Kotaro & his Dragon Mother

Once upon a time, there was a good guy who managed cultivation for his village. He had girlfriend. They loved each other but he didn’t know her well.

One day, he secretly attached a long thread to her dress when she left his house. Next day, the thread showed the way to her house. However the road led into the deep mountains. He saw she was the incarnation of a dragon. She stopped meeting with him as soon as he visited her house.

After a few years, an old woman picked a baby out of a river. The baby was named Kotaro. Eventually, the old woman died, and Kotaro set out to find his mother, because he felt very lonely. He remembered that the woman had often told him that he was the child of a dragon and that he had been found in the river from dragon mountain.

While he travelled, he noticed that his village needed good fields for life. When he arrived at the pond where his mother lived, he screamed “ Mom ! “. A big dragon came from the pond, and he told his mother that he wanted to make her pond into a field to help his village as his father had did. His mother understood she would lose her living place if she accepted her son’s demands. Nevertheless she decided to help him. While she attacked her body to the mountain for cultivation, rumbling sound was very big. When that sound stoped, the new field was born. The village people lived happily ever after thanks to their fertile field.

Nobody knows where Kotaro and his mother lived, but we can still see their flight around the mountains near Ueda city in Nagano like a long bank of fog.

Posted for Yumi

Super study Saturday

I have to admit, teaching on a Saturday is not my favourite way to spend the weekend, but the students we have here at Luna make it a very enjoyable day at the office for me.

These two lads know they're playing a dangerous game, coming to class not only in an Argentinian football shirt, but with a number 10 on it...I am sure they can both draw better than Diego, and have a longer attention span :)  Great work today remembering how to spell animal names with this/that.

We have an unusual class in the afternoon, with two great girls just started studying with mum & aunt. Don't ask, please! Managing the adults as best as possible out of the learning is tricky - giving the girls as much chance as I can to actually learn (and not get corrected before they've finished an utterance by well meaning but misplaced & inaccurate observation) needs a lot of experience and a fair amount of chutzpah - basically making as much as possible out of adult 'errors' and elbowing my non-verbal encouragement into the girls line of sight in preference to less accurate though well intentioned interventions.

Giving (even unplugged) microphones to 'teams' in a Q/A or back & forth chant is a cool way of making sure one half 'shuts up' when it isn't 'their turn'....and that they are also forced into giving up their 'go', even if they haven't finished or kept up with the tempo - challenge the other team to start on cue too. It really makes sure the mic holders listen, and the mic-less watch!

Need to make a Q & A go faster? Ancient nugget here in Japan is the 'Janken Race' - rock/scissors paper. Adapt to suit class size, but start at opposing ends of the table/room (how big are your flashcards/room?). Student produces a sentence (or whatever you have set your parameters to) as triggered by flashcards lined up along the table edge (far side if you want to work on that/those) , and works towards the middle - ditto the other team. Very easy to monitor - sit down on the other side of the table & go with Caesar thumbs! Teacher can substitute cards sneakily, leave in the tricky ones or make the line shorter to get a result...This one does get noisy!



Highlighting two classes from a full day today - I had fun, thanks y'all!