ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

The month is coming to a close and we're really in 2022, now. I hope you are finding happiness in the new situation, and that we stay safe for the rest of the year.


I'm hopeful for the future. Don't count yourself out anytime soon. Interests and hobbies, friends and enemies can change before you know it. Things I thought I could have been changing a lot, and I'm changing my perspective on the future.

You can do it, reader.   

Recently, we went to an olive garden near Takamatsu. The olives are not in season, but it was still nice to walk around. I like olives. Do you like olives?


  

I saw this photo the other day, and it really made me think of the profound impact a book has on oneself. A book, no matter how small, opens our minds to new horizons!  

Don’t you just love donuts? This donut box is from Yamaya Steel Coffee in Kanonji. It’s a delicious and cute spot. The donuts are phenomenal and the coffee is divine!  

I am a big fan of John Berryman, one of the
foremost of the "confessional poets." He is best
known for "The Dream Songs." He usually dealt
with highly emotional states often through an
invented character named Henry.. He was, himself,
a very tormented man who eventually succumbed to suicide. Yet he is an important 20th century. poet and was a pulitzer prize winner. His poetry is

difficult, but well worth reading.  

Japan is a land of a wide variety of teas. There is no shortage of choices in the Japanese market. The taste and health benefits are known worldwide.

Still, there is another wonderful and tasty option for tea drinkers (in Japan and worldwide) that I have discovered that is from South Africa called Rooibos (pronounced ROY-bus). It is also known as red tea (due to its dark red color; although a green tea variant is available), and is grown primarily on the African continent.

The taste is a bit similar to a smoky hibiscus tea with some hints of caramel and vanilla. It is also non-caffeinated.

The tea also offers a variety of health benefits such as:

1.Enhances skin health.
2.Anti-inflammatory.
3.Low calorie.
4.Aids diabetes and heart health.
5.Promotes bone strength.
6.Helps with digestion and gastrointestinal issues.

It is available in Japan at some specialty stores as well as select Starbucks coffee shops. But the simplest way to obtain it is to order from Amazon. It comes in a loose-leaf variety as well as tea bag form. If you are looking for a change, give Rooibos a try. I think you will like it!
  

I've been watching Yuru Camp. It's a easy anime to watch with no English subtitles. It makes camping look like a lot of fun and it's been good Japanese listening practice. I can't wait for season 2!  

In Hokkaido there is so much snow that trucks have to move the snow out of the town to keep it clear. There is a whole system of machines, trucks and places to put the snow.
  

I graduated with my master's in Linguistics a little over two years ago, and if I am being honest, I have not really utilized the skills I acquired through the degree since then, which is something that I regret more and more as time marches on. So this past week, I have decided that I will begin to sharpen the specific problem solving skills I learned in the major by attempting problems from both the International Linguistics Olympiad and the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad; these are competitions for secondary school students, but the problems are designed by professional linguists and in fact can be quite challenging for even professionals to solve (according to discussions on the respective websites).

So far I have done about three of them, and have gotten all the correct answers, which, I am not going to lie, has made me pretty ecstatic. The skills required to solve any of these problems are really domain agnostic, but are ones that are sharpened by studying linguistics in the form of narrowly designed problem sets. These skills are: various reasoning skills (abductive, deductive, and inductive), data analysis, pattern recognition, hypothesis formation and testing, and lateral thinking. Below is an example of the type of problems that one may encounter in this Olympiad, and it is one that I solved last week - it is classified as an intermediate problem, but I found it WAY easier.


  

Can I take you home with me?

Please send any and all lama to Gem schools head office in Kanonji, with the message "for Joe"

Thanks in advance.   

I’ve been getting out a lot recently to go driving. It has been very relaxing. Do you enjoy driving? Where do you like to drive?


  

I would like to change the subject matter for my
blog entries and give a brief mention of one of
my favorite music albums. It is "The Lamb Lies
Down on Broadway" by Genesis. This was the
last album by the "classic five" lineup and the
last Genesis album to feature Peter Gabriel. I
will just say one thing:if I'm feeling bad, this is the
music I turn to. Somehow, some way, it cheers
me up. Although Genesis continued to have success without Gabriel, I still favor the classic five
period.
  

Potatoes and salad are such a great combination. I made these. It was delicious!  

Don’t you just love katsu? It’s one of my favorite Japanese dishes. As always, this meal was brought to you by Cafe Sorabi in Toyohama. I love how Japanese cuisine is so versatile and balanced!  

Art is a subject and diverse topic that involves most every culture on earth, that is expressed in a wide variety of ways from paintings, sculptures, performing arts, film, and a multitude of other mediums.
All forms of art are the artist’s way to convey their ideas, imagination, and creativity in a mode that makes it available to a multitude of people. The power of the imagination allows people to express themselves through art and possibly to evoke an emotional response from the person who experiences the art.

When it comes to art, I have limited experience in the area except for movies, books, and some museums I have visited. I have been fortunate to visit some of the more renowned locations of art throughout the world. I have been to The Louvre in Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, as well as architectural creations of art such as the Coliseum in Rome, and The Statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio.
I know that some of these places have evoked a feeling of “wow” in my emotions, and led me to develop a stronger sense of the power of art in culture all around the world.
Art in any form is personal and we will all experience it in a variety of manners. I recently visited the Ootsuka Museum of Art in Naruto, which is about 30 minutes by bus from Tokushima Station. The museum was founded in 1998 and has over 1000 works of art created from ceramic tiles such as The Sistine Chapel from Michelangelo and Picasso’s Guernica. Permission was granted from each of the art pieces owner to recreate the art using the tiles. The effects are stunning in my opinion. The museum was created so that Japanese citizens could view world famous art without having to travel long distances overseas to view art from the past few thousand years. If you have any interest in art at all, please consider visiting this museum in Tokushima. I think you would enjoy it!
  

Last Monday, I played games with my family and friends. It was a lot of fun. I wasted 4 hours! It was totally worth it. I hope we can do it next Monday too! These games are not designed to be done online, but we managed with webcams and video chat.   

This is a machine that grooms the ski resort runs. It is very interesting and make the snow smooth with lines in it. It is called corduroy
because it resembles the clothing material.

  

I love the "wish list" feature that online retailers have adopted. It gives you the experience of window shopping, but from the comfort of your home. It's also a great way to prevent regrettable purchases because you have a place for the things that you're thinking about buying. Meanwhile, you can think about whether or not it is worth what it costs or if you even need it in the first place. I have had items sit in my wish list for years before I finally decided to buy it. In those cases, I think that I'm just waiting for the perfect excuse to purchase.  

As I mentioned in my blog post last week, I spent the Christmas and New Year's break partly in Osaka and the rest in Hokkaido - specifically in Sapporo. Even though I am not the type of person to partake in winter sports, other than watching them, I still tried my best to soak up as much of Hokkaido as I could while I was there. That usually meant just walking around the city of Sapporo and just admiring the layout and beautifulness of snow covered nature.

New Year's Eve me and the other people I was traveling with decided that we would find a nice shrine to check out, and say our New Year's prayers early, and we knew that once the sun went down and the revelries began, we probably would not make it another shrine. So the picture I have included in today's post is the shrine we went to on NYE, and I was just taken aback by now beautiful it look in the winter weather.


  

This ancient mosaic depicts someone suffering from "damn, too many fish" disease. It's a rare phenomina with only a few symptoms.


"I'm just done. I'm over fish, now."