ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

As learners of japanese will know, there tends to be not a huge selection of books at the intermediate level. One of the most famous ones is "Tobira: Gateway to Advanced Japanese" - most of the authors are or have been professors at the University of Michigan (my home state :D). Don't worry, my blog post is not about this intermediate level textbook, but about a new textbook the authors have put out during this pandemic actually. It was just released July of this year - the workbooks and beginning II book will be released next year. And already I must say that is an awesome book; not only does it look good visually, but the authors have made it for the digital age, so there are QR codes throughout the book that link to more indepth pronunciation and grammar explanations. The vocabulary lists (about seventy words per unit and there are ten units in first book) include both images organized by opposites (big - small) and also the typical bland list of words (if you prefer learning that way). I cannot wait to dive deeper into the book, and am anxiously awaiting the second volume and accompanying workbooks; I think based on my cursory glance through the book that it really does have the potential to rival the infamous Genki textbook series.




  

I have to say, I’m happy to be heading towards fall and away from summer. I enjoyed going swimming over the summer and doing other warm weather, but It’s time to say goodbye to the hot and hello to cooler weather. How about you, are you excited for fall?


  

Designed for children, and "Children only" have two different meanings. When I saw this frog smashing game, I had to step up and flex my skills. It's pretty simple to learn, but hard to master. It's all in the wrist and elbow rotation!

The score sat at a lowly 140 before I approached. 2 minutes later I obliterated that record. The whole building roared in applause and I got a free hat and donuts. My friends came to me, tears in their eyes and said, "You did it....Thank you".


  

I really enjoyed our camping trip! We got home refreshed and ready to go back to work! I hope we can go again soon it was a really great weekend!


  

I had the best ramen the other day! It had so much meat and a raw egg to top it off. Japan is awesome.   

I found a jumping spider in my bathroom the other night. It was so cool and cute! Supposedly they can be found throughout most of Japan. Jumping spiders are so cool!  

My wife's parents visited from South Dakota last weekend, so we too them to see Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.

I've been to Washington, D.C. four times, and each time I've been a little more disappointed. The Smithsonian Museums are nice, and they are free to enter, but they almost never update anything. The National Air and Space Museum is almost exactly the same as it was in 1992 except that it mentions the Columbia space shuttle disaster on a little shelf next to the Challenger space shuttle disaster shelf. It was super cool in 1992 when I was a kid interested in space, but it's really not worth visiting more than once. Everything is too crowded, too loud, and the food is too expensive.

We also went to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. That was amazing.

Lots of live sharks and Australian reef fish in a huge multi-story habitat. There was a room where we could touch horseshoe crabs and skates and stingless jellyfish. It was huge, it was expensive to visit, but well worth it.

What's the most interesting museum you've visited?

Thanks for reading!  

During one of my conversations with a student, I asked him what his favorite place was and he said "my home." His answer was surprising as I expected him to list a more "special" location. After thinking about his answer, I definitely agreed with him.

My home is my favorite place because it is where I get to press the metaphorical reset button both physically and emotionally. No matter how bad my day is or how much I'm going through, my home gives me space to start anew.

It is a truly great thing to have a place of peace and sanctuary so easily accessible.

What's your favorite place?  

Ever since the USB-C charging port on my Pixel 3XL finally decided to give up the ghost earlier this year, I have been trying to find a suitable wireless charger that outputs enough charge to compensate for the battery usage whilst watching Netflix or participating in a Zoom/Google Meet call. My old wireless charger was purchased on an impulse after the USB-C port broke, so I did not really do a deep dive into the specs; turns out that it was a pretty bad purchase and definitely does not offer enough charging power to offset my uses.

So last week I decided to buy yet another wireless charger, and this time I read a bit more about it. My new wireless charger not only has a built-in stand and is compatible with my smartphone but it is strong enough to still charge the battery whilst I am watching Netflix or YouTube... I still haven't tested it against a video call yet - that is something I will have to do Thursday. For the time being, I am just glad that I do not have to worry about Netflix draining my battery while it's charging.


  

I love the look of old buildings with vines growing over them. In Idaho you don’t see anything like that. So it was a big shock when I first saw buildings covered in vines. It’s so pretty and gives a building a magical look.



  

I was renewing my visa this month. Part of the process is a stamp that you may not believe. Stamps are usually less than 100 yen, but this special one was 4000. It's quite a jump and unfortunately I'm very familiar with it. Every year it's part of the process to stay in Japan. If you are wondering, yes it literally is about the piece of paper. I need to put that little piece of paper on my application or it is not accepted >_<

  

I slept really good our night camping. I was tired from the drive and the bed was so comfy! I slept like a baby. I woke up refreshed and full of energy!


  

I love living in Kagawa. It’s very beautiful and the sunsets are spectacular!  

One of my students recently drew this depiction of me that I thought was really cute! It made my day when they showed it to me. I love my job!  

Last time I talked about games I like, I mentioned that I like games with a lot of combinations that make every time you play it different.

Dominion is an award-winning strategy deck-building game. The game's instruction manual does not explain itself very well, and it took me a while to understand what it's about and how it works.



Here's how I explain it to new players: Each player has their own deck of cards. Your cards are your kingdom, and whoever has the best kingdom at the end of the game wins. There are three general types of cards: Actions, Money, and Lands. You play Action cards during your turn to get more Money cards into your hand. Then at the end of your turn you use your Money cards to buy more Actions, Money, and Land cards. Land cards are mostly useless during the game, but they are what determines if you win at the end.

At the beginning of the game, there are 10 types of Action cards on the table. But in the basic box, there are 25 types of Action cards. So, if my math is right, there are 3,268,760 different combinations of the Action cards on the table, and that's without any of the expansions that have been added. So, since I like a lot of varying combinations, this is a game I really like. My wife and I play it almost every week.

Thanks for reading!  

I've started rewatching this anime called Wedding Peach. I watched this show back then l was in high school, but not only did I watch it in non-sequential order, I don't believe that I finished it either.

This show is about three girls fighting evil demons with the power of love. The evil forces that they are fighting usually beset their victims with "unattractive" qualities like anger, laziness, jealousy, and even over-eating. The Love Angels then transform and work hard to defeat the demons. I should note that this magical girl anime is complete with two transformation scenes, one into a wedding dress and another into a battle warrior. I love transformation scenes, so that was my initial hook to this show. If I'm honest though, the initial wedding dress transformation is beautiful, but not very practical.

Wedding Peach bares much resemblance to Sailor Moon as far as plot and premise are concerned. With that in mind, if you liked Sailor Moon, you'll probably have fun watching Wedding Peach as well.
  

After going through about a month and a half of what I would consider high temperatures, I finally got myself a fan for my apartment. It's a nice tower fan that has a remote and quite a few functions (eg being able to set a timer, etc).

The layout of my apartment is not made for good air circulation; my aircon unit is in a different room than my bedroom, so I essentially have to cool two rooms to get my bedroom down to a comfortable temperature rather than just one. It's definitely more expensive as well to be running my aircon so much and at such a low temperature just to cool off my bedroom, so that's another reason that I am glad to have finally got myself a fan - hopefully it will reduce my electricity bill a little in the future.

So far I have my fan on the third lowest fan speed (because it's farther away from my bed) and it seems to be working out just fine in terms of keeping my apartment at a comfortable temperature.


  

I don't have a lot of interesting or new ideas I can think of for this week so I wanted to talk about one of my hobbies- gamming.

My favorite type of games are Role Playing Games, or Rgp's. This type of game focuses on telling a story by letting you take the role of a character in the story. I originally got into playing this type of game because of my favorite game growing up, Knights of the Old Republic. Growing up I used to love Star wars. I loved playing with lightsabers and making up stories about star wars. So when a friend told me about a game that let's you make your own star wars character and to choose to be good or bad, I was very interested.

I made a character and started the game. After a short mission on a ship, that teaches you how to play the game, you crash on a giant city planet. The ability to explore and interact with this interesting city planet sucked me in as a kid, and I ended up playing the game whenever I was not at school or out with friends, exploring different planets and playing through this long star wars story. That game heavily impacted my interest in games, Rpgs, and the fantasy genre as a whole. Even now, about 15 years later, I still occasionally go back and enjoy the game.

Do you enjoy games? what type of games do you play? if you don't like games, what is a hobby you enjoy?


(not my photo)  

I saw this spider the other day! Do you know what it is? It’s called a spitting spider. It’s completely harmless, common in Japan, and it’s really cool!  

This is a photo of the top of one of the pyramids of Giza. Isn’t this awesome? Besides being one of the wonders of the world, the pyramids demonstrate something we teach in our classes a lot: cool shapes!