Time travel - a dinner party with Buddha

If I could time travel, I would like to go to ancient India in 6th to 5th century BCE, and I want to meet Buddha.

Known as the founder of Buddhism. Buddha was born into an aristocratic family. His family had high expectations for him, giving dedicated palaces, luxurious clothes etc. If I were in his position, I wouldn’t work, but live in luxury. However, he entered into the priesthood, even though he had a wife and child!

There are some legends to explain why the Buddha went his own way with beliefs, but I would like to listen to him for myself. There would be some disciples at our table, who I would like to ask how to train in order to achieve enlightenment. At the dinner, we have a Buddhist vegetarian meal together with nonalcoholic drinks.

I think meeting them would change my life.

Some information about Narita Airport

Narita is the main airport in Japan.

Image by Jim George

44 million passengers travel through the airport a year.
Narita airport has 1137 ha.
Narita airport has 2 runways and 3 terminals.
Narita airport is 43 years old.
Its 60km from Tokyo station.
Passengers can get there by train and highway bus.

Posted for Masato

A big world for small equipment.

I wonder what percentage of my life is spent touching this small piece of equipment that sticks out a little in one hand and fits in both hands.

It's easy to connect with the world. Also, there is so much information in it. What's notable about the development of social networking is that it allows us, as ordinary people, to share information. 

For example, Twitter. They can tweet whatever they want. As you know, it has its pros and cons. Let's start with the pros.

First, you can talk about your hobbies and share your thoughts and opinions. Secondly, you can expose yourself to ideas that you have never encountered before. Furthermore, Twitter gives us more opportunities to learn about things. However,  as we all know, there is a good and bad side to everything in the world. 

The ease with which anyone can disseminate information is inextricably linked to the ease with which they can disseminate content that has not been scrutinized. Sometimes this is called misinformation or fake news. Whether it is intended or not, it's very difficult to correct misinformation that has been spread one by one. 

What's more, the most tricky part is the "like" reactions and follower responses. It instantly satisfies the need for approval, but it also creates a need for further approval. Are the statements we make to satisfy your need for approval really our own opinion? 

In my opinion, we need to find our own way of dealing with social media. In order to judge misinformation, a basic knowledge of the chemical sciences, the study of history from many different perspectives, writing skills, and the ability to read texts are required. And also, we have to learn how to deal with our own pschology. 

Written by Anna Koshi.

Helping kinesthetic students!

 Has it been 6 months since I started working in beautiful Matsumoto?!

Well, today I wanted to share an activity I did with my students (twins!) who are kinesthetic learners! They cannot sit still and if they do, eyes heavy! I learned it the hard way the first few months here!

The twins have school in the morning, football practice right after, and straight for English classes, no wonder they are exhausted! So changed it up this week! We played Twister (advisable to be only done for students from the same household only, sadly we are still in a pandemic!)

On a dark cold Tuesday, boy these kids were sleepy! A great day to conduct this activity! We assigned a colour and body part with a part of a sentence! We were learning chores and advert of frequency! So why not combine them! 

Red = always                                     Right hand = after school

Green = never                                    Left hand = before school

Blue = sometimes                              Right hand = after school

Yellow = usually                               Left hand = before school

Students are required to make a sentence following where their body parts land! 

Example : (Left hand on blue: I sometimes wash the car before school)

And the other student will ask: What are your chores?

Trust me, students were falling down easily and they had a blast! They practiced and made use of their target language well! The rest of the lesson went smoothly as students were perfectly energised and no more falling asleep!

Ueda Nishi High School Speaking Competition!

Was given the opportunity to judge an amazing selection of topics from students of Ueda Nishi High School! 

Now, this was my first time ever in Ueda and I can say the drive there was immaculate! It was breathtaking! The mountains were screaming with their golden amber leaves! I truly enjoyed that 2-hour drive back and forth! 

Back to the competition! We were given a list of topics from the presenters! The topics varied from traveling to storytelling! I thought I had an idea when I arrived but was I wrong, these students blew me off my seat! They were amazing! 

The first speaker told us about his favourite places in Nagano (and me being new here! took notes!) He had great and clean slideshows with pictures that definitely drew me in more! 

The 2nd topic was presented by a pair of students! This was interesting and the topic was unique! They reimagined the 12 Chinese zodiacs and retold the story if it began in America! Creative and definitely a good laugh! The students changed the animals to animals found in North America (kudos for doing your research well!) 

I would say the topics varied in this competition, it was split between Japan and its' culture to storytelling and fables with a modern twist! It was hard for us as judges to choose who was the best but with help from all of us, we decided on a student who talked about Flowers unique to Japan! Was a beautiful speech with a creative slideshow! Congratulations! 

To all the other students! Good job! Truly an amazing competition! Great job to the teachers for helping to prepare the students! 

Games in the young learning environment - vital!

Picture-based vocabulary review

 As I keep reminding our teachers, if you have a good idea, see how much you can adapt it to fit other classes/situations. We do this a lot with Wordwall and Quizlet at Luna with online learners in group/collaborative work, which we also set as homework assignments for independent use. 

As described in a post last month, we wanted to get "hands on" for face-to-face young learners, now that we have relaxed the barrier requirements. (Of course, masks on, and all moving parts disinfected after use.)

Ideal game for groups x3

With first-time, younger players we paired up & helped each other out, sharing tips and tactics loudly! The board was colour-coded to make play more obvious, and laminated; memo, mount the photocopy on something stiffer to make it less vulnerable to nudges! Teacher's scissors & glue have been in the cupboard too long; nice to get creative again.

"Homework" last week was to take each of our personalised games out at home, and challenge family members. Distinct homefield advantage here, as each of the students made the games from vocabulary sets (glossaries) in the graded readers they have already read!

We can re-cycle these games in the coming months, as each students has a different version of the same content...which makes for ideal revision when we have 10-15 minutes up our sleeve at the end of a lesson or want to avoid getting into something 'new' just yet.

As a twist, Hana & I "flipped" our new

Hana head-to-head!

Read & Imagine readers by picking out words we were not sure about/wanted to learn and pronounce correctly before we got into them...smart girl still beat the teacher!

Another exciting pay-off was exploiting the word list at the back of the text book (Everybody Up in this case) for self-access revision; diving into dictionary skills and finding the 'hard' word in-context, and after searching for the same word three or four times, fixing it in memory for longer than usual!

Dictionary diving

To anyone who thinks 'games' have no place in the language learning environment, we think you are fundamentally wrong! Guess we'll have the proof of this little pudding when these Cambridge YLE takers sit down for A2:Key, B1:Preliminary & B2:First before they leave school in the years to come :)

(Adapted from a Mark Hancock pronunciation game)

B2:First in Nagano

Looking south

A beautiful sunny day in Nagano last Saturday, hosted Luna's autumn B2:First exam session. A very well-organised and smotthly run session, in a nice big airy room on the 12th floor...only drawback really was the stunning views looking east towards Shiga kogen, which were quite distracting! Waiting rooms looking north and south equally absorbing!

It was great to be able to run this exam session this year and meet the needs of candidates, and be able to do so safely, which we have become quite accustomed to.

Thank you Yukari & Rinka for detailed preparation & taking care of our nervous candidates; we hope all of you managed to do your best. Thank you CM & RO for sitting as our speaking examiners - safe trips home.

Here's looking forward to great results in early January.

A letter home to Durrisdeer, from the widow Alice Durie

 Dear Teruki,

As you probably know, my husband and his brother James both died in the wilderness. I'm terribly sad to lose my two loving men at once. I always loved James, even when he had gone to war and never wrote back to any of my letters. He was such an attractive man.

I married Henry because he was a kind and honest man, and a good husband. We had a peaceful time until James returned home. To be honest, I was happy for his return, but Henry was unhappy, so it was obvious they would duel.I didn't think James would lose, but he did and his body even disappeared..

James was such an unpredictable man, even following us to New York! Half of my life was spent looking for James and the other half hiding from him. I was surprised to know that Henry went to the wilderness, but he had changed a lot - not kind and honest anymore. He was obsessed about his title and his loving son; money and fame are such dangerous things.

Alice Durie (aka Sayuri)

Boring glossaries...gamified!

DIY gamification

I've been wondering how to 'make more' out of the graded readers our younger students are enjoying reading, and in particular to exploit the target or new vocabulary.

I came across a tweet from @HancockMcDonald which reminded me of a favourite game I'd long forgotten - his Chinese Chequers pronunciation game. A quick little think and some eager readers with 'finished ' books handy, I asked them what their 'hardest' six words were, and to circle them with a colour pencil. Then I asked them to write their chosen words onto the blank game template, at random (importantly, not clustered together!), with that colour pencil. 

Then we looked at the second glossary page, and did the same thing with a different colour pencil. Another reader, two more pages & different colours, and a third book leaving us with seven blank spaces for the last group of words.

 As you can see, this became a very engaging activity and proved to have very valuable spelling practice built into it (which never hurts, and is always really hard to squeeze into a lesson plan!). Important to use pencils (not crayons) for ease of corrections (and fitting words into small spaces - I insisted on getting words 'on' one line).

The words I want to learn!

So why the six colours? It's a dice game...we will be exploring our own games next week, and then asking our young learners to challenge mum & dad at home for 'homework'! Stay tuned :)

Hope you like the idea - we did!

Sayuri Super Fan - post-corona concert goer

Yuming, one of my favourite artists started her tour concert at the end of September and she came to Nagano for two days. I was very lucky to get the tickets for two concerts exactly the same one.

We (my husband and I) were so excited that we arrived at the concert hall really early but there were so many people just like us waiting for the door to open.

They used the digital ticket system so we had to have a smartphone to show the ticket onthe screen. Somehow the door person gave us a stamp on the screen ticket and we werequalified to enter the hall. First thing that we needed to do was cleaning our hands withpraying alcohol. Then they handed out a special face shield and we needed to put it onwith a mask underneath during the concert. They said that they used some special ultraviolet rays to sterilize some viruses. Also there was an announcement to ask for good behavior during the concert as the new standard after Covid 19. What is good behavior like?

The stage set looked like a room in a big submarine and we were all at the bottom of the deep sea, just like the tour title "The town in the deep sea"
Suddenly a pipe organ began to play gloriously. That was following the first song "Kageriyukuheya", my favourite song! That was her very early tune and she made it with theinspiration of Procol Harum "A Whiter Shade of Pale". I was surrounded by her solemn music and tears were coming up. It was the first live concert for me ever since this pandemic had happened. I was extremely happy!! I love music!!

Her concert was famous for the artistic stage production and the fifth song "Notre-Dame" was brilliant. On the huge screen above the stage we could see a bird's-eye view of Notre Dame and I felt like I was flying like a white dove, which was incredible.

We were so excited and stood up and started dancing and clapping hands!

On the first day, an old woman behind us complained about our bad behavior and asked us to sit down very politely but on the second day, we were on the fifth line from the front and almost the center, great seats! There was certain big fun of Yuming around, then we were all enjoying ourselves without any hesitation but not shouting off course.

In the end the day-two concert became so lively and exciting, so much better than theprevious day that the audience and the artists were all happy, satisfied and content. That's what the concert should be!

I realized how much I love music and concerts!

We need art! We need music! That makes us happy and well!

The mysterious death of Ryoma Sakamoto

Ryoma Sakamoto is one of the most famous Japanese unsolved crime. He is historical person and he is famous with rebelling against in the Edo period. 

He was born in the family of the Tosa state. After leaving the state, he worked as a priest and formed Kameyama Shrine, which doubled as a trading company and a political organization.  He was involved in the defeat and the Meiji Restoration, including cooperating with the formation of the Satcho Alliance.There is also evidence that he was a good swordsman. He repeated terrorist acts to defeat the Edo Shogunate and create a strong Japan.

December 10, 1867 When Ryoma and Nakaoka were talking, several men calling themselves Totsugawa Goji visited and asked for a visit.  When Fujiyoshi took over, the visitor went upstairs, slashed Fujiyoshi, and broke into the room where Ryoma and his friends were.

On the other hand, there is also such a theory.  It is said that he was killed by a man of the Tosa state who was his companion until then. These are just one theory, and there are other theories that various people have killed him, and the truth is in the dark.

Posted for Masato, after reading The Mysterious Death of Charles Bravo

The Magnificent Seven

 

B1:Preliminary & A2:Key successes

Although it's been a pretty crappy year with travel restrictions, health scares etc, it's been a tremendous one academically, for our teens at Luna.

Every one of Luna's students who took a Cambridge examination this year was successful. That didn't just happen by chance! They have been studying hard, reading lots, and applied a positive attitude to class activities as well as homework.

A2:Key - firsts in both their schools

• Lifetime achievement at A2:Key for Schools
• Lifetime achievement at B1:Preliminary for Schools
• Lifetime achievement at B2:First

Each of these students began their formal assessment journeys with our Cambridge Young Learners programme, having taken one, if not all three levels previously. Very solid foundations, and step by step progress with "Can Do" motivation...wanting to show off their English language skills (and not being forced).

Gold Standard - B2:First

Some of our learners smashed their test first time trying - very impressive! Others needed a second or even third attempt to reach their goal, which in many ways is even more inspiring as many would just give up or lose heart. 

Missing candidate, chuffed sister & mum!

And we applaud our students who are have made their own choices in their studies/English learning, and have a clear idea of their road ahead...be it using English to study medicine at university, or not stressing out over centre exams next year but aiming for Canada instead. Others intending to be the first in their school to get the next level as well. Whatever your motivation, it's clearly powerful...and we hope inspires your peers to push themselves in 2022. 

If at first you don't succeed...

Well done all of you - very proud school/Cambridge Assessment English Centre owner!

Register for your next Cambridge exam with Luna International, offering exams 

Tokyo, Nagoya, Nagano at 

https://luna-jp004.jp/

 

Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits!

Ruka's "great escape" rabbit

In the summer, Rabbit and Ruka were playing on a farm.

The rabbit escapes.

I find the rabbit eating grass and carrots.

 

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

In 1913, Emperor Franz Joseph commanded Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, to visit the military exercises in Bosnia in June of 1914. Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg were assassinated on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip. Princip was one of a group of six assassins (one Bosniak and five Serbs) coordinated by Danilo Ilić, a Bosnian Serb and a member of the Black Hand secret society.
The purpose of assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary’s South Slav provinces so that they can be combined into Yugoslavia.
The assassination led directly to World War I. Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia after it happened. However, a part of them was rejected by Serbia since Russia promised military support for Serbia. Then, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia because Germany promised military support.
Under the Secret Treaty of 1892, Russia and France were obliged to mobilize their armies if any of the Triple Alliance mobilized. Russia ordered general mobilization. With the Russia's general mobilization, Austria-Hungary and Germany also Austro-Hungarian and German mobilizations. Soon all the Great Powers mobilize their armies and gone to war. As the assassination of Franz and Sophia was the trigger of starting World War I, it is important historically especially for European countries.

Questions for our older students.

When I took CELTA, we were taught to engage our students from the start of a lesson with pictures, questions, and many other prompts. These were extremely useful in engaging the students in the lesson and making them interested. When I started teaching adults, it was a delight! The talk we can have from the mundane to their interest! It was a truly fortunate experience for me. But I always started it with a "How are you?" "How was your weekend?" it turned expected fast. 

Students knew what I was going to ask every week. I wanted to make an impact, ask them questions that they rarely hear, and expand their critical thinking. I talked to Jim one night after all our classes, and he told me to ask them out-of-the-norm questions so I decided to do so! 

I decided to look up questions that were appropriate and not boring or expected. I found 20 interesting questions that fit high school to adults perfectly well and range from Elementary to Pre-Intermediate!

Questions like: 

- Tell me about a favorite event of your childhood.

- Are you a 'morning' or 'night' person?

- What could you do as a child that you can't do now?

- What do you think is the best age to be?

These are simple easy to understand questions but allow students to think and us getting to know each other better. I love getting to know my students and these questions will change from time to time, just to understand how they are as an individual studying a different language. 

Arisa's after reading story :)

Pandasssssssssssssss!

 In the spring, Panda have a baby.

A small baby panda was born in China.

Monkeys in School?! Rina's favourite animal

Rina's rabbit

I went to the zoo in the afternoon. Many people were looking for a rabbit. The rabbit was running away from the hut. Rina happened to have a carrot. So she try to catch the rabbit. I found it wonderfully and was able to catch it.

Malaysian Dances! Part 3: Magunatip (Bamboo dance)

 After learning the Zapin dance moves! We brought in the big guns! We brought in our "bamboo sticks" or more like poles wrapped in green paper! We make do with what we have! When I was researching for these dances, Magunatip really spoke to me! I knew the students would love it, was just something so different, and just fun honestly! Magunatip requires dancers to have agility and skill in jumping/dancing while avoiding getting crippled by the bamboos! Dancers hop in and out of the two or more clapping bamboo poles.

Originated from the Borneo land of Sabah! Performed by the Murut tribe while wearing their utterly beautiful traditional costume! Picture below! This dance originally performed for healing ceremonies and returning headhunters as a celebration (sounds of clapping, gongs and cheering made the blood of nearby villages run cold) is now performed during cultural events and festivals throughout Sabah. Most commonly now, it's performed during the harvest season or weddings as a sign of joy and happiest to their roots!

   Isn't it gorgeous?!

Two people will sit opposite each other and move the bamboos following a rhythm while 2 or more people jump and avoid the sticks! I knew I had to avoid any accidents (can't afford a lawsuit T_T) and the safety of the students does come first! I sought help from Yukari-san and Tomo-san in moving the bamboos while I jump as an introduction. We managed to create a routine where we counted (1-5) and managed to not get hurt! We were ready for the students! 

Video here:

Magunatip (warrior dance)

Students started off again watching a video and were just amazed! They were frightened but definitely ready to be jumping everywhere. I started off with a demonstration, twirl in front of the bamboos and then the jumping starts! We did it by making students follow my lead one by one until they were comfortable doing it on their own! They were later curious about the "Bamboos" and wanted to move it while the others jump around. They learned fast! By the end of it, I was sitting at the side as the students became masters! They wanted to do more tricks but were quickly shot down! 

But boy did the students enjoy it! I for one had fun teaching them about my culture as well as immersing myself in it! 

Malaysian Day Part 2: Zapin Dance

Took me a while writing this, but I made it finally! Continuing our story from last time, the first dance we learned was the Zapin dance commonly done in the West of Peninsular Malaysia and the most popular Malay traditional dances. Legends have it, it was introduced to Malaya (Malaysia's old name) back in the fourteenth century by Persians and Arab Muslim missionaries from the Middle East. Due to the gender inequality of the time, only men were able to perform the beautiful dance but proud to say, women dancers are now finally allowed. 

Source: The Sun Daily

Both men and women move beautifully across the stage that has a deep-rooted foundation to the traditional entertainment that has graced many Sultans in the past and present, hopefully, future as well. The Zapin dance is usually accompanied by traditional musical instruments such as the Gambus, Gendang and Rebana. Due to the missionaries back then, Zapin has been introduced to not only Malaysia but also Indonesia and Singapore. Hence, creating different variations of the dance. 

Due to my lack of knowledge in teaching someone to dance, I decided to follow a few tutorials I found on Youtube and use that. To be honest, it was a mixture of a lot of Zapin dances but hey! It worked out well!

We started by showing everyone a video of the whole performance of a Zapin dance that followed the song by Malaysian sweetheart, Siti Nurhaliza.

Video here: 

Zapin Ya Maulai

Students by this point were amazed and thought they will be zipping through the classroom like professionals! But sadly, I had to burst their bubbles and they will only learn a few simple steps. We started off with a move called the Inang. We sway both our hands up and down repeatedly a few times. The followed by the Asli which is a slower version of the Inang and we move left and right on a horizontal line. Then the fun starts! We zip into the Zapin move where our right hand is held in front of us as we move forward and back in a V shape style. Hard to imagine I know!

The Inang move

The Asli move

The Zapin move

The twirl move

We finished off with my favourite of all, the one hand raised and the twirl! A classic! In all seriousness, the students loved it! We then danced while wearing the costume we made and danced to our heart's content! Next time, definitely will have more moves and have a complete performance!

"Agony aunt" column in a magazine

 [Column from Ruth]:

I’m in agony for “mother-in-law”. Maybe there are many people who are same situation as me. In my case, she interferes in my family too much! I feel that tightly overseen by her as well as her husband. My town is small, and the people are like family. In other words, they know a lot of things even though another person.

Recently, I was upset because she had given a chocolate to my kid before dinner. If he ate a chocolate, he could not want to eat dinner much, so I don’t give him any snacks before meal. I understand that grandmother loves to see smiley face of grandson, however, I think she should pay regard to parent policy.

[Reply]:

Hi,

I had agonized same trouble in a couple years ago and I understand your feeling well. As for me, I had discussed with my husband many times to solve a problem. As my husband didn’t know that my suffering firstly, I explained details to him. Also, I asked him to talk his mother to refrain to give snacks for my kid before dinner. This is important point that I talked with her not just husband and I expressed my gratitude for understanding. After that I kept a suitable distance with mother-in-law. I’ve made a good relationship with her. I recommend that you talk with your husband to find any solutions first. In my experience, it is better to have many allies to raise your child. There is a potential for your mother-in-law to become one of ally! Hope you can built good relationship with her😊