Wondeful goalkeeper Zion Suzuki

Zion Suzuki was born in the United States to a Ghanaian father and Japanese mother and grew up in Urawa, Saitama that has a football team named Urawa Reds.

His mother taught him from a young age to take care of things himself. He tried to see his distinctive appearance as an advantage, and he made a conscious effort to behave properly and do the right thing, and he dreamed to become a Japan's first goalkeeper and play in the World Cup.

He started his carrier at Urawa Reds, and transferred Sint-Truiden in Belgium, Parma in Italy. Now, he plays for Aston Villa in England. During the 2024 Asian Cup and the 2026 World Cup, he showed a good/stable performance and became famous. On the one hand, when the team lost a game, there were discriminatory messages about his appearance.

He made his dream come true. Now, he tries to enjoy his new challenge at Aston Villa. He may get some opportunities from fame and fortune, but I think those may not bring him real happiness.  I hope him to enjoy his carrier and his new challenge, and keep Japan’s goal in the next World Cup.

 

Tamagoyaki

 My mom loves cooking. She often takes a memo when she finds any new recipe, and always tries to cook it.

I love mom's Japanese food. She can cook most of them if I ask her to cook.
Among them, Tamagoyaki always makes me comfortable and relaxed when I eat them.
Tamagoyaki is very popular Japanese food. The recipe is simple, so the taste varies from home to home.
Here is my home's recipe.
1. prepare two or three eggs and crack them into a bowl
2. put two spoons of sugar and a pinch of salt
3. pour it into a rectangular frying pan after mixing it well
4. mix a center of egg mixture until half set
5. roll from front to the back of the pan

As Tamagoyaki was always put in my lunch box, it was soft, sweet and jiggly, with a brilliant yellow color from well-mixed eggs. It always made me comfortable. One day I got up early for climbing mountains of a school event when I was a junior high school student. As I had some time before leaving, my mom taught me how to make Tamagoyaki, and I cooked it for the first time. Because I put too much sugar, it was burned and turned black in no time...

At that time I felt the simpler the recipe was, the more difficult it was to cook.

A postcard from Toyama Castle, Japan

Toyama Castle - southern ramp

I've shot through Toyama city several times on the shinkansen, in a rush to get somewhere further west - Kanazawa for a training session or exploring the full extent of the Hokuriku line down to Tsugura, without getting off to explore. I also used to drive to Kanazawa for work, but again, always in a rush (or taking the scenice route through Gifu instead).

Dedicated effort this summer break to take a slow look around the castle & city centre!

I have to admit there's 'not a lot to the castle'...it was flattened/burnt to the ground towards the end of the war in 1945 (Aug 2nd). The grounds remain, with the basic outline of the domain but only one small, rebuilt tower on the south side.This reinforced concrete 'reconstruction', on the site of the Honmaru Kurogane-mon, was completed in 1954; there's a hint of a gateway that would have crossed the inner moat. It looks like the moat, as in many other castle cities, was filled-in & re-used as a tramway & or main road. The north side of the domain does feature a lovely river as part of the defences (even offering short river cruises under the cherry blossoms I assume), but again, as usual, post war corporate/local government construction within the larger grounds is incongruous. 

Toyama castle's extant moat

Nothing much has been done around the keep - a nice open park - but pretty hard to take a nice photo of the 'castle' without a hotel in the immediate background or a stupid clock in the foreground!

Lonely concrete keep

Unfortunately this castle lacks a wow factor - but I did instead fall for the trams...more about them in a post coming soon...cities with tram networks are really cool, in my opinion!

Full history here

An imaginary entry in Anne of Green Gable's diary

Today was the happiest day of my life...so I thought. I was so excited to come to Green Gables. The road was lined with old apple trees. they were full of sweet-smelling and snowy-white flowers! The beautiful way made me feel like I were walking into a wonderful dream. I fell in love with this lovely place at once.

But everything changed so quickly. Matthew and Marilla wanted a boy, not a girl like me. What a horrible mistake! Why was I not born a boy? My heart was full of hopeness in this morning, but now, I feel so lonely and miserable.

What will happen to me tomorrow？Will they send me away?

Oh, Dear God, please! Please let me stay here. I promise I will work hard and be a good girl.

Posted for Nene

Upcoming training session for Cambridge assessment - Young Learners (YLE) in Tokyo

Can you manage eight flashcards in one hand, talk about/point to a picture with the other, and remember a child's name? Can you do this with a smile & encourage a young learner to 'tell you more'? Can you also focus on a speaker's use of vocabulary & (simple) grammatical structures, word stress & the amount of support you needed to provide over a 5-minute interaction?

Got three years or so experience teaching younglearners as an English language teacher (in Japan or overseas)? Currently teaching YL full-time in the Kanto region & looking to add some professional development to your skills set? Got two references to stand up your application to become a Cambridge Young Learners Speaking Examiner? Check out the requiremenets & details below...and apply now before we run out of chairs!

https://lnkd.in/gwTQpBkZ 

YLE Starters (pre-A1): https://lnkd.in/gvKkqBwQ

YLE Movers (A1): https://lnkd.in/gWDiefxC

YLE Flyers (A2): https://lnkd.in/gUCRAU-W

Memory of my local train station

When I was a high school student, I used to take the train from the nearest local station every morning.  Trains came frequently during morning time.  It came usually every five to ten minutes.  I always got on the same train and stood in the same spot near the train door.  After a while, I noticed that the same people were there with me each morning.  I didn’t know their names, and I never asked which schools they went to, but from their uniforms and bags, I assumed they were also high school students.

 

I usually traveled alone, so the routine of the morning train became something I looked forward to.  During the ride to the station where I got off, I often listened to their conversations. They talked about homework, teachers, club activities, and sometimes their boyfriends.  I never spoked to them and I never even said “good morning” to them.  We   shared the same space and time.  So, it felt as if we were part of a team, commuting to school together every day.  Secretly, I felt a quiet connection to them.  

 

When one of them was not on the train, I found myself worrying.  I wondered whether she had overslept, or she was sick.  Even though we were complete strangers, their absence made my morning routine feel incomplete.

Upcoming Cambridge SE training in Tokyo - B2:First & C1:Advanced

Looking forward to running this #B2First & #C1Advanced #SpeakingExaminer training session for Kawaijuku JP026 Sept 12-13th in #Tokyo

Need a roomful of chalkface professionals to work with! Please check out the recruitment details below - can you walk the walk and talk the assessment talk? All applications welcome if you meet the MPRs - no 'native-speaker' bias.

https://lnkd.in/grrDFcrd

Great chance to put assessment learning into practice in your own teaching environment; great chance to network & work with educators from a wide variety of teaching backgrounds - language schools, high schools, corporate, universities, with an international outlook.

What is B2:First? https://lnkd.in/gXwyWB_T

What is C1:Advanced? https://lnkd.in/geKYvfT6


Now you know! Come & join the Tokyo team - recognised globally.

Let the kids talk!

Three videos here, highlighting how even very young learners can quickly become content creators in their English langauge learning journey! Each of these examples are a result of after reading projects, from graded readers, which all of our students at Luna invest in. We use these readers in a myriad of ways - not 'just' reading...we try to 'milk' them for all the're worth!

Misaki's Cake is the outcome from Oxford University Press' Read & Imagine graded reader called 'The Cake Machine'. Inventor Grandpa has a fairly calamitous baking experience...our children do better with a drawing project (homework) & then guided with a writing task in class to describe their lovely, dreamy, cake creations.

My approach as teacher is to do the background prep quickly, then let the students take control of the creative process, using the iPad + Chatterkids app intuitively. Recording themselves & criticising their own speaking (want to be smoother, or quicker, or not stop in the middle or get a word wrong...) is an easy fix - just re-record against the thirty-second limit. Their own pressure, not teacher's! As you can hear, the focus is on far more than just a list of ingredients - a proper description. As a quick finisher, Misaki was first - after that, she was first assistant & bling direction for whoever finished next. Teacher - job done (help the slower finishers with gentle suggestions & corrections).

 

What do you think of Misaki's cake?

A twist on this exercise I love with slightly older young learners, is to have them interview each other about their after reading projects. Here is Moe's description of her favourite animal (her real pet), from OUP's Read & Imagine title 'In the Treehouse'. Here the pressure is on both learners to ask, and answer, a set of questions quickly...so of course they want to practice a few times before hitting the record button - who said 'drilling' is boring?! Love Moe's "Wolfie"?

And from another class, Yuri & Koharu tackle the same task from their reader. 

Extensive reading has obvious benefits - so does intensive reading...the two do not need to be mutually exclusive. As you can hear, students are empowered with being able to share their imaginations and are unencumbered with stage fright, instead collaborating and being bold. Love these outcomes!

Let the kids think!

 I'm a firm believer in teachers waiting for students to actually ask for support. If you're playing a game, and really want to take your turn & progress, then the motivation is high...but teacher, don't jump in to facilitate. Instead, wait for the language to percolate, language attempted, missing word isolated.

And wait for an actual request (weaker learners who are unable to verbally ask for help will indicate no-verbally they need a boost - watch carefully). Other students might be able to help - if not, then chances are they'll all need to use this same 'unknown' word again soon and will listen/practice/rehearse before their turn comes around.

Similarly, let students self-correct. Accept what they are trying to say, and let them reflect on their output/pronunciation/accuracy. Maybe teacher indicates that something was not quite right, or it needed to be faster or more fluently delivered? Not teacher driven, but students striving to 'get it right' on their own.

Teacher's role in any game, for my money, is to facilitate as much English with as little active participation as possible. Encourage, keep the focus, make sure we're playing nicely and having fun. For sure, allow books open to glance at key structures, question or sentence structures...but let the players do all the work. Can't see any English here? Because it's all been absorbed already :)

Where are all the words?!

My take on a recent online Cambridge SE certification session - I'm biased!

 

As we all know, with work & family commitments we can't always be available when we intended to be - same is true for Cambridge Speaking Examiners (SEs) & their certification commitments/requirements. Despite numerous face-to-face meetings throughout the year, and around the country, some of our valued team members have simply been elsewhere. Great to be able to reintegrate valuable assets who've been out of country.


For SEs 'in good standing' we are able to offer occasional online meetings to ensure our team maintains compliance. Obviously doing so via zoom requires quite a bit of preparation by the Centre and participants, and managing activities differently - the variety I have tried to incorporate into F2F sessions this year won't work in break-out rooms for example. Also bandwidth & screen(s) size can negatively impact the core details of the job - delivering exams per scripted format & procedure, managing unforeseen circumstances (always new ones!); and applying assessment criteria consistently.

In the latter regard, discussing performances with a wider cadre is motivating - we can get a bit used to the same faces that we usually bump into annually. It's also vastly reassuring that the same messaging & 'examiner-speak' is in play no matter where SEs are physically based in our network...#Kanto, #Ryukkyu, #Kyushu, #Chubu, #Hokkaido, #Tohoku


An added benefit of conducting our annual get-together online is that we can also assess the possibilities of remote assessing, and workshop such eventualities realistically. Well done our JP026 team recently!

(NB online certification is not 'an alternative' to F2F certification. Essentially, all SEs must attend certification meetings in person, annually).