Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year

All the fun from our Christmas Party now available on Flickr

All the children (and our staff!) were delighted to welcome Father Christmas (aka Santa Claus) to our end-of-year Christmas party on December 22nd, after a variety of games, activities and even a quiz! Excellent mime skills (Konoha), flag recognition (Ceilidh) & animal name spelling (Godzilla, naturally) and all-in participation (Seita, Airi, Kanna, Haruki, Yoshi...) check out all the photos on Flickr where you can also download your favourites.

Thank you Eri, Emi, Yuka, Yukari, Natsuho, Rico, Sam & Cedric for making the day a roaring success.

We are now closed for the New Year - we will be open from Jan 6th, with a new full-time English teacher joining us, and Sara returning from Egypt early in the New Year as well. Sad news is that we will be having to say goodbye to Natsuho...yes, with Matsumoto Yamaga's relegation from J-League, our lovely manager has been transferred. Boo!

Thank you all for a great year in 2019; we are very excited for the year/decade ahead, and are looking forward to mission #1, which is the papier mache mouse (and England winning the next two Rugby World Cups of course!). Let's chase our dreams :)

Jim

My hopes for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games

The 2020 Olympic Games are coming to Tokyo next July, and I have two hopes for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

The first is to encourage people around the world to be more interested in Japan, as a lot of people don’t know much about our country. Some people may believe that ninja and/or samurai still live in Japan. Most of the countries can watch the events on TV. I hope that the Tokyo Olympic Games will be a chance for a lot of people to learn more about, and become interested in, Japan.

The second is to hold the Tokyo Olympic Games without terror attacks or acts of destruction. Unfortunately, I believe that the Olympic Games are very tempting target for the terrorists. In the Atlanta Olympic Games of 1996, a bomb was left in a park, with very big crowds, by an American man. The bomb was found by Richard Jewell, and a lot of people could escape, but the incident still the loss of two lives.

Most Japanese do not have enough crisis awareness with regard to terrorist etc., and still think the police can protect us. I’m not sure about this assumption. However, we should enjoy the Olympic Games with our eyes open to finish the Tokyo Olympic Games safely and to enjoy a wonderful Tokyo Olympic Games.