Recently in Step 5 Category

Today was the debate. We ended up with 3 for the negative and 4 for the positive. People read up on the topic and everyone admitted it is a difficult one, but they learn a lot.

It has been a fun class and I enjoyed working with you. I think most of you plan to continue taking this class next term. I am sure Carlos has a lot of interesting things planned for the class. Remember there is no class next week and the first class will be April 5.

We had a full house today with two people doing make up classes. We started the class with the short listening about the 1% increase in US incomes in January. In the report they talked about the negative savings rate and this article gives a little more information. This article addresses some the points I brought in class about how investments are treated.

We moved on to our topic of the Kyoto Protocol and people were assigned the position that they have to defend. I then gave you time to discuss with your partners the approach you are going to take. The following links might help you out a little.
link 1
link 2

Carlos said he had good time in the class and is looking forward to teaching it starting in April. He said you talked a little bit about the Kyoto Protocol and he showed you the trailer for the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. I don't know if there has been much about it in the news here in Japan, but Al Gore is taking a lot of heat (pun intended) for his energy use.

Next week we will talk more about the debate structure and then make up teams for each side. You won't get to pick the side you want to debate. The assignments will be made at random.

We did the short listening at the beginning of class today and there were a lot of good words and idioms that came up.

We started talking about debate and the different aspects. If you want to watch one, you can go here. Watch the one in Japanese and tell me what you think next time. You can read more on the topic here.

Update: I forgot to ask, but did anyone check on the Al Gore effect?

A real slow start today and we ended up with only four people. I had forgotten that Shio had said she was going to be gone and Atsuko and something else. I guess everyone else was tired from shoveling snow, but Ai lives in a condo. I wonder what her excuse will be.

We did the listening a little bit differently today. Instead of me giving you questions, you had to think of questions based on the title of the news story. It was pretty difficult and there were really only two questions that could be answered by listening to the story. We then spent some time talking about air travel and the headaches you can have.

The next topic we will be talking about will be global warming/climate change. We are going to do it in a debate format. We will talk about this topic and learn the ins and outs of debating. To prepare for the topic you should start (in English) reading as much as you can about it.

I hope you enjoyed the little bit of Valentine's Day trivia and if you want to learn more about conversation hearts you can go here.

Some very interesting floor plans and some of them were very detailed. On this site a person shares his ideas for his dream house. It is really detailed and should give you some ideas to think about when planning your own home in the future. You might find this design site useful, too.

I think we have exhausted the housing theme, so we will move on to something else unless you have something you would like to explore. I haven't decided on a topic for next time and will be looking for something over the weekend. Post a comment or send me an e-mail if you have an idea.

We started off with the short listening about shoppers who go into a store, but then don't buy anything. If you want to listen to others you can go here. We also talked about co-housing and looked at a video clip from CNN. Most of the people in the class weren't interested in this housing option.

Shiho and Masami were interviewed by the homeowners in the class to find out about their lifestyles, so they could give them some advice about building their homes. We also learned what people would change in their homes if they could. I mentioned that I would change my house to a central heating system and this is the type I would buy.

The homework for next week is to plan your dream home. Draw your floor plan and think about heating systems and other features you would like. This site might give you some ideas.

We went over the advantages and disadvantages of buying a condo. This article will give a few ideas of what to look for when buying a condo. We talked about the lifestyle issues when deciding to buy a condo or a house. We also got people's opinions about owning a house. The things people don't like about owning a home is the yard work, snow removal, and cost of maintenance.

Next week we will talk about some other housing options and question Masami, Shiho, Ai, and Atsuko about their lifestyles and daily routines. From the information we get will give them some suggestions on what to include in their house designs.

We started off the class with the listening exercise and as I thought there were a lot words and phrases you didn't know. If you want to listen to it more go here and you can read about it here.

After talking about this topic we moved on to the theme for this month—housing. We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of buying and renting. I mentioned the calculators you can use to help you figure out the financial angle. To try it out go here. Next week we will look at house vs condo.

Well, I was hoping that we would get off on the right foot in the new year and have everyone show up on time, but no one should up at 10:45. Oh well, maybe next week. There were some very interesting New Year Resolutions and Manami did the best guessing whose was whose.

People were pretty optimistic in their predictions for 2007 and I hope most of them come true. One of the predictions was about taxes and there was some confusion about what will happen with the taxes this year. This article gives some information about them.

I got some good ideas for the coming months and I will try to use many of them in the class.

We had quite the spread today. People really pulled out all the stops today and made some delicious things. We talked about a wide range of topics and I hoped that Atsuko could give her impression of Its a Wonderful Life, but she has had a chance to watch it yet. Maybe she will have a chance during the break and can tell us about it the first class.

I was impressed with the research that you did on the different Christmas customs. Masami talked about Xmas, Atsuko, Manami and Ai the Japanese Christmas cake, Eiko Christmas cards, Shio Christmas stockings, Kaori Christmas trees, Ryoko the first Christmas in Japan and I talked about Santa Claus.

I was a little surprised that people weren't more familiar with the Christmas Carol or A Visit from St. Nick (probably one of the most parodied items from Christmas).

We only had five people today, but we had a really interesting discussion on meme and the relationship to traditions. We looked at what some of the meme that might be associated with some of the Japanese holidays. One group talked about the Coming-of-Age Day holiday. (Nobody knew when it started or why, but I hope someone can find out.) One of the points that came up in the discussion was that the number of young men wearing kimonos seemed to be increasing and the number of young women renting kimonos instead of getting them as gifts was also increasing. These were seen as examples of the meme evolving. This led to the observation that the drunken behavior at the public ceremonies may lead to the cancellation of those events thus killing off the host for this meme. I guess this a good point as long as we are interpreting Dawkins' theory correctly.

At the end of class we made a list of Japanese Christmas traditions and the homework is to pick one and try to trace it back to the source. Pay careful attention to how it has changed overtime and in Japan. I will do Santa Claus, so please pick another one. If you need ideas post a comment and maybe someone in the class can help you.

In discussing the article we discovered many of the Japanese public holidays are hard to classify according the author's definition. We talked about why some the public holidays in the States might be "problematic" and then talked about Japanese traditions. Most of the talk centered on New Years. We will talk more about that later. I have given you a research project and I am looking forward to what you discover. Good luck in finding the meaning of meme and the relationship to tradition and customs.

The article mentioned the Thanksgiving Day parade in New York. You can learn more about it here.

Update: I forgot to put in a link for the Buy Nothing Day and the truth about Black Friday

Congratulations to Masami, the winner of our class paper, scissors, stone (rock) tournament. If you didn't have a chance to read the whole article in class take a look at home. If you want to practice or learn more about the game go here.

It took people a little longer than I thought it would to match the dates and holidays. I mentioned next week is Thanksgiving Day in the States, so to learn more about the traditions associated with this holiday go here. Read the article I gave and think about the importance of traditions on a national level and personal one.

Update: We talked about tornadoes a week ago, so I thought you might find this article interesting.

People are still getting used to the new seat assignment system. I think this way will work much better than the way we did it in the past. We talked about the tornado that hit Saroma and focused on the vocabulary used to talk about natural disasters. The one article talked about the F-scale and you can read about the creator here.

At the end of class we talked a little bit about the US elections and I mentioned that talking about elections and sports has a lot in common when it comes to the vocabulary used. Shio thought that might be a good topic fort he next class.

Today's class was a little different, so I hope you liked it. The articles were a little off beat, but interesting. I mentioned the Jerusalem Syndrome which is very different from our class SSS. I was surprised the no one had heard of eBay. I think it is big everywhere, but Japan. I also brought up Craig's List and as you can see, if you followed the link, it is a pretty plain site.

The other activity we did was related to cliches. I was surprised that you didn't know these very common ones. If you would like to learn more go here.

I am looking for ideas about what you would like to do in this class for the next month. If you have any ideas please post them in the comments by next Monday.

First of all thank you for the cake. I was surprised, but for my waistline I probably should have eaten the tofu cake. The jokes were very good and I think some of you have a real talent for joke telling. With a little practice on your pacing and timing you could get a lot of laughs. It was amazing that three people out of eight picked the same joke. Luckily, two of them had a back up.

We didn't have time to come up with a new topic for next month, so please give me ideas by posting a comment.

Today Atsuko joined us as the tenth and final person for this class. Even though we now have ten people in the roll book I don't think we will ever have to worry about having everyone here at once.

We talked about jokes today and discussed the origins of jokes and how they spread. I was surprised that no one knew what a knock-knock joke was. We also went over the paper on how to tell jokes (a longer version) which will be important for next week when you tell your jokes.

This is a blog entry that comments on the article I gave you to read. Everyone seemed to agree that Japanese people don't tell jokes, but do more with puns. I would be interested in hearing more about Japanese jokes. Don't people make jokes about people from other parts of Japan. Osakan make jokes about Tokyoites and vice versa,

The homework is to read the article I gave you and prepare a joke to tell in class. This site has a lot to choose from. It is best if you memorize the joke and not read it.

This class just keeps getting bigger and bigger. We have space for one more person and I think the person may come next week.

We continued our talk about humor and comedy. People brought in several different senryu and I introduced limericks. We listened to the Abbott and Costello classic Who's on First?. We also talked about comedy duos and Japanese manzai.

I asked people to talk about their favorite types of comedy or comedians. There was a wide variety. Next week we are going to talk about jokes and the last class this month you will have a chance to tell a joke. Try to find a good one.

This class is slowly growing back to its original size. As of now we have seven people, but it looks like Masami will be coming back, so we will have eight.

On the day of our pot luck we didn't decide on a topic for this month, so I decided that talking would be good because we will having English rakugo. We started today by talking about the different types of humor and I talked about a few of the ones from this list. We then talked about why humor was found in all cultures and the purpose of humor. In the process the topic of Japanese types of humor, like rakugo, came up. I was introduced to something I don't remember ever hearing before and that is senryu. The homework for next week is to bring some translations of senryu to class.

I forgot to put in some links to the humorists that I mentioned in class: Mark Twain,Will Rogers, Art Buchwald, and Dave Barry

We talked about the future of Japanese food culture and what direction people thought it might take. I mentioned that I was reading a book about the Tsutsuji Fish Market (I couldn't find a link for the book.) and the author talks a lot about Japanese food culture. I will try to remember to bring it next class.

The pot luck started a little late and went until almost 1:00. There were a lot of delicious foods and they were all very healthy. The problem was that I ate too much.

Sorry this post ended up being so late. It has been a little hectic getting Eva and Carlos moved and settled.

In class today we got a little sidetracked with a talk about wood stoves and I think Keiko may be having second thoughts after hearing Kaori and I talk about the things you need to do when you own a wood stove. I think the possibility of having mice in the woodpile was the worst thing for her.

We did talk a little bit about the food scares and scandals. We also touched on the food traceability issue just at the end. Atsue couldn't make it to class, but she did send this interesting linkIf you haven't seen the Meatrix you should and if you liked it then watch the next episode. You might find this article on food traceability interesting.

Remember next week is our pot luck of healthy dishes.

People had trouble listening to the podcasts and there were some questions about exactly what a podcast was. If you would like to learn a little bit more than what I told you in class you can go here. We listened to parts of one and went over the comprehension questions. In the podcast this mentioned this site. Take a look and see if any ideas might be useful for Japan.

The homework for next week is to think about some of the food scares or scandals that have occurred over the last couple of decades. Also check on the food traceability program that is being established.

I must apologize again for the mix up with the links. To find the things you read in class today go to this link and this one. The podcasts that I mentioned are The Politics of Food and Fat Kids and Beer. You can download the comprehension questions here . This a link to the site they mention in the second podcast.

There is a lot of material here, but I think you will really find it interesting.
Update: I forgot to make a link to Suzanne Summers

Update: I found this article this morning. I haven't checked the website yet.

We talked about obesity today and looked at from many different aspects. No one had check their BMI, so I found this calculator for you. This link will take you to someone who has a very negative opinion of the index.

I think that for next week we can talk about some of the popular diets that are out there. I will put some links to them on Monday, so please check back.

Sorry, there was a problem with the software and I lost the links that I put in earlier. I hope you were able to read them before they disappeared.

The vacation is over and time to get back to work. Today we had a small class of only 4 people. We talked about my summer vacation (I hope to upload some pictures soon.) and what other people did. I also asked for a run down of the big news stories for time I was gone. In my whole time in the States I didn't hear one word in the news about Japan.

Towards the end of the class we started talking about our next topic nutrition, food and cooking. I will be looking around for some interesting articles to talk about, so keep checking back.

When I brought of the topic of nutrition at the end of class I mentioned the problem of obesity in America. This link is to a site with some basic information, but if you want even more detail take a look here. I will keep looking for more information for next week.

There were a lot of interesting travel plans, but my attempt at guessing people's destinations was a real bust. The only two I got right were Masami and Manami. Of all the trips Atsue's was probably the most ambitious, but the jet lag was going to be a real killer.

After talking about everyone's trips I mentioned Elderhostel and university alumni tours. After I retire I will have to check these types of things out.

We finished off the class with talking about travel horror stories. Everyone had one except for Riyoko! She said she did have one because she was extra cautious. I liked Masami's about getting stuck in Mexico because she didn't have her passport to get back into the U.S.

No one was interested in keeping the Japanese tradition of summer vacation homework alive, so there is no homework for the break. I will keep you posted on the topic for the first class after the break.

Eiko did a good job in finding me a ticket to Ireland and a nice place in Hawaii. In our talk a lot of good things came up about travel. Riyoko mentioned the good ticket price her daughter found for going to Canada from Chitose via Taipei on Eva Airways. A student in another class told me about the good price he got for tickets to Paris. I will have to keep my eye on that airline. We also talked about the need to reconfirm flights when you are overseas. I couldn't find the page that I referred to, but I found this site that has some good information. In my notes I found this also:

Even if you meet these requirements, the airline might refuse to compensate you if any of the following is true:

* you did not comply with the airline's ticketing, check-in and reconfirmation requirements
* you are not acceptable for transportation under the airline's usual rules and practices (for example, you are drunk)
* the entire flight was canceled and so on.

I also came across other sites that said reconfirming was no longer required, but I think it still might depend on the airline. Ask around and see what you can find out.

The homework for next week is to plan your dream vacation. You have 15 days and 300,000 yen. The airfare is extra. The 300,000 yen is to use at your destination.

Update: This is an interesting article about divorce that would have gone well with our topic a few weeks ago.

We only have a couple of weeks before summer vacation, so I decided to pick travel as our next subject. I know it is too late to do much planning for this vacation, but maybe you can use what you learn for your winter vacation. We looked over the travel tips at TheTravelzine.com. I will give some links to other online travel sites where you can plan your trips and then give you some search challenges to see what information you can find.

General Travel sites:
Orbtiz
Expedia
Travelocity

There are sites you can you use when you have decided on a location that can help make more detailed plans for that destination. For example, AlaskaOne.com or Aloha2Hawaii. Most of the guide book companies (Fodors) have sites, too.

Of course, the airlines (United Airlines) and hotel chains (Hilton Hotels) also have sites you can use. Many them offer discounts if you book online.

I found this video about using online sources for making travel plans. It is a little old and it is long, almost 30 minutes. If you decide to take a look at it click on the Stream link for 265.

Search Challenge
I would like to visit Hawaii, but I want to get off the beaten path. Also I want to have the luxuries of modern life. What kind of place or tour can you find for me?

Next I want to visit some friends in Dublin, Ireland for two weeks. I will be staying with them, so all I need is airline tickets. I can go anytime, so find the best deal on tickets.

The topic of adoption covered a lot of different topics. I was surprised that only one person knew someone personally who had adopted someone and in that case it was a relative's child. There were some good questions about why adoption was more common in the States and why people looked overseas when they wanted to adopt.

We couldn't come up with a topic at the end of class, so I guess I will need to think of something. I will try to keep it a lighter topic than we have had in the past few weeks. Keep checking back here for links to the topic I pick or for information about what to prepare for class.

Update: I have finally come up with a topic for this week's class. With summer vacation coming soon I think a good topic for the next couple of weeks will be travel. I don't have any links for you to read today, but I may bring a handout for you to class.

I thought I had posted something, but it seems to have disappeared. Our discussion of blended families covered a lot of ground and some specialized vocabulary came up. Of course, there were were words like stepmother or stepson, but also something like bonus child. In the discussion it was pretty much agreed on that in Japan you would not introduce someone as your step .... and there really isn't a word that people could use. We also talked about the usage of the word biological ..... This finally led to the topic of adoption which is what we will talk about next week. I guess the best place to start with topic is here. There are a lot of good links to follow, but take a look at thisone. I will keep my eyes open for other articles this week, so keep checking back.

A couple of other things we talked about were recumbent bicycles, Canada Day and the 4th of July.

Update 1: You might want to take a look at this site.

Update 2: This is a page with information about the procedures for adoption in Japan.

Update 3: One more article and this should be enough for this topic.

Our talk about divorce covered a wide range today and there was a lot of speculation about the future of the divorce rate in Japan. The main question was how the change to the law requiring a man to share his pensions with his wife if they divorce. The consensus seemed to be that the divorce rate will go up among seniors. I found this article about the problem. I mentioned the topic for next week will be blended families, but I will need to search for a good article. Keep checking back. I also forgot to mention the movie War of the Roses as another movie about divorce.

There are many many sites dedicated to helping blended families, but I didn't find any good articles about the issue. You might find this article interesting. Of course, we will talk about the Japanese side of the issue in class also. See if you can find something about Japan. I posted too soon. I just found this article that I think is interesting.

Our talk about parenthood and parenting covered a lot of different topics, but my plan to show you some clips from the movie didn't work out. If you have time rent the DVD, I think you will like it. Just before I sat done to write this I came across this article related to our topic. I wish I had found it sooner.

The topic for next week is divorce and here is a podcast on the topic. When you put the word into a search engine you get millions of links. This is one to a site that is dedicated to the issue. This site is full of divorce stats, but the creator would like to reform divorce laws in the US to make them more restrictive. What are some of the statistics for Japan? What is is image of divorce?

We talked about the declining number of marriages and the reasons. I asked if people thought it was because people are being selfish and are unwilling to compromise. We talked about cohabitation and mentioned some figures for the USA. I got the information from this site. There are a lot of other links on this site that you might want to look at. I also mentioned the number of men still living at home. That number came from this article, but I heard it first in this podcast. (By clicking on it should will be able to listen to it on your computer.) There are some interesting comments.

The topic for next week is parenthood or parenting. I will try to find some articles for you to look at. Remember to try to find information on Japan if you can. Also I would suggest that you try to make a list of key vocabulary words that you would like to try to use in the discussion next time.

Update: I forgot to put the link to an article about helicopter paretns. This link will take you to the ABC News story that I saw. I was hoping that there would be a video clip, but there isn't.

People were able to take trip down memory lane today with the talk about weddings. Hisa was the only person who didn't have a wedding ceremony or reception. Everyone else had pretty conventional one. There was only one person who had a Christian ceremony besides me. Everyone was thinking the same way and brought in information from the new wedding hall in town. This company must think there is still a lot of growth in the wedding market, but I have heard that there are some hotels scaling back on this type of business and looking at hosting funerals (another growth business) instead.

The topic for next week is why are fewer people getting married and why are people getting married later. One thing I would like to talk about is what the advantages of getting married younger might be and if you think that there is a chance that people will start getting married younger in the future. I will look around for some articles this weekend and try to post something early next week, but here is one article about Japan. I am not sure how this article fits in with our topic but it is interesting. I will try to find more, but it may also be related to divorce.

Today was the first time that we had everyone in class. Let's see if we can do it two weeks in a row.

The lesson today was about retirement and people shared their images of retirement, talked about a traditional Japanese retirement and discussed what is important for a successful retirement. Finally, we talked about my plans for retirement. This link and this one have a comparison of American and Japanese retirement systems.Here is more about Japanese retirement and the elderly. See if you can find the interesting contrast between these articles.

I know I said that we would talk about the Japanese wedding industry next week, but it looks like it is going to take me some time to find a good article. Keep checking back this to find a link.

Here is an article about Japanese wedding. It is a little old, but see if you agree with it and what has changed since it was written. Also see if you can find some facts and figures about Japanese weddings. For example, costs, numbers, styles.

Update: This link is to some US wedding statistics.

I thought the discussion about happiness today was fun and interesting. I hope you enjoyed it, too. This link will take you to a page where you can find the article I talked about. You will need to scroll down the page. We can talk a little bit more about this next week if you have any questions.

The topic for next week is retirement. There are many different aspects of retirement that we can discuss, but what people seemed most interested in was why I want to retire at 55 and what I plan to do. We can use that as a jumping off point, but why don't you look at these articles. 1 and 2.

I think our discussion of regrets went well and hearing some of your stories was very interesting. Of course, the regrets we were talking about weren't on the scale the Mitch was referring to. Read this article(it covers other topics as well) and we will talk about the idea of happiness. This aricle takes a different few.

We continued with the book and talked a little more about the touchy-feely. Here is a good definition and an example sentence. We also talked about the health survey and I gave you another short one in class. In the second one I gave you there were not questions about tobacco or alcohol. In our talk the body mass index came up. This article will tell you more about it.

In the story today we talked about regrets and I think this might be a good topic for next class. This article may have some useful information for you.

Update: Did you see the pictures of Horie-san on TV yesterday? He lost so much weight! This is going to be bad for the police because they are going to be so much busier with people breaking the law to get into such a great weight loss program!

We talked about ADHD today and I was surprised how much research you had done. It is a complicated issue and there is a lot of information available. The hard part is sorting through it all. We didn't come up with a topic at the end of class, so I would like you to go to this site and do the questionnaire. At the end you will get a health recommendation. (You will need to turn off the pop up blocker on your browser.) I would like you to think about what lifestyle changes you need to make to lead a healthier life. We will compare ideas next week. Also think about the biggest health problems in Japan.

We talked about a few topics for the next few weeks and we will see how things go. The topic for next week is Attention Deficit Disorder. This link is just one that you might want to take a look at to get an idea about this issue. I will try to find something that we can look at in class. This site is interesting so take a look.

At the end of class we talked about Easter and people were wondering how the day was decided. This link explains it. For more information about Friday the 13th go here.

We got started with the new semester today. I asked for some topics that you might be interested in talking about this term. I got a lot of different ones and I will see what kind of material I can find. I gave you a chance to get to know some the people you had never met and we went over the book. I guess we will continue with the book for this semester. If you get tired of it just let me know and we can change.

With the new school year stating next week I think that this article might be interesting to talk about.

Today was the last class and we continued talking about travel. Next term we won't be using a textbook, so the first class I would like to get your ideas about what topics you would like to talk about this coming six months. I will also share with you some the ideas that I have.

Here is an example of the topic we might discuss next time.:)

Everyone was back today and it has been over a month since we have had perfect attendance. We mainly swapped travel stories today. When I look back over all the trips I have taken, I have had quite a few troubles. I am glad to say that most of them were caused by an airline (Northwest mostly) or the weather, and not being disorganized. One tip I forgot to mention is that when you have trouble with an airline you should also get a document saying the delay was not weather related. When you get to your destination you may need it to get the airline to treat you correctly. Also make sure you get the name of the person you are dealing with. It is amazing how much more helpful they are when they see you taking down their names.

We went over the homework and talked a little bit more about the book. This started a short discussion about childhood obesity in America. This could be a really good topic for next term. I hope you have started thinking of things you would like to talk about from April. We won't be using a textbook, so we will need to come up with a lot of different topics. I taught this class several years ago when we didn't use a textbook, but it was more difficult because I didn't have a blog and many of you didn't use the internet.

In today's lesson we talked about tips for traveling and if you want more go here. No homework for next week unless you want to do the assignment that was due today.

We went over the homework and practiced using future perfect, future perfect continous and gerunds as the objects of prepositions.

We also looked at the cultural points for North America and talked about if they were the same for Japan or different. Here is the article that I mentioned. It might be useful for your homework. Remember pick only one of the three topics and don't write more than five pages.

We started the new unit on culture shock and heard from the people who had lived overseas about their experiences. None of them really experienced much culture shock, but they were all a little lonely at first because of their inability to communicate much in English. They had one thing in common and they were all in their mid-20s when they went overseas to study. They said that they saw many Japanese teenagers having trouble.

We ended up talking a lot about when I first came to Obihiro and what I experienced. I also didn't suffer from culture shock, but part of the reason might be that this is Hokkaido. I have heard it is much more difficult in more traditional parts of Japan.

Everyone was back today and think this was the first time since winter vacation. We talked about the Olympics a bit and a few people are staying up to watch some of the events. I mentioned that I thought the ratings were down for the Olympics and this article is about that.

We went over the homework and practiced non-defining relative clauses as sentence modifiers. We also talked about collocations and you had to try to recognize some common ones. I also mentioned that dictionary publishers are doing more in this area and I found this site that you might find interesting.

There is no homework for next week.

Manami was sick today and Yumiko was helping at the international food festival in the FujiMaru. We talked about unique solutions and also did the listening exercise. One of the inventions mentioned is already available. Read about the TIVo here. You can read about the RFID chip that I mentioned here.

We talked about the everyday objects and how we use them, why are they useful and ways to use them for other purposes. One of the things that came up was about buttons and if you want to learn more go here. We also talked about aluminum foil and I mentioned a unique use. To read more go here and here. Plus you might want to read this.

The homework for next week is to think of time when you were faced with a situation and had to come up with a unique solution.

Update: Here is a link to the matchbook collection that I told you about.

We got off to slow start today, but by 11:00 everyone was here. We got on the topic of Korean TV shows which then spread to talk about Japanese TV and why there are so few good dramas. This then started a topic of some of the changes in American TV. I told you a little bit about some of the technological changes that are changing the way TV is being watched. I mentioned TiVo, iTunes downloads of TV programs, and the simultaneous release of the movie Bubble on cable, DVD and in the theaters. We also talked about the TV show 24.

Finally, at the end of class the topic of Groundhog's Day came up. I also mentioned the movie. I think you can probably find it at the video rental shop.

We talked about creativity and ways you were creative in you everyday lives. I mentioned cooking in your dishwasher to save time, but people were shocked. Here is a recipe.

The homework for next week is to look at the grammar focus on page 75 and think of solutions for the 4 situations on page 76.

We had a little better turn out today. Yumko called before class and said she couldn't make it because one of her children was sick. We continued our discussion about middle-age life in Japan. A lot of different ideas came out, but I wonder from what I heard if middle-aged people are happy or not. Maybe I misunderstood you and if I did let me know what you think in the comments section.

There is no homework for next week, but you might find this article interesting and this one, too.

Only Miyoko today, so we talked about the holidays, movies and the homework. It will be interesting to hear other people's opinions about middle age. See you all next week I hope.

We had everyone here for the first time in a long time. We continued with the story, but we discovered that there had been a small misunderstanding about what you heard last week. I think got all cleared up in the end. When I asked if everyone had done the homework, everyone looked very sheepish.

We continued our talk about values and did a listening exercise about the people who had influenced the speaker. It wasn't too difficult, but there were a few minor points people missed. We then talked about people who had influenced you.

The homework for the break is to do the homework that you were supposed to have done for today and do the reading on page p.73. Think about being middle-aged in Japan. Is it similar to what the article is talking about?

After class you had a chance to sample my suet pudding and once again I was surprised that everyone liked it. As we were talking about Christmas dishes the topic of stuffing came up and you requested that I give you my recipe. It is loosely based on the one from the JOY of Cooking.

I don't use the giblets and I alter the amounts based on my experience, so it is going to be a little difficult to write down, but here it goes.

First saute about a handful of chopped onions in butter and then add them to about 4 cups of dried bread that has been cut into cubes. It says that you should cut off the crust, but I don't. The Japanese white bread crust isn't think or hard, so it isn't a problem. Next you need to put in the other ingredients 1/4 cup of chopped parsley, 1/2 cup of celery (you might want to know who is eating the stuffing because I have discovered many people don't like celery) 1 tsp of basil, 3/4 tsp of salt, 1/2 tsp of paprika, 1/8 tsp of nutmeg (I put in a little more). I also add chestnuts.(The first time I did this I used the ones that are roasted at the store, but later switched to the sweetened ones that you buy in a bottle. I use one bottle and chop in to small pieces. I also add chopped oysters. I usually buy two of the tubes. Save the juice from the oysters to add to the mixture if it is too dry. I mix it all together and the only way to do it well is with your hands. The mixture should be pretty moist and if the bread still seems dry add some juice from the oysters or you can use either melted butter or milk.

You are now ready to stuff the turkey or chicken. Don't stuff in too much because sometimes it won't cook in the center. If you have any left over you can wrap it in foil and put it in the oven with the turkey. The stuffing is done when bird is cooked. You can also cook the stuffing outside the bird in a casserole pan, but I don't think it tastes as cook because you don't get the juices from the bird. If you have any questions post a comment.

There was no homework to check today and I read another part of the book. In introducing today's reading I mentioned the idea of a teachable moment. When I did a search with Google a lot of sites came up, but I think this one was very straight forward.

We went on the B section of the unit and there were a lot of good vocabulary words introduced for talking about values and attitudes. If you were absent this week make sure that you take a look at them before the next class. The homework for next week is to do grammar exercises on page 71.

Just an update on something that I said last week about Black Friday. I said that Black Friday was the biggest shopping day of the year for retail stores, but it turns out that it isn't true. You can read more about it here.

We continued talking about values today. People selected four values that they thought were important. Miyoko and Kaori were almost the same, but Hisa and Manami were totally different. The discussions moved on to talking about individuality vs community. We did a lot of talking about neighborhood associations. Later I remembered this book and here is a discussion of the issue. Take a look and let me know what you think by posting a comment.

Manami, Yumiko and I had a nice discussion about a variety of topics and went over a few pages in the textbook.

The first topic we talked about was Thanksgiving Day in the US. This link will take you to site that specializes in Black Friday shopping information. This link will tell you the origins of the word. I forgot to mention Buy Nothing Day that was started to try to offset the madness of the Christmas shopping season.

The homework for next week is to do #5 on page 67 and #6 on page 68. If you were absent today then you should also look over the grammar points on page 67 because you will need to use the pattern in the discussion that we will have next week.

We did our second installment of the book. In today's reading there was the mention of Lou Gehrig's disease. Most of you knew he was a baseball player but to read more about him go .

Update: Here is a link to an opinion piece about the death of newspapers. What do you think?

We started the new warm up activity today and we will see how it goes. If you think it is a waste of time please tell me.

We talked about newspapers and people's reading habits. We also talked about their other sources of news. I mentioned Craig's List and I would like you to look at it. Think about why this kind of site is having an impact on newspapers in the US and what it might mean for a local newspaper like the Kachimai. Especially, in light of what you said about the local paper.

I also introduced rss/xml readers and this list may help you find one. There are also Japanese ones available. Check the link in the sidebar of this blog at the bottom.

Finally, at the end I brought up the information on biodiesel As I said I think the Japanese government, co-ops and car manufacturers are being short-sighted on this one. If you want to make it yourself go here.

Update: There was a question about why scrap was used in the word scrapbook and may be that scrap is part of a whole.

Another update: This is related to what we were talking about in class. Do you think the numbers would be the same in Japan?

Today we listened to some music by Steve Seskin. One reason I picked him is because he is a storyteller and we have spent the last few weeks talking about telling stories and think his music provides a good example. We ended up doing two songs which took longer than I thought it was going to. We did have a chance to check last week's homework at the end of class. There is no homework for next week.

We started out the class today listening to a song by Mary Black. If you would like to see the lyrics go here.

We continued with the unit on story telling and listened to people talk about their most embarrassing moment. In the talk the word scatter-brained came up. The thing to remember is that this is pretty negative word and someone would be insulted if you called them this. You can use it about your self if you like.

The homework for next week is to write a story using the sentences in #8 part A and the words from part B. Next week we will have small group because a couple of people have to be absent.

I think we got off to a good start today. The warm up activity was a song and if you would like to learn more about the singer you can go here. If you want to find out about the The Roadhouse podcast go here. I will be talking more about podcasts in my presentation at Engish Expo.

We started the unit on storytelling and talked about what makes a good storyteller. We listened to two stories from the book and people found them interesting. The homework for next week is to do number 3 on page 59 and then think about an embarrassing moment that you would like to share with us. Try to use adverbs with past and past perfect forms. Remember try to balance the amount of details you are going to include. You don't want too many, but not too few either.

I am looking forward to your comments.

Zenta brought some sponge cakes that he had made on his business trip. They were testing different kinds of flour from different varieties of wheat. It is very good cake, so I guess if he gets tired of doing wheat research he can open a cake shop.

The three teachers were absent this evening, but I figured they probably would be because it is the end of the year. This time of year they are busy finishing up grades, helping people move and a lot of farewell parties. I hope that they can make it to the party tomorrow.

The ideas for the businesses were good. Yuki wants to create a company that would make customized beckoning cats, Hayato would open a soba shop and Haruko would open a vet clinic in conjunction with a psychiatrist who uses animals as party of the therapy. Some good ideas and if any of you have ideas you thought of you can post them in the comments or send me an e-mail.

Hope to see you at the events next week.

We had Amy with us this evening because she will be taking over this class from April. Only Yuki checked on the wordLuddite. There is also this disscussion of how the word is used in the media today.

We moved on to the unit on entrepreneurs. We talked about some the famous ones in Japan and the US. We also talked about what made them successful. One of the American ones that came up was Martha Stewart and one person wanted to know why her products were so popular. This article doesn't really explain the appeal, but it outlines the danger of basing the brand on one person.

The homework for next week is to come up with your own business idea. Think about what you would like to and what kind of business you could start. Zenta has a business trip next week so he will miss class, but he can post is idea in the comments section.

We listened to the comedian's routine about technology again, but ironically I had trouble with the CD before we could listen to it. People didn't laugh any more this week than they did last week. I thought if people could read the tapescript they might think it was funnier.

We talked about the Amish and their simple lifestyle. No one thought my suggestion of a no technologyweekend sounded like much fun. Maybe when it gets warmer we can all give it a try. The homework for next week is to find out if you are a Luddite.

After class Yuki asked about the reading at the end of the chapter. He wanted to know what dolphin free tuna was. This article will give you some more information.

Zenta came directly to JOY from the station. He had just gotten back from a two-day buisness trip to Sapporo. He looks very good in a suit and tie. Yuka was absent today, but this is getting to be a busy season for teachers.

We looked over the structure of the essay and talked about the differences between tvs and computers. It seems everyone has cut down on the amount of the tv they watch, but except for Akiko and I they haven't replaced it with internet time. Here are some stats on internet usage around the world.

We moved on to part B of this unit on technology and science. The first activity was trying to explain how different things worked. The toaster, and hair dryer weren't too difficult, but the camera was a challenge.Next we did the listening exercise which was a comedian talking about how exasperated he gets with technology. No one laughed and parts of it were hard to catch. I will bring the tapescript next week and we will listen again. There were a couple of things that I mentioned. For example, using not at the end of sentence. We learned from JJ at the counter after class that it came from the movie Wayne's World There was also reference to the movie 2001 Space Odyssey.

The homework for next week is to do #3 on page 99.

Zenta, Kazunori and Yuki stayed after for >English Time. Yuki sat and talked with a high school student at the English Table, but Zenta, Kazunori and I sat in front of the fireplace. Yumiko joined us later. I think the English Time idea has potential, so I hope more people will come next time.

It was quite the snow storm tonight. I am glad that people still decided to come. When I left the office it was really blowing and I was dreading the drive home. The drifting can be really bad on the road I use. The nice thing was that the winds died down after I got past the Rokkatei baseball field in Kitafushiko. There were a few times when I couldn't see anything before I got there, but at least the drive home wasn't a complete whiteout. I have been telling you about my snow blower so, here is a picture.

Last night Yuka gave her presentation on her trip to London. She also brought some very nice pictures. Here favorite place was St. Paul's Cathderal. She did a good job, but she was also unable to finish everything in four minutes and she was speaking very quickly. I hope everyone realizes now how easy it is to give a four-minute talk. I am beginning to wonder if Haurko has a presentation phobia because this homework was assigned she has been absent. :) I realize she is busy at school and will probably will be back next week.

We continued talking about technology and science. A lot of good points came up, but to have this type of discussion you do need to learn some new vocabulary.

The homework for next week is to part A of #6 on page 97. If you have time and would like to write and essay like the one in the book please do. If you e-mail it to me I will look it over and make some suggestions.

Update: I forgot to give you this information.
If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb. If March comes in like a lamb it will go out like a lion.
What does it mean?

We heard Zenta's presentation on Pullman, Washintion. Yuki asked about the name, but I am sure you can find out why the city was named Pullman somewhere on the net. Yuka said she will have a presentation for us next week and maybe Haruko will have one, too.

We moved on to Unit 11 and we will be talking about science and technology and focusing on the positive and negative aspects. Tonight's listening exercise was right up Zenta's alley; genetically modified crops. He studies wheat and works on creating wheat strains that are resistant to different types of diseases, but I don't think he does anything with GM products. He is using traditional techniques.

This unit will bring up a lot of new vocabulary about a variety of new technologies. Don't feel bad if you don't know them even native speakers might not be familiar with them unless they have an interest in that area.

Update: Yuka asked if there was another level of the Passages book and I did find that there is a book one. You can take a look at it next week and let me know what you think.

I must say that I really enjoyed the presentations tonight. I think everyone did a good job and with a little bit more practice you could all do a great job. Everyone seemed still a little too nervous. Remember half the battle is relaxing. You were all surprised how quickly four minutes went. Last week when I said you had to prepare a four-minute presentation everyone groaned and said it was too long, but tonight no one reached their conclusion before time ran out. I guess next time we will need to make it ten minutes!

Akiko did you enjoy the soccer game?

Next week there is now homework, but we are looking forward to hearing Zenta's, Yuka's and Haruko's presentations.

If you want to see pictures of Seward, go here.

We had a large class tonight because of people doing make ups and an observer. The looks on Yuka's and Akiko's faces when they opened the door were really funny because you could tell they thought they were in the wrong room. From the doorway all they could see were unfamiliar faces because both Zenta and Yuki had their backs to the door.

We took a little time at the beginning for introductions and I wished everyone a happy Groundhog's Day. As I expected no one had heard of this holiday. Take a look at the site and you can decide for yourself if a groundhog is cute or not.

We talked about the three different types of communication classes and the one people had the most difficulty with was verbarl self-defense. I mentioned the idea of assertiveness training. Here is a link to an explanation of this type of course teaches.