ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

One thing I miss a lot is the summer weather from my hometown. My family lives in "Tornado Alley", an area with a higher frequency of tornadoes. Every summer the sky changes to brilliant colors, beautiful and ominous. There is a distinct energy in the air before a storm. It's the calm before the storm. I only saw one good summer storm while I was visiting my family. Here's a photo of the beautiful sky from my uncle's farm.

  

Lately Ive been trying the ketogenic diet to try and lose some weight.




The keto diet basically works by limiting the boy's intake of carbohydrates. The body will bur carbs first, so by limiting these, the body can be tricked into thinking ti is starving and instead burning fat. I've lost a bit of weight doing this, so it works!

The only problem is that given Japan's love of rice and sweets, I actually have a hard time sticking with the diet if I don't cook at home. So I've started teaching myself how to cook bit by bit. Pictured above is a recent attempt - chicken fried in parmesan cheese and olive oil with a green salad. It was delicious!

  

Last week Katie and I had our dress rehearsal for our Yosakoi dance team! We invited our new friend and fellow teacher Chris to come and watch. He was very excited to see Yosakoi for the first time, and he took some awesome photos of me and Katie! I was very nervous, and very hot all evening. Our teammates all did so well, and I am so proud to be a part of this dance team! Everyone has worked so hard,and I really look forward to dancing with everyone at the festival next week!



  

It has been hard communicating with my parents since I've been in Japan because of the time difference. I try to talk with them about once a week but sometimes that doesn't happen.

I sometimes text my dad and I play a Facebook game with my mom most of the time and then I'll use Facetime/Skype to actually talk with them.

My sister is also hard to get a hold of, but we usually just send Snapchats back and forth to each other.

I miss my family a lot!

What would you do if you traveled across the world? How would you stay in touch with your family?  

Hello Everyone,

Summer is also a great time for different delicious foods! During the Winter we eat many hot foods and things like stew or curry that help keep us warm. But now that it is Summer, I don't feel like eating a big hot bowl of stew. During the summer I like to eat a lighter meal, and Summer is a great time for it. Summer time offers many delicious vegetable choices! You can see in the picture above all the things I used to make my favorite salad!

Can you name all the things in the picture? Let me know and maybe I can share the recipe!

Thank you for reading,

Kristen  

July has come!!!

I am so excited. There are so many fun things to do in Summer. I like to barbecue, travel and find a good way to stay cool. One of my most favorite things to do in the Summer is go to the beach! I hope to find many new beaches to visit this year.

What beaches would you suggest? Let me know!

Thank you for reading,

Kristen  

This is so cool, I saw this picture of three swords that are a monument to Norway's Viking age. Do you know where Norway is? It's a country in northern Europe with a rich Viking history. I'm a big fan of history ranging from the classical periods of Greece to the Colonial periods of the world. Viking history, however remain one of my favorite historical civilizations. They were great seafarers that are credited with the first voyage to the Americas, beating Christopher Columbus by over 500 years! What a feat.

- James Barbosa  

I recently got a desk, which is great. Studying is so much easier to do in a good environment. Before I studied on the floor, and none of my things were organized. I was always looking for a pen, or for the right notebook. No it's much easier to get my work done. I should have gotten a desk a lot sooner. It would have helped me get ready for my test quicker.   

In 2009 my parents bought me a Mac laptop. It was a gift for once I started college. My laptop went with me everywhere it was like my little baby. Unlike some of the PCs I had owned the Mac never got a virus, slowed down, or gave me any headaches with error and permission problems. Now about 7 years later it has reached the end of the line. Midway through a twitch stream the Laptop started acting up. Almost like everything closed. I would try and open some programs they would start to load and then nothing. If something ever went wrong with my Mac I could simply restart it and ta-da it worked like new. This time it never booted up again. I made an attempt to erase, partition, reinstall the OS, and many other things. Unfortunately nothing could be done since the hard drive is no longer mountable and it is corrupted. All hard drives fail its only a matter of time. So its time for me to say goodbye to my laptop but that's okay someone new and bigger is on the horizon.

On a side note R.I.P is what is put on many tombstones in America. It stands for Rest In Peace.  

The cool weather disappeared! I was appreciative of our cool summer that we'd been having, even though a lot of it was accompanied by rain. The first day of 80 degree temperatures and humidity was staggering,I felt like the air had never been so thick. My first time in Japan was in the summer, and I was here in Kagawa last year, but you'd never think so. It hasn't gotten easier.

I've noticed I make a lot of annoyed groans under my breath while I try to deal. Dance practice has been exponentially harder as the sweat pours off me in the gym. I drink like a fish, but I'm losing so much that I don't even have to use the bathroom!

My fan died the first night I needed it. It just sputtered and came to a stop. I slept with an icepack on my head! It was the best thing I could come up with at midnight. Now I have a new fan and I am still sleeping with icepacks. I wake up really early cause I'm so uncomfortable. I had no food in my apartment on the weekend because I didn't want to bike allllll the way over to the grocery store. Crazy, I know.

I always remember Japan summer festivals so fondly, and they are some of my favorite pictures, but I wish they didn't have to happen at the peak of hot and humid weather. And I'll be dancing outside in 2 huge festivals!
Let's have Fall festivals instead! It's much cooler then. We won't have to worry about losing Katie to heat-stroke.

I want to hide in my apartment until it's Fall.   

I have lived in Japan for three summers now, and I must say this year is the most uncomfortable. I don't quite remember the first year very much, except for the fact that I was living in Kanonji, and I remember really only turning on the air conditioner when I had company over.
The second year I had moved to Niihama, and once again only really used the air conditioner when I had company. Every other time I got by with a fan, and it felt okay.
But this year. Oh man, this year seems almost unbearable at times, especially at night! It's just so humid, and it feels like there is nothing that can be done! Even using the air conditioner, sometimes seems useless.
I have been told that it has to do with El Niño and La Niña, which are weather patterns that are determined by ocean temperatures. I don't know the specifics, but El Niño results from warmer weather over the ocean, which brings about more rain and typhoons to Japan. La Niña happens when the ocean is colder, which means that the rainy season is shortened in Japan, but with it comes unreasonably hot weather. Or so I have been told. Either way, I'm going to try to stay indoors where I can get free AC, like a library, or maybe even a restaurant!  

Coffee. The wonderful, magical, delicious cup of awesome that helps adults stay awake throughout the day. Generally children don't like coffee so sometimes it is considered an adult drink. Did you know that 1.6 Billion cups of coffee are consumed globally every day? How about that coffee is the second most traded product in the world after petroleum? Why does this happen? Caffeine. Caffeine is a wondrous little crystal in coffee that helps us all wake up and get our day on. Some people prefer tea to coffee and some people prefer coffee to tea. I love both but coffee has my heart. Coffee is so diverse and modifiable! You can have a chocolate coffee, black coffee, espresso, cappuccino, a latte, etc. So if you drink coffee or if you drink tea, I raise a toast to you to help you start your day!  

Hello!

Today, I want to talk about one of my favourite times of the year coming up in Japan right now: the festival season!

From basically now until October, every city (and I believe almost every town in those cities) will be celebrating it's yearly festival. This means music, shops, games, and my two favourites, fireworks and street food!

If you've never had the opportunity to watch Japanese fireworks in person, they are something truly special to behold. We have fireworks in Canada, and celebrate every July 1st, our national Canada Day, but there is something wonderfully artistic about how Japanese fireworks are performed. The colours and patterns are vibrant and unique, and often so close to the observers that you can not only hear, but feel them as they explode.

I'm so excited for this time of year, and I can't wait until I can find a cozy spot and watch the show in the sky!

A  

At movie theaters across the globe, it is not custom to serve buttered popcorn. You can order popcorn salted or sweet. The very nice concessions worker apologized that I would not be able to get it buttered, likely because the rest of the world has figured out that delicious butter poison is bad for your health. In America, they will drown your popcorn in butter. It is kinda of ridiculous.
Though we did feel healthier, it didn't feel like the same movie experience without having shiny, buttery fingers.  

  

Farewell, all!

This is the last blog post I'll make in Japan—I leave on Saturday, only a few hours before my visa expires! I just shot my farewell video with Ryo, which was very honest, but I'm afraid I hadn't planned out what to say, so most of the video is rambling and repetitive repetitious rambling for the most part. (Like so.)

I've been very busy this weekend trying to get my apartment as clean as I can, throwing away most of the stuff I own (I am quite good at keeping myself clutter-free by making it a policy never to own more than two suitcases worth of "stuff"—excepting books, of course, as my library takes up a good quarter of my parents' garage), taking one final bicycle ride

This sloth is me, saying goodbye to my bike. I never want to let him... er, "it"... go!
before giving the bicycle to Chris, who has promised to treat it right and take it a long way (and he knows that I will haunt him with my ikiryō if he does not), making sure I get everything finished for Gem School, and of course packing what I can, so this post will be very short:

Thank you, everyone! Thank you for making this last year at Gem School a year I'll remember always, for giving me support, new ideas, your trust, and so many opportunities to grow. Thank you for being patient with me when I'm annoying. Thank you, parents, for entrusting me with your children, and thank you, kids, for proving that I can enjoy working with children after all! Thank you, teachers, for the constant delight of your company, and thank you, staff, for the equally delightful chance to get to know you. As I've said many times, Gem was by far the best of the many workplaces I've experienced overseas, and I'm really happy that I can conclude my sojourn here with such positive feelings all around.

I'll conclude with a "benediction," which in this case simply means a "good speaking" at the end of a shared experience. From my vast knowledge of classic and esoteric English-language poesy and prose, I have selected... a section of a trite-yet-true poem from The Lord of the Rings that you all already know. Sometimes the most common shared things are the best!

The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

May we all follow that Road to find our selves, and, with luck, my we find that someday our Road once again converges!

Farewell! I shall miss you!

—Matthew  

We all know summer is here in Japan, but do you know the phrase "winter is coming"?

That phrase comes from the very popular TV show "Game of Thrones", which just finished its 6th season. It's a show about a medieval fantasy world where family loyalty, political treachery, and dragons all share screen time. It's famous for being very violent and full of nudity, but thats not all the show is about. There are a several complex interwoven plotlines that influence each other, and because even popular or important characters often die, the stakes are very high for fans.

If you don't mind some blood, violence, and nudity in your television shows, and you want to watch one of the most popular shows in the world right now, I highly recommend it.   

Hello all,

This is my first blog post! I went to Osaka a couple weeks ago and it was such an incredible experience. I found an owl café and it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen! We don't have any animal cafes in the United States really. I hear that there are cat cafes in Japan too. I'm really interested in this type of business and will be visiting many more in the future!

How popular are animal themed cafes in Japan? Do you think they could succeed in the United States?


  

Summer is here, and it is getting to be very humid again! As many of you know, my hometown is not a very humid place, so Japanese summer is very difficult for me. I feel like my skin is always covered in water, and i feel sticky all the time when I go outside. I have to be very careful to drink lots of water and sometimes even some sports drinks (Like Aquarius or Pocari Sweat!) so that I don't get dehydrated. I also end up taking 2 or 3 showers a day just to not feel sticky!

Do you feel sticky in the summer? How to you stay cool?


  

The 4th of July is coming up in a few days, and in America that means BBQs and fireworks!

A lot of people get wrapped up in the festivities of the holiday that they often forget the real purpose of the day, which is our Independence.

In my family we would always dress in as much red, white and blue as we could and go to see my god parents. At their house we would have a BBQ and eat lots of food. Then, sometimes, we would go to a park and watch a fireworks display. One year we even saw the fireworks in Washington DC, that were displayed behind the Washington Monument!

This day is a fun day to spend with family and friends, but we have to remember that it's also an important day!