Wednesday, 20 May 2026

A respected football player - Daizen Maeda (Celtic & Japan)

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 I will introduce a football player I respect. On Friday, May 15th, JFA (Japan Football Association) announced the national team members fo...
Tuesday, 19 May 2026

Postcard from the end of the line; O Shi station in Gunma

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  I found a rather unusual station in Golden Week, in Gunma - near Kusatsu onsen. It is no longer in use (it closed in 1971). However, it is...
Wednesday, 22 April 2026

Postcard from Canton, China

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Hi Jim sensei, I am on the business trip to China with Tomoko from April 12 to 16. This photo when we went to Canton Fair on April 15 and ha...
1 comment:
Tuesday, 21 April 2026

Let's welcome Ana to Luna!

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We are delighted to announce that Ana has joined our teaching team at Luna; please say hello when you see her & introduce yourself! ...
Monday, 20 April 2026

My cousin Shou

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I’ll introduce my cousin,Shou. He’s the son of mother’s brother. He was only six when I was born, so he’s been more like a brother to me tha...
Saturday, 18 April 2026

Jim's awayday in Tokyo - challenging examiners

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Limited thinking time for Speaking Examiners to consider lexical resource components (words!) into CEFR bands...if only there were a website...
Thursday, 16 April 2026

Visiting Matsumoto - local advice

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Let me introduce Matsumoto city! Firstly, Matsumoto castle: it was built in the medieval age. You can rent traditional clothes like yukata, ...
Tuesday, 14 April 2026

Teaching - and assessing - Young Learners

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Calling all teachers of Young Learners in Kanto...here's a great opportunity for you to share your teaching skills, add some internation...
Monday, 13 April 2026

My big sister Fuu

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I have an older sister who was born one year before me. She and I used to go same school until high school. I moved after that and she keeps...
Sunday, 12 April 2026

Cross-posting from LinkedIn - Speaking Examiner training

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It's taken a few days to get my voice back!March 28th - training for Cambridge Assessment English speaking examiners (SEs) at A2 & B...
Friday, 10 April 2026

Postcard from...Nagurumi Castle ruins, Gunma

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 This is an outstanding preservation job on a hilltop castle (site), perched over the Tone River, in Gunma prefecture.  The overgrowth has b...
Wednesday, 8 April 2026

I want to follow the BFG’s example! ~Talking About the Amazing BFG~

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  The BFG is different from the other giants. First, he doesn’t eat people. Even when he is very hungry, he keeps eating snozzcumbers, whic...

What “Shopaholic” shows us

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  Due to quickly growth of Internet, we can buy something online very easy. We do not have to give real cash to shop staff, so it is difficu...

A Giant to be respected

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 Virtually all Giants love to eat people and eat people every night.  One night, fourteen boys and eighteen girls disappeared from their bed...
Tuesday, 7 April 2026

Is shopping a good way to feel happy?

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 I don’t think shopping is a good way to feel.  I understand that it is easy to feel happy if we go shopping, but good feeling is not mainta...
Thursday, 26 March 2026

Ayumu Hirano - profile of a famous sportsperson

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Ayumu Hirano is a professional snowboarder and skateboarder. He was born in Niigata on November 29th, 1998. He started snowboarding when he ...
Monday, 16 March 2026

Visit Matsumoto - Hikari's top tips

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Visitors can rent Yukata If you come to Matsumoto, you'll definitely enjoy visiting Matsumoto Castle. It was built in the medieval age. ...
Thursday, 5 March 2026

☻My best friend☻

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 My best friend and I are both twenty four years old. We met last year of high school in Matsumoto when we were eighteen years old. We studi...
Wednesday, 4 March 2026

A Precious Friend in My Life

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I met her at high school. We were in the same class and chose art class.  We went to the art class room together every class. She was really...
Monday, 2 March 2026

My best friend Mariko

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Mariko and I were neighbours.  We met when we were four years old.  In the first grade of elementary school, we went roller skating together...
1 comment:
Thursday, 19 February 2026

Are All Animals Equal on Animal Farm?

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 I don’t think life on Animal Farm is fair for all the animals.   At the beginning of the story, all the animals believed they were in an eq...
1 comment:
Wednesday, 18 February 2026

The animals of Animal Farm were not equal

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I think life on Animal Farm is not fair for all the animals. At the beginning of the story, all animals are equal. They work together an...
1 comment:

Appropriate shopping

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 When I was in my twenties, I would go to Shinjuku once every few months to buy clothes. I would walk around all day, carefully consider wha...
2 comments:
Thursday, 12 February 2026

Telling your students to "Go Away!"

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  Go away, kids! A risky strategy if you want to get paid next month! My kindy classes fell on Feb 3rd, which is 'setsubun' festival...
Wednesday, 11 February 2026

My great cousin Hiroko

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 I like my cousin Hiroko. She's my father's older brother's middle daughter. She is seven years older than me. I often played wi...
1 comment:

Assumptions - a hand game that tanked!

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We make assumptions all the time - mine was to expect my young students to be able to take turns. How old do you need to be before you can m...
Tuesday, 10 February 2026

Task based learning - is it?!

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As I keep saying, I'm not an expert! I'm not sure if this classroom activity actually meets the methodological definition of "T...
Thursday, 5 February 2026

Seiko Matsuda biography

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She was born in Fukuoka on 10th March 1962. When she was born she almost died, but she survived. Her real name is Noriko Kamachi. She has a ...
1 comment:
Wednesday, 4 February 2026

Professional Development from an "expert"

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 I'd been losing sleep for weeks over the Christmas & New Year holiday, about an invitation I'd accepted to be a panelist for OU...

Intonation is key! Encouraging learners to bounce

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Having 'learned' the vocabulary & structure - third person + be + adjective - to describe how someone is  feeling...and also ex...
Monday, 2 February 2026

On Thin Ice - the graded reader (not the state of Greenland)

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Reading for detail - Read & Imagine As you can easily see, there's a lot of text on the page, which most learners in Japan would bau...
Sunday, 1 February 2026

Postcard from...Nagoya, Japan

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Hi there blog readers! I went to Nagoya to meet English teachers, school owners, an ex-student and a couple of really cool old friends I...
Friday, 30 January 2026

Train ride review - Shinano

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I read recently that the trains on the Shinano service between Nagano & Nagoya will be replaced in 2027, and that the new ones will be ...
Thursday, 29 January 2026

Hard Worker Boxer - after reading "Animal Farm"

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 The animal that I felt sorry for is Boxer. He deeply trusted Napoleon, and he made his best in the Battle of the Windmill and worked hard t...
Sunday, 25 January 2026

Take it outside!

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Started this week's lesson with "Put on your shoes" song...reason being, I wanted to hurry up, hurry up, let's go outside!...

No, I'm not fine!

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"How are you? " "How are you." Try again. "No. How are you?" "Oh. I'm fine." How's he?  And ...
Saturday, 24 January 2026

A joined up lesson - making the most of students' flashcards

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Making a learning record with flashcards I'm a firm believer of doing more with less - and a massive fan of good text books. Students ne...