ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

I left my previous blog post with a cliff-hanger and now I will remedy that. I have been using a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) through the University of Helsinki to quickly learn as much Java as I can before my program begins on June 27th. Sure, the videos themselves are in Finnish, but the actual relevant learning material is written all in English. There are two parts to this Java programming course, and each part then consists of 7 units. According to the authors of the course, it should take about 5-10 hours per part depending on factors like how much time you are dedicating and how quickly you learn. Based on my own progress through the material, I am just shy of the 5 hour minimum - which means I am going rather quickly. Lets hope the rest of this course goes well!


  

As anyone in the Shikoku region who is reading this can attest, the hot, mugginess of summer has begun. Over the past few weeks, I have had to use my AC more and more during the day and night, and am no longer able to sleep without the help of either a fan or the air conditioner. This temperature change hit us later in the year than I expected; I thought that it would already be here by the time I arrived in Japan in April. But luckily, I did get about a month-long grace period of beautiful, temperate weather, before the "mushiatsui" madness that is summer began.

I think what inspired me to write this blog is a meme that I saw going around on Twitter, where a woman says something along the lines of "Summer, the season itself, is terrible. We have just been conditioned to like it since it was the only time off that we had for 12 years when we were kids." And now that I saw her tweet, I couldn't agree more. I could never truly put into words the reason why I, as a kid, used to think that Summer was my favorite season, and that now, as an adult, why I want to do nothing but escape the heat. It is because I used to associate summer break with a fun time, and now that I don't have a summer break anymore, I have no reason to romanticize the season anymore either.

I am still going to look for ways to have fun this summer, don't get me wrong. It is just so often that I forget about the obstacle that is the sweltering heat getting in the way of doing fun outdoor activities. In practice, spring and fall are much better for going hiking, camping, going to the beach, etc. since the sun is not beating down on me 24/7 like it is in summer.

Therefore, this summer, I will not go in search of spending more time than I usually do outside, but will instead seek out fun ways to keep cool, such as bathing in the cold-water pools at Busshozan Onsen, or getting a nice, heaping plate of Kakigori.