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What do you want most in a friend- someone who is intelligent, or someone who has a sense of humor, or someone who is reliable? which one fo these characteristics is the most important to you? Use reasons and specific examples to explain your choice.
22/M/Japan>>> TOEFL CBT 267 (5.0)>>> University Student
I don't want anything in my friends. You may think that as strange, but I want my friends just as they are. So I want to tell you about myself as someone's friend. As someone's friend, I try to listen to what they say. I think this is the most important asset as a friend. Why do we need some friends? I think this is because we need someone to talk about anything we have in mind. For example, when I was a child, I have read some tale about one barbar. One day, the hair-cutter was asked by the king of the country to come to his palace. And there, he found that the ears of the king is a hourse's shape. But the king said to him, "if you tell about my ears to someone else, I will kill you.". So the man dig a small hole, and he shouted into the hole, "the ears of the king is a horse's shape!". And after that, the barbar was killed, because what he shouted was spilled from the hole and everyone in the town knew the secret.

But imagine that, if the man had someone who is very reliable, who can keep secret in his mind, the barbar can tell the secret to the friend. So I think that the most important asset of a good friend is listening to what a friend says carefully and patiently. In my country, we call such person "Kiki-Jozu", that means who is good at listening to what others say. But it is difficult to be Kiki-Jozu, because Kiki-Jozu must make comfortable situation while his friend talks to him. Kiki-Jozu must not just listening to what his or her friend saying, he or her at the same time, understand what the friends saying. And it is not so easy to understand what the friends saying truely. So if you want to be Kiki-Jozu, you must talk with the friend many times and try to understand about him or her carefully.

We usually have variety types of friends. That is, we have an intelligent friend, an humorous friend, or a reliable friend at the same time. I think this is because we need every kinds of friends at the same time. And do you think that we have to have all these asset? I think we don't have all the assets, we only have one asset that can make our friend comfortable. But I think we have to have many friends who have different characteristics or personalities. To have many and variety of friends, I think most important thing is to talk with many people. We don't live in this society alone, many people live in the world, and each has his or her own characteristics. So I think we all have many chances to have variety of friends.