Roba English Podcast Episode 2: Quality over Quantity

英語の後に日本語が続きます！

Are you an English learner? I'm glad you landed on my channel!

My name is Roba and I'm from the UK. This podcast is perfect for those who want to learn British English and who want to do it the natural way - by listening to natural, native speakers!

I live in Japan and I've been an educator since 2018 and I'm fascinated by languages. I'm a native English speaker and I'm fluent in Japanese, and I'm learning French and German!

Learning languages is all about meeting new people and in learning Japanese, my life has changed in so many ways, so I started this podcast because I used Japanese podcasts for learning and I found them incredibly helpful.

This episode is about the quality in Japan.

It's also a chance for you to contact me! Please comment below or send me an email! Please let me know in the comments about the channel and what you would like to hear about next.

Contact: [e-mail]

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みなさん、こんにちは！自然な英語を聞きながら英語を勉強したいですか。私のチャンネルへようこそ！

イギリス出身のロバです。英語圏の自然な英語で、異文化や僕の経験など、面白い内容を楽しみながら英語力を身につけたいという方にとって、このポッドキャストはぴったりの内容になっています。

２０１９年から日本に住んでおり、その時からも教育業界で働いています。外国語がめちゃくちゃ面白いだと思い、日本語ももちろん、フランス語とドイツ語も独学で勉強しています。だからこそ、言語学習の大変さの溝と楽しみの波をよく理解できますし、そのポッドキャストを作ることで、みなさんとその経験を共有したいと思っています。

僕は日本語を勉強し始めた時に僕と違う背景の人に会いながら楽しく話すというモチベーションで勉強し、日本語のポッドキャストをよく聞き、人生が変わった実感があったので、僕と同じような道を歩んでいる人の役に立ちたいと思い、このチャンネルを始めるようになりました。

リスナーのみなさんと繋がれるのを楽しみにしています！　コメントでもメールでもご連絡をお待ちしております。ご意見や感想を共有してもらえれば一緒にこのチャンネルをより良いものにしていきましょう！

今回のポッドキャストについて、日本での品質へ配慮です。

Contact: [e-mail]

宜しくお願いします

Find the transcript for this episode here!

Music: Clipped from - Blue bossa by Jazz at Mladost Club is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
[Music]

(00:14):
Hi guys, welcome back to Roba English podcast. I'm your host Roba. It's Sunday 27th of July, 2025, and I really enjoyed making the last podcast.
So thanks for everybody who joined. And also, please keep the comments coming.

(00:35):
You know, I really, really value the comments about how to improve the podcast so that you guys get a better experience.
This time I'm trying a different mic, and I'm trying to speak a little louder, I think last time it wasn't quite so clear.
So please let me know if it's good enough, and if you need, I don't know, easier vocabulary, for me to speak slower or whatever.

(01:05):
Much like Japan, the British like to talk about the weather, and so today the weather is really hot outside.
The sun is just so powerful, and it's really humid and sticky and muggy. It's a classic Asian summer, and it's just, you know, the only thing that you can do to get through the summer is to eat as much fruit as you can.

(01:35):
So I'm out for a run the other day. Usually I go about 5.30am, something like that. I tend to go a little bit early just to avoid the summer heat.
But this day, even at 5.30, it was really hot, and I really didn't want to go outside.

(01:56):
So I, but I'm trying to get my time down, and so I have to go out. And what happens is I step out the door and there's a wave of heat.
Just a wave hits me in the face, and I start my run, and it's really hot, and I'm halfway round, and I'm really thirsty.

(02:21):
I don't think I can make it the next half. But as I'm in the park, there's this old man eating this watermelon on a picnic bench, and, I don't know.
God, I think was, was laughing at me. I think that day I was so thirsty, and all I could think about for the last half of my run was eating watermelon, or just the really great peaches here.

(02:50):
I really think that if you come to Japan, or if you're in Japan, just celebrate, worship fruit. It's so good. It's expensive here, relative, but it's worth it.
And so when I finished my run, I know it's expensive, but I just had to buy a watermelon.

(03:18):
The supermarket wasn't open yet, and so I just, but I just had to buy one. I waited until 9am outside the supermarket waiting for a watermelon.
You know, you have to do it. But I just wanted to talk a little bit about quality over quantity. It's a phrase which is often said, but especially in Japan, you can see it in many places.

(03:47):
Of course, many cultures celebrate quality, but we do it in very different ways. But Japan, I think fruit, vegetables, food, you know, really there's a big focus on that.
And so I would just like to maybe mention a few things that I was thinking about when I was on my run.

(04:09):
So yeah, in English, we usually say quality over quantity. And this means that it's better to have high quality things rather than many low quality things.

(04:38):
It's often something that your teacher says to you. Your teacher usually says it's quality over quantity when you hand in a really bad piece of work.
I think the special things that this focus on quality, especially in food is a real benefit to Japan. It brings this kind of love of turning things into an art form.

(05:07):
Even work which can seem hard and boring, maybe sometimes like farming. Even then it's turned into an art form here, not an art form, but it's perfected.
I was watching TV the other day. I usually don't watch TV very much, but I was really into this program about this farmer.

(05:36):
Well, the program itself is about food in Japan, but this program that I watched was about a farmer who was a pumpkin farmer.
I know that sounds really boring, but it was really fascinating to see this farmer who had a very hard job working in the summer in the heat.

(06:02):
And he'd been working on pumpkin farms since he was young. His family were also farmers.
And so he had a very long experience of pumpkin farming. Now that might seem really boring, but he was able to make the highest quality pumpkin you could imagine.

(06:24):
These pumpkins were pampered. He even went so far as to cover them from the sun, from the fruit from the sun, and also he would maintain the shape of the plant so that it perfectly captured the sunlight and put all its nutrients into the pumpkin.

(06:50):
And then this guy was so well known for making pumpkins that he had a famous chef come to his farm and deliberately pick the best pumpkins for his restaurant.
But it's this focus or this attention to detail that's really, really common here when it comes to food.

(07:17):
But this obviously means that the best food is really expensive. You can get watermelons here for 8000 yen. That's about 40 pounds. I don't know how many dollars that is, but it's about 40 pounds.
That's 40 pounds for one piece of fruit, even with the weak yen, that's still pretty expensive.

(07:40):
And so that's one advantage you're living in Japan is that you get access to really great quality food.
I think the other advantage of this attention to quality here is that you can be guaranteed it's reliable and that you are going to get a good product at the end of the day.

(08:04):
Of course this is the same in many places, I get it. But I think here... it's especially for things like Amazon, it's well known for being more reliable and making less mistakes than perhaps other countries are.
I think one friend told me that actually Amazon has less quality checkers because everyone is so good and they have good routines for Amazon.

(08:31):
I don't know if that's true, just heard it from a friend, but I could believe it to be true. I think Japanese infrastructure is very reliable.
However, I think there are maybe a couple of downsides to the focus on quality.
I think number one, it can be quite stressful for workers.

(08:54):
I think there's many rules here, especially when you're at work. Obviously not all places are like this, but there can be many rules.
And obviously this is to ensure quality.
But I think if there's many rules in your work, then I think it can feel quite stressful.

(09:15):
Obviously there can be pressure from managers to enforce rules. And if you're taking those rules, then...every day, then I feel it can be quite stressful.
I think maybe the second thing is that there's a lot of people who can complain about things if the quality is not as they expect.

(09:42):
Obviously this also creates tension for workers. Now if you're, I think if you're also worried about people complaining, then there's obviously this pressure for quality.
And especially in fruits and vegetables that can be damaged easily, there I think there's a lot of wastage that comes with meeting this quality demand.

(10:09):
I know that governments and councils here, they often, as a way to meet their climate goals, they promote the idea of reducing food loss.
I think it's quite a common problem here, certainly I see it in the news a lot.
Obviously in other countries, they have lots of food loss to get me wrong, but you know, I think that might be something which the focus on quality here makes worse maybe.

(10:43):
But actually very close to me, there's a supermarket which is selling fruit and vegetables which are being thrown away by supermarkets, either because they're out of date or they're damaged.
I go there often because I think it's a really great way of reducing food waste.

(11:04):
And obviously there's many people there because it's really really cheap.
So people like quality over quantity, but sometimes when it's cheap and it's perfectly good to eat doesn't need to be the best quality.
Thanks again guys for listening to Episode 2 of Roba English Podcast.

(11:42):
Let me know if there's anything that you want to listen to, any topics about Japan or about English or about Britain or Scotland.
I really want to hear what you want to say and what you want to listen to.
Please send me an email.
I really love listening to what you guys want to say, that's why I'm doing this podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can reach me on [e-mail].

(12:15):
The link is in the description with this podcast.
My goal for the podcast is every single time I do a podcast, I have to make one thing better. So please keep it coming.
I improved the sound on this podcast because you guys let me know, so thank you very much.

(12:39):
Please have a look at the transcript along with this episode. It will really help you guys learn what I'm saying.
If you have any questions about what I'm saying and why I'm saying it, please get in touch.
I think it's really great for listeners and for my students that you've got to ask native speakers why they say specific things.

(13:06):
Sometimes native speakers don't know and they have to research why they say specific things. But it's a really great way for both me and for listeners to learn.
So please keep those questions coming. If I can't answer them, I'll honestly tell you if I can't answer them, I'll try my best to research why.

(13:31):
But anyway, I'm looking forward to the next episode and stay tuned, I'll see you in the next one. Cheers.
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(13:58):
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