Minimalism - Online Income - ESL - Japan
One of the biggest difficulties in teaching English to adults in Japan is you are constantly battling against what they have previously learned. Most Japanese have studied English in some capacity for at least six years, most of which, if not all, were at the hands of a Japanese English teacher, and in some cases the teacher wasn’t even an English teacher, just a homeroom teacher reading from an English […]
Japanese Golden Week is one of my favorite times of the year. It’s not too hot, nor too cold, and best of all, I have a week off. I seem to be the only person who finds the name “Golden Week” a little inappropriate. Sure enough, there are so many national holidays squeezed into these seven days, that it is arguably a “valuable” holiday, but why use English? If Great […]
One of Mami’s favorite TV programs is the mystical and spiritual “Aura no Izumiâ€, featuring Hiroyuki Ehara and Akihiro Miwa. When I first started watching it, I was baffled by the old man dressed as a woman. Where I’m from, if a man grows his hair long, dresses in a skirt, and dons a load of make up, it’s usually in the name of comedy, for example Barry Humphries acting […]
I was talking to my mum on the phone about pregnancy in Japan lasting 10 months as opposed to nine. Neither of us had a clue as to how it could be different, but we laughed ourselves silly at the idea of an extra month for Japanese women. Thankfully, a quick Google search gave us the answer, so here’s a quote from Anna Hotline: It’s becoming more and more common […]
In my first post on English T-Shirts in Japan, you saw the “Honey Spunk” shirt. Here’s another classic, modelled by one of my seven-year-old students. What do you think? I explained the meaning to the class by kicking myself on the bum with my heel, and yelping “Ouch!”. I think they understood! If you like, you can find me on Twitter at @nick_ramsay. I’d love to hear from you!
If you’ve never seen a Japanese keyboard, you might wonder how on earth the Japanese type into their computers. With a language containing over 10,000 characters, you’d think a Japanese keyboard would have more buttons than the Starship Enterprise. In this article, I’m going to give a brief overview of the basics, so if you’ve just arrived in Japan you can stop banging your head against the computer screen and […]
One thing that bugs me about living in Japan is when you surf the internet, some websites, particularly the big ones like Microsoft and Google automatically default to the local language, which in my case is Japanese. This isn’t too much of a hassle as it’s relatively easy to locate the language settings and switch to the English version. Recently I decided to register at the iTunes store so I […]
A little while ago, Mami and I were at a home center looking for a new shower head, when we noticed that some of the new bathroom sinks had extendable taps! What I mean is that you could pull the tap, or faucet as some people call it, and it extends so far out that you can easily wash the sink – great for cleaning up dropped toothpaste! Well, a […]