Time travel - a dinner party with Buddha

If I could time travel, I would like to go to ancient India in 6th to 5th century BCE, and I want to meet Buddha.

Known as the founder of Buddhism. Buddha was born into an aristocratic family. His family had high expectations for him, giving dedicated palaces, luxurious clothes etc. If I were in his position, I wouldn’t work, but live in luxury. However, he entered into the priesthood, even though he had a wife and child!

There are some legends to explain why the Buddha went his own way with beliefs, but I would like to listen to him for myself. There would be some disciples at our table, who I would like to ask how to train in order to achieve enlightenment. At the dinner, we have a Buddhist vegetarian meal together with nonalcoholic drinks.

I think meeting them would change my life.

Some information about Narita Airport

Narita is the main airport in Japan.

Image by Jim George

44 million passengers travel through the airport a year.
Narita airport has 1137 ha.
Narita airport has 2 runways and 3 terminals.
Narita airport is 43 years old.
Its 60km from Tokyo station.
Passengers can get there by train and highway bus.

Posted for Masato

A big world for small equipment.

I wonder what percentage of my life is spent touching this small piece of equipment that sticks out a little in one hand and fits in both hands.

It's easy to connect with the world. Also, there is so much information in it. What's notable about the development of social networking is that it allows us, as ordinary people, to share information. 

For example, Twitter. They can tweet whatever they want. As you know, it has its pros and cons. Let's start with the pros.

First, you can talk about your hobbies and share your thoughts and opinions. Secondly, you can expose yourself to ideas that you have never encountered before. Furthermore, Twitter gives us more opportunities to learn about things. However,  as we all know, there is a good and bad side to everything in the world. 

The ease with which anyone can disseminate information is inextricably linked to the ease with which they can disseminate content that has not been scrutinized. Sometimes this is called misinformation or fake news. Whether it is intended or not, it's very difficult to correct misinformation that has been spread one by one. 

What's more, the most tricky part is the "like" reactions and follower responses. It instantly satisfies the need for approval, but it also creates a need for further approval. Are the statements we make to satisfy your need for approval really our own opinion? 

In my opinion, we need to find our own way of dealing with social media. In order to judge misinformation, a basic knowledge of the chemical sciences, the study of history from many different perspectives, writing skills, and the ability to read texts are required. And also, we have to learn how to deal with our own pschology. 

Written by Anna Koshi.

Helping kinesthetic students!

 Has it been 6 months since I started working in beautiful Matsumoto?!

Well, today I wanted to share an activity I did with my students (twins!) who are kinesthetic learners! They cannot sit still and if they do, eyes heavy! I learned it the hard way the first few months here!

The twins have school in the morning, football practice right after, and straight for English classes, no wonder they are exhausted! So changed it up this week! We played Twister (advisable to be only done for students from the same household only, sadly we are still in a pandemic!)

On a dark cold Tuesday, boy these kids were sleepy! A great day to conduct this activity! We assigned a colour and body part with a part of a sentence! We were learning chores and advert of frequency! So why not combine them! 

Red = always                                     Right hand = after school

Green = never                                    Left hand = before school

Blue = sometimes                              Right hand = after school

Yellow = usually                               Left hand = before school

Students are required to make a sentence following where their body parts land! 

Example : (Left hand on blue: I sometimes wash the car before school)

And the other student will ask: What are your chores?

Trust me, students were falling down easily and they had a blast! They practiced and made use of their target language well! The rest of the lesson went smoothly as students were perfectly energised and no more falling asleep!

Ueda Nishi High School Speaking Competition!

Was given the opportunity to judge an amazing selection of topics from students of Ueda Nishi High School! 

Now, this was my first time ever in Ueda and I can say the drive there was immaculate! It was breathtaking! The mountains were screaming with their golden amber leaves! I truly enjoyed that 2-hour drive back and forth! 

Back to the competition! We were given a list of topics from the presenters! The topics varied from traveling to storytelling! I thought I had an idea when I arrived but was I wrong, these students blew me off my seat! They were amazing! 

The first speaker told us about his favourite places in Nagano (and me being new here! took notes!) He had great and clean slideshows with pictures that definitely drew me in more! 

The 2nd topic was presented by a pair of students! This was interesting and the topic was unique! They reimagined the 12 Chinese zodiacs and retold the story if it began in America! Creative and definitely a good laugh! The students changed the animals to animals found in North America (kudos for doing your research well!) 

I would say the topics varied in this competition, it was split between Japan and its' culture to storytelling and fables with a modern twist! It was hard for us as judges to choose who was the best but with help from all of us, we decided on a student who talked about Flowers unique to Japan! Was a beautiful speech with a creative slideshow! Congratulations! 

To all the other students! Good job! Truly an amazing competition! Great job to the teachers for helping to prepare the students! 

Games in the young learning environment - vital!

Picture-based vocabulary review

 As I keep reminding our teachers, if you have a good idea, see how much you can adapt it to fit other classes/situations. We do this a lot with Wordwall and Quizlet at Luna with online learners in group/collaborative work, which we also set as homework assignments for independent use. 

As described in a post last month, we wanted to get "hands on" for face-to-face young learners, now that we have relaxed the barrier requirements. (Of course, masks on, and all moving parts disinfected after use.)

Ideal game for groups x3

With first-time, younger players we paired up & helped each other out, sharing tips and tactics loudly! The board was colour-coded to make play more obvious, and laminated; memo, mount the photocopy on something stiffer to make it less vulnerable to nudges! Teacher's scissors & glue have been in the cupboard too long; nice to get creative again.

"Homework" last week was to take each of our personalised games out at home, and challenge family members. Distinct homefield advantage here, as each of the students made the games from vocabulary sets (glossaries) in the graded readers they have already read!

We can re-cycle these games in the coming months, as each students has a different version of the same content...which makes for ideal revision when we have 10-15 minutes up our sleeve at the end of a lesson or want to avoid getting into something 'new' just yet.

As a twist, Hana & I "flipped" our new

Hana head-to-head!

Read & Imagine readers by picking out words we were not sure about/wanted to learn and pronounce correctly before we got into them...smart girl still beat the teacher!

Another exciting pay-off was exploiting the word list at the back of the text book (Everybody Up in this case) for self-access revision; diving into dictionary skills and finding the 'hard' word in-context, and after searching for the same word three or four times, fixing it in memory for longer than usual!

Dictionary diving

To anyone who thinks 'games' have no place in the language learning environment, we think you are fundamentally wrong! Guess we'll have the proof of this little pudding when these Cambridge YLE takers sit down for A2:Key, B1:Preliminary & B2:First before they leave school in the years to come :)

(Adapted from a Mark Hancock pronunciation game)

B2:First in Nagano

Looking south

A beautiful sunny day in Nagano last Saturday, hosted Luna's autumn B2:First exam session. A very well-organised and smotthly run session, in a nice big airy room on the 12th floor...only drawback really was the stunning views looking east towards Shiga kogen, which were quite distracting! Waiting rooms looking north and south equally absorbing!

It was great to be able to run this exam session this year and meet the needs of candidates, and be able to do so safely, which we have become quite accustomed to.

Thank you Yukari & Rinka for detailed preparation & taking care of our nervous candidates; we hope all of you managed to do your best. Thank you CM & RO for sitting as our speaking examiners - safe trips home.

Here's looking forward to great results in early January.

A letter home to Durrisdeer, from the widow Alice Durie

 Dear Teruki,

As you probably know, my husband and his brother James both died in the wilderness. I'm terribly sad to lose my two loving men at once. I always loved James, even when he had gone to war and never wrote back to any of my letters. He was such an attractive man.

I married Henry because he was a kind and honest man, and a good husband. We had a peaceful time until James returned home. To be honest, I was happy for his return, but Henry was unhappy, so it was obvious they would duel.I didn't think James would lose, but he did and his body even disappeared..

James was such an unpredictable man, even following us to New York! Half of my life was spent looking for James and the other half hiding from him. I was surprised to know that Henry went to the wilderness, but he had changed a lot - not kind and honest anymore. He was obsessed about his title and his loving son; money and fame are such dangerous things.

Alice Durie (aka Sayuri)