within the same country?
True. That's a different topic.
But you know, French people are based on those confidence already.
Okay. Got it.
So they have confidence upon those, you know, those pride.
I understand.
So sometimes it's, yeah.
I understand.
Even they do some mistakes, but still, I'm a French guy.
So, you know, sometimes that happens to them.
Yeah.
That's a little different.
But that's true.
In country, there's like, monastic people and Arab people.
So, right.
I actually want to talk to you about that in the next episode.
Okay.
Okay.
Comparison between countries of like pride.
But you know, it's a really difficult topic.
I can say this country is like this.
Yeah.
You know, this is not things like that.
Of course.
It's already so many people, variety of people.
Yeah. Right.
Yeah.
Alright.
Thanks for listening, guys. Bye-bye.
