ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

Wow! What a crazy series of events! After a bit of a whirlwind, I have decided to travel back to America for a few days in order to complete an interview for a special full tuition scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I am so excited to have this opportunity, and I will do my best at the interview! Wish me luck!
  

I can't recall the last time I was in an actual park. You know, the kind with more grass and trees​ than swings and slides. This past week I went to a real park for the Easter Picnic.

Busshozan Park, to be precise. Sure it had it's fair share of amusement for the kids. There was even an amphitheatre and a full sized gymnasium, but you didn't feel like they interfered with what the park had to offer by just being a park.  

The lanterns are out at Marugame Castle in preparation for the Sakura blooming. My friend Laura and I took a walk there recently and it was just stunning (beautiful). I'm going with a party of friends to see the Sakura this weekend. I'm really excited. I hope the weather is nice.  

PEZ is one of those candies that you just grow up with. The other day while walking around Toys R Us I saw a PEZ dispenser of Chewbacca! Chewbacca is one of my favorite Star Wars characters. This little guy now decorates my computer desk. The candy itself is decent but nothing great. The dispenser makes it that much more fun to eat.

Do you like PEZ? Do you have a dispenser?  

Look at my beautiful kitchen! Yes, it is that small.

I'm surprised to find I have enjoyed the challenge of organizing my apartment. You may recall my love of bookshelves that I use to hold things that aren't books. I put up some temporary hooks and rods in my cooking area and to my surprise--everything is staying up!

I'm cleaning all over the place because my Mom and my friend are coming to Japan soon! They've never been to Japan before. I'm so excited but I have so much to do. Every weekend I go through and clean part of my place, and I've started buying extra things for my guests like a futon set. All of the futon sets were pretty ugly, in my opinion, but they seem nice enough to sleep on.

I'm so excited for my April guests!!!!
  

I think something is going around, because just in the last few weeks, I have seen or heard about people getting sick, particularly with high fevers. I guess the flu is getting around. I feel like it's such a weird time of the year for everyone to be getting the flu; I see it more as a sickness you get in the middle of winter, not early spring. I guess it is different in Japan.
My wife also just recently came down with "something". Doctors say it is just a normal cold, but I find it hard to believe, especially since she has been experiencing symptoms that point directly to influenza, such as the high fever. It's been difficult, trying to take care of her. I don't know much about what I can do to help with her pains, especially through the night, when she can't sleep due to being too hot and too cold. Suffice to say, niether of us have been sleeping much.
Hopefully she can recover soon, and best case scenario, I avoid getting sick next!  

A couple of weeks ago, my friend took me to see the Senyuji Temple in the mountains near Shikokuchuo. It was a gorgeous day, and I was happy to be able to get out and have some fresh air. The temple itself was very beautiful as well. It’s built into the side of a mountain, and there is a stream running under the temple itself. The stream tumbled swiftly down the mountainside, and we climbed beside it, up many stone steps. Once we reached the courtyard in front of the temple, the building itself loomed above us, old and rustic. My friend told me that it was 1,300 years old, and the temple felt heavy with its years. But there was something whimsical about it too, probably because the style reminded me of the bathhouse from the movie Spirited Away. Isn’t funny how such a simple thing can connect an ancient temple to a modern movie, two pieces of culture so far removed from each other, but still emerging as parts of a whole? Culture really is fascinating that way.
The greenery around the temple was verdant and lively with spring. I was feeling pretty lively myself, so I tried to reach the top of one of the staircases that started in the courtyard and ascended up the mountain. I thought I would reach the end quickly, snap a few pictures, and then come down. Unfortunately for me, there were a lot of stairs! There were many friendly Buddha statues on the way, and each one seemed to whisper, “Just a little bit further.” Up and up I went, think that each curve in the path would reveal the end. But, finally, I had to give up. My friend was waiting for me, and I didn’t want him to think that I had fallen off the mountain. So I went back down, stepping carefully. The steps were covered in old leaves, and I was worried that I would slip and break my neck on the stairs. Luckily, I reached the bottom safely but much winded. If I am going to be climbing up all sorts of stairs at Buddhist temples, I’m going to need to be in better shape!
  

Hello!

Today is an exciting day, because it's the GEM School Easter picnic! Today, there will be 4 picnics all around Kagawa and Ehime for the kids and parents of GEM to come together and have a fun time outside with English. Look out for pictures on this blog and on the Facebook site soon, and keep watch for the handsome dude in a costume!

A
  

Pictured above is a shot of me and the same actress in one of my recent posts about attending the Japanese theatre. Her and I are pointing at our arms because one of my students broke her arm recently and I wanted to show her that I was thinking of her recovery. My student looks like this actress, so I thought it'd be in some good humor to show my student that I located her twin.

In that last shot she seemed to play the Angry dwarf. She was, at least, dressed in red and she put on an angry act when we took one of our pictures. While the last show was of a story I was familiar with (Snow White and the 7 Dwarves), this one I couldn’t really make heads or tails of. It was perhaps an original Japanese story. The director was the same as the last production and so displayed some of the expected ingenuity. In the last play the stage director integrated (included) interactions between the actors and the audience, which was partly composed (made up) of children. I wrote last time that in that production (of Snow White…) Malificent, or the evil witch, asked the audience who the most beautiful woman in Japan was, and the audience of children would respond that she was. Additionally, the audience helped pick the nick name for Snow White when she was discovered sleeping on the Dwarves’ beds, after it was agreed upon that she could stay with them. This time, this production made the stage the centerpiece of the production, a thing and cast member itself. In fact, the stage was a stage on a stage, since the actors stepped on and off of it, skipping around it and taking things off and onto the center stage from without. It was extraordinary and really reinvigorated (renewed) my drive to learn the language. What was happening on stage? Why did everyone keep leaving all their props on stage? One actor left his cigarette on it, another some sort of forbidden picture, and another some scissors and a table. The center stage just kept piling up with forgotten props, accumulating traces and clues of past actions. The name of the play was “The City of Memories,” if I remember correctly, and this must be why: the stage was the city and the props abandoned on it were the memories of all its inhabitants. I also gathered or guessed that the actors were aging, one actress even dying on stage. In the end, I think everyone passed away since all the actors then played animals that went on stage and then built lots of miniatures buildings out of the blocks that were lying around on the ground floor around the center stage. Wow, I wish I could describe more the experience I had.   

I've always enjoyed history and art, so I love it when the two come together.
Today I want to share with you my favorite painting, it's called "The Lady of Shalott" by John William Water House. It's based on one of my favorite poems of the same name.




I really love this beautiful painting. The water, the beautiful dress, her hair, and all the little details are so amazing, I could look at it for days. The poem as well is very beautiful and thinking about it while looking at the painting gives it even more impact.

Do you have a favorite painting? What's your favorite piece of art?
  

I've been having fun with a different technique of painting. It's pretty difficult to control actually. You never know how it's going to turn out but the result is cool and abstract. Here are some of my favorites. Can you tell what they are?



Koi, octopus, and cat  

I'm not a morning person. So, sometimes it's difficult to find energy in the morning. As a result, I'm not as energetic as I could be in the morning. I don't have my edge yet. It takes me some time to warm up. On occasion I try to speed up the process using various methods. On this day, I tried to use a ratio of 1:1 with coffee. I tried to drink my weight in coffee. It didn't help much, but I enjoyed the taste.

  

I really like tofu, but I haven’t experimented with it as much as I’d like to. This is something I want to change. Tofu is high in protein and a wonderful alternative to meat. What I love about tofu is that it is a blank canvas. Tofu itself is pretty bland, but it can absorb a lot of flavor by simply seasoning it or marinating it to one’s liking. What I also like about tofu is that it is fairly versatile with the way it can be prepared. I am particularly interested in making a tasty tofu burger and tofu chorizo. Wish me luck!



  

As all of my students know by now, I'm leaving GEM at the end of the month to pursue a new opportunity in Hiroshima. I'll be joining an international school there as a junior high school teacher, which is a big step forward in my career!



I'm going to miss Saijo very much. I love all of my friends here, and it wasn't an easy decision to leave. this place has been so good to me, and it's a truly special town. Anyone reading this should take the time to visit Saijo and have a barbecue by the river, eat some imotaki, come see the matsuri, or just enjoy the local restaurants.

I cannot thank GEM enough for the opportunities given to me here. I've loved my time at GEM school, and I truly believe that it's a great place to work and study. I wish all of my students and GEM's students good luck in the future, and may we meet again in the future when we are older, fatter, and happier.   

Pictured is a photo of some of the gardening work my mom recently did. I don’t know when she started her new hobby exactly, but it was very recently, maybe within the last month. She has a lot of free time on her hands, since two of her kids are independent and the third is going through college. She doesn’t work so she is bored often being alone at home. I wish I could be with her more. I’d like to bring her some ornaments from Japan for her new hobby.

So how was your week? How has your week been? How has your week been treating you? How have you been handling the week? How goes your week so far? How have you been?

Anything exciting happen this weekend? Anything new this past weekend? Any new developments? Anything you’d like to discuss or share with us? What’s new with you? Go anywhere exciting? Any new thrills?

Let me share a bit about mine. It’s the same old same old, same as usual, sort of week. Everyday I study, every morning I practice singing or playing the guitar, or just improvising on the piano. Every night after work I come home and study some more. Recently I have been resorting to, or using, flashcards for my language studies. Do you use them, too? I have been reading some books on learning and memory and recent science advises that we practice spaced repetition and interleaving. What is ideal is to forget what you are learning just a bit, and then to work hard to recall that information. What would be ideal is if you can get new information to the point of forgetting that it is “on the tip of your tongue.” You can’t quite recall it precisely, but you have a sense of what you want to recall. This point is when your brain is working the hardest at strengthening the neuronal pathways that would produce the new information.

This is how the brain is “like a muscle,” because your memory does improve with mental exercise. But only if you are doing it right. You have to space your studies in such a way that you forget new information to the point of just barely remembering it, and then when you do finally manage to recover that new information its “recall ability” is improved. Memory basically has two aspects, retention and recall. Lots of information is retained, but the ability to recall any information is separate from the ability to recall. One book reports that our capacity for retention if infinite, but it is our capacity for recall that fluctuates and is limited. We can improve our recall powers by spacing our studies, never cramming, forgetting new information just enough to get it “on the tip of your tongue.” The simplest way to do this is to produce flashcards of new information for yourself, and then to just run through them once in the once in the morning and another time in the evening, then repeat every day on. That is the bare bones minimalist approach.

Another method is to interleave your studies, so that, for example, if you’re studying how to give and take directions, you study through flashcards mapping vocabulary, and then you switch half an hour later to reading about a country, and for your downtime, you play a board or video game that involves a map in some form. Interleaving here means two things, basically: include variety, and include leisure. The main idea is that you perform how you practice and vice versa. Since language is everywhere and you need it for living, you have to be prepared for any language exchange encounter. The bare bones minimalist approach is simply to just study at different places every time. The idea behind this is that the variety of stimuli or visual cues, or the environment, creates more associations with what you’re learning. Related to this, you might want to check out for yourself what a “memory palace” is. Just Google search “memory palace.” Since humans are visual, we remember images easier than we do abstractions and words, what helps a lot, says recent science, is to associate images and your environment with new information.

There’s a lot more to say about my research, but I’ll save it for another time. For now, let’s return to my week. Actually, I’ll stop here and let you imagine how I had a blast singing karaoke by myself for two hours!   

I bought a plant. It was a spur of the moment decision, and I'm not really sure what kind it is. I have had plants before, when I was younger and lived at home, but never any like this. It's a very pretty plant with lots of purple flowers. I am doing research to find out how to care for it so that it will continue to bloom and grow!



  

Spring is here what I'm most excited for is the cherry blossoms. My favorite time of year last year was spring because of the cherry blossom trees. In Florida there are no cherry blossom trees because it is too hot, so it is a rare treat to see the trees and their flowers. I am also very happy that the cold weather will be leaving soon, I have not enjoyed this winter I think it was colder than the last one.

What are you most looking forward to this spring?   

As mentioned in previous posts on the blog, i have a major interest in music, so much so that I've written a very large amount of compositions (that not many have heard, maybe some day?).

Suffice to say, I've been having an itch to scratch and that itch was my record buying itch. When i was in Canada, recording buying was a thing i did just about every weekend, however that came to an end when coming to Japan.

I however discovered a record store in Takamatsu. Going into the shop and going through the Japanese free jazz and plenty of obscure and abstract records really gave me a rush that I haven't felt for awhile.

Do you collect records?


  

With Sakura season approaching, I am very excited to experience the beauty! Recently, my boyfriend has been sending me pictures of the cherry blossoms in Washington, DC. It's funny to think that we will be experiencing the same beauty at the same time on different sides of the globe! :)
  

Hey, do you remember Jolt Cola? Jolt was an experimental soda that came out when all the big brand names were trying to find the next major hit. This was just before the start of the energy drink boom, and Jolt was sold as a soda with crazy amounts of caffeine. It didn't work out so well, since anyone could buy it, a few kids overdosed on caffeine... this lead to a bunch of legal issues for the parent company and eventually the removal of Jolt from stores.



But wait! The legend lives on! Pepsi Strong is Jolt reincarnate (with added carbonation). Since I don't like coffee or energy drinks, I'm not sure if I should be grateful for this sugary substitute.

Remember, drink responsibly!