Postcard from...Haneda airport

Who's the tallest now?!

A snap decision to accept an invitation from her uncle & aunt in Australia, some frantic preparations and a dash down the expressway to Haneda airport and a rendez-vous with Qantas, bag just about packed and ready to travel alone...

A quick pit-stop at Futaba SA gave us a stunning view of Mount Fuji, which is still taller than everybody.

Bye bye Eleanor!

And then we said quick goodbyes at the security gate, cousins clambering to get in a final farewell, and off she went bravely on her own (accompanied by ground staff) to find her big Kangaroo for the overnight flight to Sydney. We waved her her off into the night sky, and followed her progress across the Pacific...she had her toes wriggling in the sand before we even got back home!

Miami Police File: the O'Nell Case - The Utsukushigahara Open-air Museum

The museum stands on the top of the mountain, the Utsukushigahara. It located at the center of Nagano prefecture. It is about 2000 meters high and the top is flat and very wide. At the corner of it there are a lot of big outdoor sculptures of modern art. We can see all directions view, sometimes Mt.Fuji in a fine day.  And we can see a various beautiful alpine flowers in every season.

There are restaurant, gallery, indoor museum, a huge sculpture for kids playing in it and so on. The admission fee is 1000 yen for adult. It opens from April to November every day. 

It takes about 60minutes from the centre of Matsumoto city by car. And we can go down from the top to Suwa city or Ueda city if we like to.

Posted for Misako

Ayumi's mini-guide to Japan

Japanese Black Bear

• This is a Japanese black bear.
• They live in the forest.
• They eat small animals and fish and honey.
• They are bigger than me
• They have thick black fur and long claws

Mount Fuji & Hokkaido

This is Mount Fuji.
It is the highest mountain in Japan.
It is beautiful.

This is Hokkaido.
It is the biggest prefecture in Japan.
It is beautiful.


Posted for Ayumi

My home town

I live in Matsumoto city which is commercial city in Nagano prefecture. It's has poplation 200000 people. It's near The Japan Alps and old castle. So.a lot of tourist visit here all year round.

My home town is beautiful and safe. Important tourist attractions are Matsumoto castle and traditional street name is Nakamati close castle. You can also see The Japanese Alps. The most famous peak is Jonen. It's 2880meters high it looks like Mt.Fuji.

The weather is severe, summer season is hot and humid, winter season is terribly cold.

It's famous for Matsumoto Castle constructed 400years ago. It's almost all black, It looks like a crow so it's called Crow castle.

The best things about Matsumoto are it has good soba restaurant, and kind people. I love Matsumoto.

My Home - Masa writes & draws

In my house, there's a:

• black mamba
• a cupboard

In my house there are:

• games
• TVs

In my town (Hata), there's a:

• station
• hospital

In my town (Hata), there are:

• convenience stores
• watermelons

In my country (Japan), there's a:

• parliament
• Mount Fuji

In my country (Japan), there are:

• mountains
• hot springs

After reading a graded reader; multimedia project & presentation.

Nanako recently read a really interesting book about another young girl called Heidi, who grew up in the Swiss Alps. She really liked the book, and we had a lot to talk about - living in the country or the city, overcoming homesickness & disability, being able to read...

We also talked about mountains & in the back of the book did a bit of a project on Mount Fuji - being Japanese this was a bit easy :) So we had a think about another mountain from a list that we knew nothing about & which would be interesting to research. She chose Mount Ararat, and this is what she achieved using Glogster.

http://lunajim.edu.glogster.com/mount-ararat-with-nanako/

Unfortunately, I can't find a way to embed this great creation into the blog (if anyone can tell me how to do that I'd be supremely grateful!), so please pop over to Glog country and check out her excellent research & creativity. Please feel free to leave your comments as well (hint!)

Things to see & do in Japan

Mt. Fuji and Shinkansen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Japan, you can visit Tokyo Disneyland, Mount Fuji and Matsumoto Castle. They are famous places.

photo by Jim George

You can ride on bullet trains. Because it is very fast. You can eat sushi. It is very good. People like playing go and cards. You can buy kimono and models of Matsumoto Castle.

Nanako (7)

What can you see from your bedroom window?

            When I asked my younger students “what can you see from your bedroom window?” I got a rather dull and boring answer of “a wall”. One of my students even said that he doesn't have a bedroom. I had to make sure he wasn't Harry Potter! These were not exactly the responses of inspiration and wonder I was hoping for. I couldn't even use the Japanese Alps in view from out of my classroom window as creative inspiration since it was dark. As I wanted my students to transfer their bedroom views onto paper, I realized this was going to be rather an unfruitful activity if we spent the next part of the lesson drawing our neighbour’s walls.

So I took a slightly different approach. Instead of asking “what can you see from your bedroom window?” I asked “what would you like to see from your bedroom window?”. This gave the class the spark I was looking for, giving them the incentive to use their creativity and imagination. The students began to draw the most bizarre and wonderful things you could imagine: from dinosaurs to an octopus climbing Mount Fuji, even the vast expanses of space!

Once our visions of wonder were completed, we learnt how to spell and write all of the marvellous things we had just drawn. This allowed the students to recycle the words they have learnt previously as well as learn how to say some of their favourite things in English! The students took great pride in hanging up their make believe bedroom view around my classroom, boasting to their fellow classmates of all the new exciting words they have learnt.

A fantastic way of engaging the students while giving you the opportunity to learn a little more about them. So the question is; what can YOU see from your bedroom window?

Damian Gowland