Do you believe in magic?

This week I had a talk with a young post-doc working at Osaka University. One of the questions that he wanted to talk about was the secret of learning Japanese. Unfortunately, all I had to suggest was a lot of hard work and study.
( behind the curtain )

Why do we think there must be an easier way? And does this desire make it easier for the snake oil salesperson to convince us that this time, we are really going to get the magic elixir? And why do we feel disappointed when we find out that we're going to have to do some hard work again, or guilty when we don't have a fail-safe, quick-and-easy method to tell people?

Interesting. Do you believe in magic?

Did they really say that?

Just a tiny little quirk in an advertisement we saw recently. See, they were talking about how much of something this wonderful drink has in it, and they said it has 10,000 mg.

I laughed, because if I remember correctly, mg stands for milligrams. So I think 1,000 mg is just one gram. 10,000 mg really means ten grams. A lot easier to say, although I guess it doesn't sound quite as impressive. Our drink has ten grams of good stuff, or our drink has 10,000 mg of good stuff? Which one sounds more impressive to you?

Me, I'm avoiding the whole question by not drinking that healthy drink, but . . .