Minimalism - Online Income - ESL - Japan
It’s been a month since Mami last went to the maternity clinic, but she went back today for another check-up, and everything is fine. I wish I could have gone with her, but I can’t deny my students their weekly English class! Nevertheless, I got to see the latest video of Rikuto, the baby formerly known as “Peanut”. Since we found out that Peanut is a boy, it wasn’t hard […]
In part 1 of this series, you saw a video about dropping litter in bicycle baskets, and in part 2 I showed you a commercial aimed at stopping people from eating on trains. Both of these videos are part of an ongoing effort to improve manners in a country where you can pretty much get away with anything, because very few would dare tell you off. The following video, sadly […]
Last month I got a new computer, a Windows Vista PC with enough power to run Google Earth! I’ve been playing with Google Maps a lot lately, particularly after I discovered you can manually alter the zoom level to go in further than you thought possible, like this section of Africa in which you can clearly see a man with his camel. Google Earth is even more fun than playing […]
I used to use some old textbooks called Jack and Jill, in which the words ‘ugly’ and ‘pretty’ were represented by pictures of an ugly girl and a pretty girl. Jack and Jill was published back in the ’70s, but not much has changed in the book I’m using now, Hip Hip Hooray, in which pictures of pretty and ugly mice are used to teach the same words. There have […]
In part 1 of this Japanese Manners series, I showed you a public service announcement to encourage people not to drop litter. In this country, people would rather turn a blind eye than tell a stranger off for doing something they shouldn’t. This next video isn’t the final version that made it to TV, but the message is the same. The glossed-up final cut was shown in commercial breaks during […]
In England, if you’re talking in a movie theater, there’s a good chance the person behind you will tell you to ‘shut it’. If you drop litter in the street, someone might pick it up and throw it back at you. If you’re eating, drinking, walking, smoking, or even peeing in a place you shouldn’t, someone is likely to call you up for it. Half way around the world however, […]
We all know that the Japanese have one of the longest life expectancies in the world. Peter McGarry suggests that a combination of the right diet and lifestyle is the reason why the Japanese live so long, listing things such as fish, soybeans, wheat and walking as important factors. However, in a country which has one of the highest rates of tobacco consumption, it is still an amazing statistic. One […]
When I first came to Japan, I couldn’t speak the language at all. I had bought a phrase book and tape which I listened to a few times, but never got much out of. I remember pulling out the book and asking a ticket clerk what time the next train for Nagoya was, but he kept telling me the time now. It wasn’t till much later that I realized that […]