月別アーカイブ: 2016年9月

Level2 – Viking

カテゴリー: Tim | 投稿日: | 投稿者:

Level2 – Viking

My classes this week are about restaurants so I’d like to write a blog about a very common mistake my students sometimes make.

A: What did you have for lunch?
B: We ate Viking! (バイキング）

When I first came to Japan I was very surprised by this answer because :

バイキング, in English is an all you can eat buffet and it’s inspired by Swedish Smörgåsbord (buffet) restaurants. The Hotel that started the trend in Japan (the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo) thought that Smörgåsbord was not a catchy name and also was difficult to pronounce. At that time “The Vikings” was a very popular Hollywood film. Someone watched it and thought that Viking was a perfect word for buffet style dining. After all both words come from Scandinavia. Personally I am not so sure.

Important Expressions:
a common mistake
an all you can eat buffet
be inspired by
catchy
difficult to pronounce
I am not so sure

Level 3/4 Catch !

カテゴリー: Jaimie | 投稿日: | 投稿者:

Level 3/4  Catch !

image           image

Hello everyone, I’m sure you are all thrilled to hear that after a brief hiatus we are starting our weekly blogs again!!

Hope you all had a wonderful summer( the weather has been fantastic this year hasn’t it?) and I’m glad to see you all back looking tanned and refreshed.

Today we are going to concentrate on the word catch.

“Why?” You may find yourself wondering, well it’s because I spent most of my summer holiday catching various creatures with my very energetic and enthusiastic children.

First was tadpoles, not really summer more like spring ,we caught about 40 of these little beasts in the pond in front of Fukuoka City Museum in Momochi let half go and took the rest home and were soon blessed with the birth of about 20 baby frogs which we kept on my balcony. Quite a horror show. Next was diving beetles, captured at the same place and surprisingly long lived they lasted about 3 months! Summer came and the inevitable cry of “ I want to catch cicadas.” came from my son’s mouth. This is a rather harrowing time for me since there are no insects quite so big in the rather cool part of the world I come from and when my son says “I” he means you, namely me since he is rather scared of them himself and my wife can’t touch them. We then moved on to crabs from the beach, a disastrous process of trial and error when we realised that they don’t survive long when left in direct sunlight for long periods of time.
They died.
Last but not least was catching the mythical creatures known as pokemon, easy to find, never die(unlike my i-phone battery), and cost nothing to keep. I have found they are the perfect pets.

As you can see it was an eventful summer for me and due to all this outdoor activity I managed to catch the sun pretty well this year and got the suntan of a lifetime, didn’t catch a single minute of the Rio Olympics, was able to catch up with my kids a bit since I only usually see them sleeping, managed to catch a few z’s myself (a precious luxury) and at the end of all that I caught a nice dose of food poisoning from some dodgy mayonnaise that I ate.

Catch you at the next lesson.

Jaimie.

Level 1- A Day at the Zoo

カテゴリー: Tim | 投稿日: | 投稿者:

Tim’s Blog – A Day at the Zoo

Last Thursday I wasn’t very busy so I went to the zoo and the botanical garden. I went there with my family.

The botanical garden is my favourite place in Fukuoka. On weekdays there are few people, so I can relax.

We went to the zoo after Irene’s (my daughter) school. She was really excited, she really loves the zoo.

We stayed there until 16:30. After the zoo, I went to my school in Yakuin and Irene went to her ballet practice. We were very tired, but we had a very good time.

This Saturday we are going to go to the night zoo. Irene is again very excited.

What about you? What’s your favourite place in Fukuoka? Have you ever been to the zoo?

Tim and Irene at the Botanical Garden

Cute Irene is very excited!!

Important Vocabulary and Expressions:
・on weekdays
・there are few people (there are some people, there are many people)
・excited, tired (I am excited. I am tired, I was excited, I was tired, she is tired, she is excited  etc.)
・I am going to go to the night zoo ( I am going to go to work tomorrow, I am going to go drinking on Saturday)