News in Easy English: Tokyo man speaks out daily for Gaza in busy streets
The man's name is Yusuke Furusawa. He is 49 years old. He works building sets for TV shows. After work, he goes alone to places like Shinjuku and Shibuya stations to speak about Gaza. Gaza is a place where many Palestinian people live. Recently, there has been fighting there. Many people in Gaza have died.
Furusawa started this activity in October 2023, after getting sick with COVID-19. As he recovered, he watched videos online about the difficult situation in Gaza. He felt he needed to speak up about it.
At first, some people were unkind to him in the street. Because of this, he started taking videos of himself and posting them online. Many people around the world saw these videos. Now, he has about 170,000 followers on Instagram. Foreign visitors to Japan sometimes come just to meet him. They say, "Where are you today?" and thank him for speaking up.
He often wears a special scarf and uses a bag with the Palestinian flag on it. Followers from social media gave these to him as presents. One time, an Israeli woman met him and said she agreed the fighting needed to stop. Furusawa explained, "I am speaking about the governments, not about normal people."
But not everyone is happy with his actions. Sometimes, people tell him, "You are noisy," or "This has no meaning."
Furusawa knows some people dislike what he does, but he keeps standing there. He says, "In Japan, people have the right to live safely and speak freely. If someone loses these rights somewhere in the world, I believe we need to speak up. Is meaning important? I think it is just the right thing to do."
(Japanese original by Kohei Chiwaki, Digital News Group)
Vocabulary
genocide: trying to kill many people from a group or country
set: background used on TV programs or movies
recover: to get better after you have been sick
social media: websites or apps like Instagram or Facebook, where people share information and videos online
follower: someone who regularly looks at another person's social media posts
government: the group of people who make decisions for a country
right: something everyone should be allowed to have or do (for example, the right to speak freely and safely)
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