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My English accent is rapidly becoming more and more noticeable when I speak to people. When reading out loud for the benefit of English students to repeat it really slaps you in the face.

When I ask them to repeat something I`ve said, I have to try and stop myself from sniggering. The problem is I`m not laughing at them or their (near flawless) replication of the sounds produced from my mouth but at the realisation of how I sound to foreigners.

It began with post office. In my accent it comes out it close to poe-u-st office. When they repeat it it sounds bizarre. I make it a point to try and cure the Americanisms creeping into Japanese speakers of English. They seem genuinely surprised that you can spell colour with a U in, refer to a game called football without touchdowns and call an intersection a crossroads. Maybe they`re just being polite.

It made me realise that although to my ears English spoken by Japanese in an American accent is no worse than if they spoke it in an English one. Perhaps it`s better that way.

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