Monday, October 12, 2009

Benesse VIEW21 Feature

I really try to keep it professional and not talk about work in this blog. I will make an exception to mention this, because it’s always cool to be featured in a major publication. However, a couple of months ago, a few people came from the Benesse Corporation to do a 研究授業 (in other words... they came to do a class study) on my 6th grade English class. The magazine is circulated among elementary schools in Japan. Its premise is to share different activities and teaching methods from schools all over the country. When it came to my class, they basically just wrote up an in-depth report on elementary school English in my town, using my class as the prime example. I don’t like the photo that they published at all. I wish they would have just asked me for a proper photo instead of acting like the paparazzi. I also loved how they assumed that I didn’t speak any Japanese during the post-class interview. That was amusing.  However, I will say this, this is a fairly big thing for me, to get mentioned in a print article, thus I’m fairly excited about it. If you’re at all inclined to read in Japanese, please go ahead and read this article in the September issue of VIEW21.

The online version can be found here:

http://benesse.jp/berd/center/open/syo/view21/2009/09/s03english_01.html

The magazine in its entirety can be downloaded in PDF format here:

http://benesse.jp/berd/center/open/syo/view21/2009/09/pdf/2009_vol2.pdf

Saturday, October 10, 2009

typhoon day

Ok, so I took these pictures at around 5:30 PM on the day that typhoon 18 was supposed to be directly over Ashikaga. I get out of school at 4:30 and I rushed to the river to see how high it had risen from all the rain we’d had all week – I was just curious. The typhoon did create a substantial amount of damage in other parts of the country; 116 people are injured and I believe at least one person died. In Ashikaga, the winds were pretty intense, even with no storm. I almost got blown away while I was taking some of these.
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Thursday, October 8, 2009

Things I Love Thursday – back & better than ever.

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Ok. well… maybe not better than ever. More like… more of the same but slightly different this time. It’s just not very appealing as a title. In any case, it’s fall here – my most favorite season of all. Complete with pears, apples, persimmons (柿), trips to the local museum, 紅葉 (colored leaves), and comfortable weather. Seriously. The only things that could make Japanese fall better would be the additions of Halloween and Thanksgiving… but I don’t think either of those will be instituted anytime in the near future.

In addition to all of the wonderful things that make up fall, I also had a couple of surprises last week. Flowers from my school’s groundskeeper (They look a little droopy… but that’s only from the rain we’ve had all week) AND reruns of ALF (!!!) on NHK. Does anyone remember Alf?! We’ll he’s back! In Japan!

Anyway. Apologies for a severe lack of interesting posts as of late. School keeps me fairly busy and since I got back from Kansai I’ve been a little low on funds, which has prevented me from doing any serious traveling. In the meantime, there’s a Japanese speech contest coming up soon here in Ashikaga that I’m participating in. That, plus doing some studying for the JLPT in December… just… keeping busy.

In short. Just some things I love.

Stay cool.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

京都 大徳寺 高桐院

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I can’t imagine a better place to have a cup of tea.

more photos here & here (on the facebook, of course)