ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

I love to organize my desk, but I am not very good at keeping it clean! I have to clean my desk every two weeks because I never put anything back in its place after I've used it. It is a real problem. I am very slowly starting to get better with it, but I still have a long way to go! One of the reasons is that I am always buying new notebooks, or pens, or pencils, or craft supplies! It is so much fun finding cute things for my desk!
This is my dream desk! It is hidden in a closet so it is out of the way, but it is still very accessible! I cannot wait to find a house where I can make this.  

Hello!

Today, I got some good news about our plans for Christmas! The plane tickets are booked! We'll be leaving late December, and returning early January of the New Year and spending our holidays in the great big city of Tokyo! I'm still fuzzy on details about where we'll be in the city, so making plans are still up in the air, but I've always been the type to make plans up on the fly anyways. Just being able to go back to the city and experience a new and different part of one of the most unique places on Earth is going to be a treat on its own. Being able to explore and experience new places is one of the reasons that I decided to teach English in other countries, so any opportunity to do that is gratefully accepted!

Alex  

I live in Marugame, which is not that different from my own hometown. Except it has a beautiful, old castle on top of a mountain.


Marugame Castle is one of my favorite places to go. I like to take long walks there almost every day. The climb is very steep, but it is worth it. The view is fantastic!


  

One of my favorite things to do is go for a walk in the mountains. In this picture I visited a place near Saijo. The river looked beautiful and the trees were starting to change colors. After the heat of summer, the cool autumn afternoon felt great.

What do you like to do when you go to the mountains? Let me know!

Thank you for reading,

Kristen  

As I'm sure all of you know, I LOVE horror movies. I just cannot get enough of them! When October roles around, it's time for me (and some of my friends) to take on the Horror Movie Challenge!

The challenge is to watch 1 horror movie every day in October, making that 31 movies! But 15 of them have to ones that you have never seen. Ah, there's the hard part. I enjoy watching scary movies during any month, and don't tend to save any for October viewing. Trying to find 15 new films has led me to seek out old films (Hitchcock, D'argento) and foriegn films (Korean, French). It's so exciting to discover something new that maybe I didn't want to watch before.

The genre of horror is good and bad. There are hundreds of horror movies made every year, but so many of them are lacking. Plot, characters, production? These movies get made whether they are good or not, with the expectation that fans such as myself, will watch it. Sometimes it's really hard to be a fan, when the movie makers don't seem to respect their audience enough to give them something decent to watch.

I need a good story, or I need to have a lot of fun. I like to be surprised and a little bit scared. I'm not looking to be terrified---I still need to sleep at night!

So far, I am 7 movies for 7 days into my challenge. There has been one very good film so far, called The Hive. It can be bought and watched online and I really enjoyed it.   

AS many you already know, I took part in the Marugame Half-Marathon last February. It was quite an experience, and afterwards I felt like I wanted to do it again (even though I could barely move afterward, hahaha). Well, I just recently applied to join in the marathon again for this next February. Know what that means, right? Workout montage!! If you don't know what a montage is, it's most easily identifiable in movies, especially ones where someone needs to get strong and train over a period of time, or someone needs to study to pass a big test. Instead of spending time watching these people study one subject at a time or performing each exercise to completion, they just show quick shots of the different actions they will take to improve themselves over a matter of minutes, since to show it over the days, weeks, or even months it would take to do it could not actually be shown in the movie. A good example would be any of the Rocky movies. In one scene they would show Rocky doing difficult push-ups, then jump to a shot of him working with a jump rope, then jump to another shot of him running up some stairs. All of this doesn't happen in the same day, but because of time constraints in the movie, it appears like he gets into shape in a very short time. It would be nice to be able to workout in the form of a montage; instead of spending hours a week trying to do different exercises, you can get into shape in just a few short cut scenes! Hahaha, not that that could ever work. Anyway, time to Rocky up and focus on getting ready for this next run!   

It is so easy to live life in a safe, controlled, little bubble. In life some of us like to stay in the norm, I myself am kind of one of those people. Well, I used to be anyway! I used to be so content with my small space in the world, nothing unexpected happened, everything was down to a comfortable schedule. Then things changed. I started wanting to see things, to do things, to make memories. That is exactly what I have been doing this year! I have had so much fun! I have done so many things and experienced so many new things that I can hardly keep up! I need to make a scrap book to help remember everything! Get out of your bubble of comfort and do something new! It's a wonderful feeling!

  

Today I want to talk about the Robot Restaurant in Tokyo that we went to with my parents.
My mother saw the restaurant on TV when she was in Canada and decided she really needed to go to it while she was in Japan. So she made the reservation and we went! It's located in Shinjuku, our hotel was actually very close to it, we only had to take a 5 minute taxi ride to get there.
The restaurant itself is VERY bright, every surface is covered in lights and the lights make the shapes of lots of cool designs. There was lots of cool art on the walls too. The upstairs lounge was almost all golden, it was really gaudy but I really liked it.
The show was really cool, there was lots of dancing, lots of dancers, and LOTS of robots! I really enjoyed the show. After the show I bought some souvenirs, it was so much fun! My parents had a wonderful time too, my mom was very glad she booked the reservation.
We'll be going back in December for Taylor's birthday celebration, I'm really excited!   

  

Last Monday we had a GEM staff event in Saijo! We ate Imotaki!



Imotaki is a soup made with potatoes, chicken, fish balls, tofu and vegetables. The broth is really delicious, but the best part for me is eating outside with good friends.



It's also common to bring your own ingredients, since refills on broth are free! Beef, chicken, bean sprouts and even sausages all go really well in the soup.

I really enjoy this late summer tradition in Japan. :)   

Hello, all—

The end of summer is almost here! Last weekend I went to the Kamo River for imotaki. It was really fun! Many Gem School teachers and staff came to eat delicious food and watch the moon.


Many years ago, the first time I was in Japan, I visited the Aka River in Tsuruoka (which is a city in Yamagata Prefecture) for imoni. Imoni and imotaki are very similar, but there are some important regional differences. Imotaki happens during the summer, in the evening, so you can watch the sun set and the moon rise. Imoni happens in the autumn, during the day, so you can enjoy the changing leaves. That is, motaki is supper, but imoni is lunch!

It's always so interesting to find that two very different places have developed such a similar tradition. Many parts of Japan have no imotaki-like tradition at all. I wonder what other fascinating cultural discoveries I'll make in Shikoku?

—Matthew  

Fall (also called Autumn) is one of my favorite seasons! I just love to see the leaves change colors and bake nice and warm pumpkin bread. It's so yummy! Last year I was living in Australia. Did you know that the seasons are different in Australia. Fall starts in September/October in America and Japan, but in Australia it starts in March! So I got to experience Fall in March and it was pretty strange but I loved it.





  

When I came over from Canada I brought my smartphone with me. I have a Japanese SIM card for it, and I use it fairly constantly. I use it to translate words when I shop or need help, to find my way around, and most importantly, to check the train schedules to get to my classes on time! We are so lucky to live in a time where all the information we need is in a device the size of our hand!
  

So over the week I went shopping with my friend and fellow teacher Leslie! She and I went all over the place in the shotengai and really needed to take a break from all the walking. So we stopped at probably the cutest little cafe I have ever seen. It was a little doughnut shop!!! They had all kinds of doughnuts, but what was really amazing was that they had doughnuts in the shapes of animals!! I've never seen food prepared like this America. Sure they sometimes make cakes with designs on them where I'm from, but I had never seen anything as adorable as a cat dougnut! It was so cute I almost couldn't eat it! I had gotten a halloween cat and pig doughnut. While Leslie got a regular cat and shiba inu doughnut. They were not too pricey and very tasty!







  

The long hot humid days of summer are gone. As we say goodbye to summer I think about all the fun times and all the new experiences I had. One of my favorite things this summer was visiting the Kamo River. Having a barbecue, dipping my feet into the water, or just sitting on the riverbank watching the sunset. I met many new people and had a lot of fun this summer. While I am sad to see summer go, I know it will come again. Let's look forward to all the fun we will have in Autumn!

Thank you for reading,

Kristen  

Last weekend I went to Shodoshima with some familiar faces. Can you recognize who those are? It's Sam and Leigh!, two of our fellow teachers here at GEM School.

We all decided to take our super cool bikes to Shodoshima and cycle around the island. It was a lot of fun despite the mountainous terrain but we made it from one port to the other despite my lackluster directional skills. I got us lost a few times, but that is all apart of the adventure. Cycling is our pastime and you'll never see us without our bikes.

- James Barbosa  

Two of my favorite things about Japan so far are the food and the people. The deserts here are so yummy! When I first got here my fellow Gem School Teacher Keiti took me and another new teacher Jillian to the mall. We went shopping and got some delicious deserts. Look at the size of that parfait! It's so big!




"Eat up!" :D  

Can you do Osaka in a day? YES but it's crazy!

We took an early footbus over to Osaka station, where I insisted on stopping at the Pokemon Center. There were dancing pikachus and people everywhere! I bought some things that can be good presents, but I had to carry them all day long while we continued shopping.

Over in Amemura, we had lunch and checked out my favorite stores. I bought a lot of clothes for good prices, and some silly concert goods that were just fun to have. I didn't find any Halloween accessories that I could use, but we did have fun taking pictures with various Halloween decorations!

We saw a cute artist selling buttons and artwork, a newly opened cosplay cafe, and tons of fashion EVERWHERE! I love how freely everyone wears their styles in Osaka, it makes me want to dress up more!

Osaka is fun to do in a day, but pretty hard! I wish we had had more time!  

Just recently I was able to climb Mt. Ishizuchi again. It was a much better experience this time around. Well, in some ways. For one thing, it ended being a gorgeous day. The first time I went it was very foggy and cloudy, and you really couldn't see anything, even at the top. This time around, well, see for yourself:



It was so beautiful! There was a bit of fog during the middle, but once we reached a certain point, it was almost all blue skies and sunshine! It was definitely one of the best visual experiences I have had to date. Although it was kind of brought down by the fact that there were sooooo many people there! It should have been obvious that there would be, seeing as it was Silver Week and all. It probably wouldn't have been so bad, if it wasn't for the fact that there were lines for climbing the chains. Oh, by the way, I climbed them all this time! It seemed so much easier this time around, even while waiting for the people ahead of me to climb up. Just take a look!



Don't worry, I didn't actually almost fall. At least, not in that picture.I went up at the ridge of the mountain, and that was quite a scary experience. Mostly I was worried about my friends falling more than about me falling. It was definitely a better way to get my heart racing than it would be watching a horror film. I believe another group of friends are going to try climbing near the end of October, on a Saturday, on Sunday if the weather isn't good. I really hope it ends up on Sunday. If it does, I am definitely going to climb again!