2. 职称英语
  3. The simple wooden house sits in an unremarkable old neighborhood in an Osaka

The simple wooden house sits in an unremarkable old neighborhood in an Osaka

游客2025-03-18  35
问题     The simple wooden house sits in an unremarkable old neighborhood in an Osaka suburb, the kind of place people forget still exists in modern Japan. There are no pachinko parlors or cyber cafes—no shops of any kind, really. It’s an unlikely place to encounter the next version of Japan’s technological evolution. But listen to what happens when a gray-haired septuagenarian named Kazuko Komiyama returns after visiting friends, "Welcome home," a voice chirps. "Isn’t it a nice day?"
    The high-pitched greeting belongs to a robot. It’s a simple machine, to be sure. This isn’t a thoughtful robotic character like those found in a Star Wars movie, or like Japan’s own popular creation Astro Boy. But it’s a robot nonetheless: a chocolate-brown wombat that eventually will be able to flutter its eyes when Komiyama, 77, enters the room and giggle when she scratches its fuzzy little head. It tells her what the weather is like. It reminds her when it’s time to take her medicine. It sings sweet songs to her.
    For Komiyama, a mechanical companion is a guard against the dreadful loneliness many elderly Japanese must endure. She saw one such tragic story on a TV news show recently. "An old man’s death went unnoticed because he lived alone," she says. "Day after day, his diary read, ’I didn’t meet anybody today. Again. ’I don’t want to end up like that. " So when welfare workers from the Osaka suburb of Ikeda asked for volunteers to test the prototype of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.’s pet robot, she jumped at the chance. She keeps the robot sitting in her living room. After a month, she’s starting to warm up to the thing, despite one irritating habit. "It speaks with a childish voice," she complains. "That makes me feel like I’m treated as an old person. I would rather have an equal relationship with a robot. "
    This is modern Japan, a Gizmo Nation where even grandmothers make friends with their gadgets. For half a century, the Japanese have made it a cultural mission to turn out a succession of cool, elegant and increasingly human machines. And what machines they have become: robotic geishas; headgear that projects computer screens in midair in front of wearers’ eyes; toilets that measure a person’s weight, body fat and urine sugar levels. The country that gave the world transistor radios, the Walkman and hand-held videogames is now positioned to turn its love of gadgetry into a profitable national enterprise once again. [br] The phrase "warm up to " in the third paragraph can be most likely replaced by______.
选项 A、become warmer and warmer
B、prepare for a game with the robot
C、start to like or be friendly with
D、approach to or come up to
答案 C
解析 本题为词语含义类问题，需要拥有一定量的词汇与短语，从而找出本题的正确答案。另外，也可以根据文章的上下文进行推断。由文章第三段我们可以推断出本题的正确答案为C，开始喜欢并与之交朋友。
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