Kanako's Blog Profile

About me

My name is Kanako. I was born and raised in Chiba prefecture. I have a 4-years-old son and a 6-years-old daughter.

Likes and Dislikes

I like listening to music and taking a walk and doing yoga. I hate cold places and noisy it.

Hobbies and interests

I've played the flute since I was ten years old. I'm interested in cooking and making cakes.

My New Year's Resolution

I make opportunity to perform the flute. At a first step, I played the flute last month at Christmas party of children's center. It was performance after long time. I'm planning the recital for close person with a pianist of my friend.

Posted for Kanako

Luna's super Marios meet Super Santa!

As Christmas sneaks up on us, in tow comes our annual Christmas party!
A huge thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with us and a special shout out to Yukari for the incredible organisation of food, venue and fun, Cedric, Matt and Naomi for helping to keep the whole thing afloat, Jim for being the backbone of the entire celebration, and Santa himself for taking time out of his busy schedule to help us spread Christmas cheer!

Complete with games, smiles and presents galore, it was a brilliant way to end 2018.
We look forward to seeing you back at Luna from the 7th of January.

Take a peek at the festivities with the link below:

https://flic.kr/s/aHskP7zoey

Merry Christmas everybody!

A Christmas Carol - Christmas Eve diary

It was a hard day, as usual. I worked at the cold dark office all day long. Today, Mr. Scrooge's nephew came to the office to say Merry Christmas to him. But, Mr. Scrooge said Christmas was humbug and he just said "good afternoon". He is very strange and mean. He doesn't care about other people, especially poor people.

Tomorrow is a Christmas Day. Everybody wants to be happy, cares each other, loves each other. Mr.Scrooge is a rich man and he is very good at business, but he doesn't look like happy. If he cares about others more, he could be happier. Maybe something very sad had happened to him before and he became such a mean man. But I like his nephew. He is a nice man.

Anyway, it is Christmas Eve tonight. We had Christmas Dinner with all my family. How wonderful! I am a lucky man to have such a lovely wife and good children. Poor tiny Tim, he can not walk by himself, but he is lovely. I love him very much.

Mr. Scrooge gave me a half day off tomorrow. I wish I could have a day off, but I don't want to lose my job. I hope Mr.Scrooge will change his mind next year and he will be more gentle and generous.

Posted for Yasumi

Christmas in Japan

In class this week, my junior high school class was reading about Christmas for teens in the UK, in their Mary Glasgow magazine "Crown". We decided to compare our own answers, and this is what we found.

Do you like Christmas?

• Yuta: No, because Santa Claus doesn't come to my house. Maybe I'm a bad boy?
• Karen: No, because I don't get any Christmas presents.
• Jim: No, because I don't like working until the very last minute and not having time to buy nice presents or prepare my home.

Did you get what you wanted last Christmas?

• Yuta: No, I didn't. I wanted a Fender guitar.
• Karen: No, I didn't. I wanted money.
• Jim: No, I didn't. I got socks instead of books about cricket in Afghanistan & the West Indies.

What did you do last Christmas Day?

• Yuta: I went to school, as usual. My teacher gave me some chocolate.
• Karen: I went to school.
• Jim: I skyped my brother's family in Australia & talked to my mum. After that, I started cooking with a glass of wine.

What did you eat last Christmas?

• Yuta: I ate fried chicken (my mum cooked it) at home, with my parents. I didn't have Christmas pudding because I did not know what it is. I'd like to try it this year.
• Karen: I ate chicken & Christmas cake at home with my family.
• Jim: We ate a traditional Christmas dinner that I cooked - roast turkey & vegetables, gravy, as well as other things my wife's family brought (pizza, salad, cake...) and of course we drank champagne & wine. I ate too much!

How about this year?

• Yuta: I want a new basketball, to play with my friends at school - no holiday.
• Karen: I want a polaroid camera. School is off for Christmas this year. I don't know why!
• Jim: I don't want socks. I want a gadget to turn my old analog stereo amplifier & speakers into bluetooth receivers. I hope my children do not get toy guns/swords/anything noisy!

Only one of us has a tree in the house (we have a big one outside the school)!

We'd like to know about how you celebrate Christmas.

 If you don't, what do you do instead?

Christmas Party photographs

Sunday's Christmas party was a massive success, thank you everyone! Once again Yukari excelled herself organising the venue as well as the food & logistics...that helps us massively to relax and enjoy throwing a bonanza party. Damian was up late all last week preparing games & activities, and on the day Naomi helped us manage things smoothly. Lots of winners, and no shortage of smiles - only one (massive) nose bleed (thank you Kyoko for prompt first aid).

Children thoroughly enjoyed themselves and were thrilled to meet Santa, have a quick chat with the very busy man and receive a present. We must thank him properly for making this special visit!

Find all the pictures with the link below:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/saint_george/sets/72157647555834063/

Merry Christmas everybody!

November came & went pretty quickly - here's what happened!

We finished planting loads of bulbs along the car park, so that we might get a dash of colour in spring - already some shoots showing but we think the sub-zero temperatures will slow everything down significantly now. Last count we had 20+ pushing through, but it already started snowing?!



Very importantly, our YLE exam results came back (very quickly, thank you Cambridge) and we were able to give the cool newly-designed Certificates to all the children who tried very hard in October. The new certificates have several security features embedded in them - which means they are impossible to copy or fake. Well done kids, you own your English achievements!

We are already preparing the Christmas party, everyone is invited! This year, we will be using the local kominkan - we do not have the space, obviously! New Luna is easy to keep warm, but we cannot have a party in 3 different rooms!

Hope you like the slideshow? Please download it, share with friends & relatives, and tell us what you think :)  We would love to share your photos too!

Adventures in Australia - the lost diaries of Remi

Recently one of our students, Remi, had the opportunity to have a 2 week homestay at Jim's brother's house in Australia. How exciting! Before departing on her grand adventure we asked her to keep a diary of her experiences as well as sending us a postcard, which read "Australia was fun". Thankfully her diary is much more interesting to read, even though it did take her 3 weeks to finish after returning from her trip! So here is the long awaited diary log of Remi's experiences in Australia!

3/21

It was my first time to go to foreign country alone. So I was very nervous but also excited. And I was very happy because one of my favorite singers, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu was on my plane!! I was soooo happy!!!!

3/22

Next morning I got to Sydney at 7:30AM.(In Japan it was 5:30AM) I had to get up so early. So I was a bit tired. After I met Mike (Jim's brother), Charlie and Louis, Mike took me to a place where we can see Opera House. Opera House was really white and beautiful than I expected.

3/23

I got up early and went to see football practice of Louis and Joe. In Japan, football is not so popular so, I didn't know the rule at all. But it looked so exciting and fun !! In the afternoon, I went to a walk with Mike, Liz (Mike's wife), Fred, Louis and Joe. And we walked along the beach. The beach was beautiful than Japan. Japanese ocean is not always clean and algae is always floating so I hate swimming in the Japanese ocean. But that beach had white sand and clear water. Next time when I goto Wollongong, I'd like to swim!! 

For dinner, we had fish and chips.Usually, I don't eat oily food a lot. But it was incredibly delicious that I ate all!!!

3/24

I went to Coles (a supermarket in Wollongong ) with Liz. When we got out from the supermarket, it was raining cats and dogs. Liz told me in Austrailia, it doesn't rain so often and last time it rained that much was before Christmas! I was really unlucky.

3/25

I met to Misaki. She used to study at Luna. And she lives in Sydney now. She took me to Rocks, Manly and Mosman. We took lunch at Rocks and had pancakes. It was my first time to eat pancakes for lunch. This day was short because, Misaki took me to lots of nice places and I had so much fun. And I thought I wanted to meet her again.

3/28

Went to Sydney with Liz, Fred, Louis and Joe by double decker train.It took a lot to go to Sydney so, at last everyone got bored. After we got to Central station, we walked through QVB(Queen Victoria Building). Queen Vitoria Building is a very huge shopping mall. And in the corner of the building, there is a big statue of

queen Victoria. So, it is called QVB. After that, we went to Aquarium. The aquarium was very big and there were lots of animals like Dugongs, Platypus and Sharks etc...

After going to the aquarium, Liz was planning to go on a ferry from aquarium to Circular Quay. But the ferry had already gone. So we had to walk all the way to Circular Quay station. I got really tired tired but, it was so fun to walk with the boys.

3/29

I went to Sydney again!!

This time, I went with everybody by car. Liz told me it is really difficult to go out with everyone. Because
everyone has each football practice and soccer practice almost everyday.

First we walked around Darling Harbour. Mike told me there is the biggest cinema in the Southern Hemisphere. After walking around, we went on the ferry and played a little bit in Luna Park. Luna Park is a amusement park in Sydney. There are lots of rides like roller coaster, ferris wheel etc.... 

And walked across Harbour Bridge. The view from the bridge was very beautiful and we could see Opera House from the bridge. I saw people doing bridge climbing. It looked really scary. I think I can't do bridge climbing because of the height. 

For dinner we had Chinese food at China town. 

After that we went to the Olympic stadium (now it's ANZ stadium ) to watch Australian Football. The rule was complicated but I had so much fun. 

What do you want for Christmas?!

Can you remember what we did this Christmas?

Let this audioslideshow jog you memory!



Please follow this link & download or go to Luna's Youtube page...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAvevkcMAJ0&feature=share&list=UUfKHk9pHVIpNqvHhu-q5ufA

Don't burn that turkey - and have a wonderful Christmas xxx

And now, that Christmas party with some blues!

I have been buzzing since our end of year Christmas party on Sunday; the room was bulging with children - many of them them very young and dangling off mummy or older sisters! Two or three were so little they managed to sleep through the entire afternoon - the innocence of youth (but absolutely wonderful to see Miki-chan, Anna-chan, Fumi-chan as mummies again!). Not everything went to plan - hope you didn't notice! Main thing was that everyone was involved and everyone seemed to win something!

For the first time we "dressed" the tree - a new idea I came across through twitter last week as an alternative to musical chairs (we don't have enough!) and pass the parcel. We had an enormous alphabet soup which took a while to figure out, and then tackled Naomi's wonderful Christmas picture montage. Yukari & Mayumi delivered a delicious Christmas lunch, before a surprise guest in a red suit arrived to give everyone a present.

Enjoy the show, as we enjoyed the day!



You can find all the photos on flickr right here

Thank you for your patience

A quick thank you to everyone for your kind thoughts & words lately; Ceilidh was released from the hospital this afternoon, and he is very happy to no longer have tubes in his arm.

You will have noticed that Yukari has not been able to spend anytime at her (new) desk, and that we were unable to hold our Christmas party last weekend...we will make that up to you with a proper school-warming party in January.

Today is our last day of classes for 2010, and indeed our last teaching day in MK Building. It has been a great location for us for the last seven years - please don't forget to come to your next classes at the new premises > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

Wishing all our students and friends a super Merry Christmas

(and would everyone cross their fingers for Kevin's long trip home to snowy England?!)