A day-trip to Hakone

We went to Hakone as a part of our winter proglam.


I was worried about the weather,but fortunately it was fine.
Though we had someone who caught a cold and couldn't join us,
The teachers and students headed for Hakone from Shinjuku on ' Romance Car' ;it's a name of a train.
Personaly I feel a little embarrassed to tell you the name...

The train had seets which could be turned to make us facing each other.
I don't really like that type of the seat. It makes me feel nauseous and drowsy.


After the 'Romance Car', we got on 'Tozan densha' which means 'climbing mountain train' in Japanese.There were quite a few people on the train.



It was cold and couldn't expect the weather, so I just guessed there wouldn't be
many people going there. Well, apparently I was  wrong.
They might have thought in the same way as I did.
It took us 40 minutes to get to the station where we changed to a cable car to go further up.
Every one of them transfered to the car, so it was very crowded.
You can see that from the picture^^;

After 20 minutes in that crowd, we finally...........! got on a ropeway;;;;;;;;;;;;;
But the scenery from the window was exellent. Our students were excited and looked fun,
but when I looked in the other direction, our principal was silently gazing somewhere else.
I asked him why and found out he was scared of hights.

 The students were very happy to see the view saying ' Wow,look! There is some snow on

 the mountain!' ' I've never seen snow before!!' ' We are so high up!' ' It's beautiful!' and so on.

There's a point where you can see Mt.Fuji on the way up, but unfortunately the top of the mountain
was covered by clouds and couldn't see well.
We could barely see the foot of it,and they were taking photos of it.
If I only could control the weather!


We had 'Tendon' Tenpura with rice, Ramen and Black egg,that was the name of the dish, for lunch.
Why do carry and ramen seem more delicious on the mountains? I don't know..

 Black eggs.

We took a picture in front of the place covered with volcanic smoke of Mt.Hakone.
 I brought a Sully hat to wear so that students wouldn't get lost.
Miss Kouan from Taiwan wore it. It looks so cute, isn't it?


After that, we got on a pirate ship, of course a fake one, though I guess I don't even need to mention it.
It was so comfortable that made them nod off.



Then, we went on a bus to head for a hotspring.
The ones who wanted to go to a hotspring left, and the rest of them just decided to
take a foot bath.


We chatted while looking at the great view.
I actually wanted to eat icecream,but couldn't find anywhere to buy.
We bought souveniors like rice crackers and sweet bun.
I picked up a toy for my nephew.




The train we took, Romance car, was a new model and made us drowsy right after we got on it.
Hope they will remember this day as  a good memory of an experience in Japan.

Students from South Korea

Some Korean students who came to see Nihon Denshi vocational school in Shinjuku stopped by our school
on the 17th of Jan.



They had a model lesson in Japanese taught by Japanese teacher.


They are studying animation as a major at their school in Korea.
When I asked them what they liked, many of the answers were titles of animation.
I don't know anything about the latest ones.
I only know 'Garasu no kamen' ' Hana yori dango' and 'Slum dunk'.
They knew about Japanese animation much better than I did.
Many of them also liked computer games. It seems there are a lot of kinds in South Korea.
What I couldn't believe was that some of them are playing games for more than 10 hours!
 I can sleep for 10 hours, but can't concentrate on doing something like that.
It reminded me of some old memories.
When I was a child, my friend's mother used to say 'If you play video games too much,
your thumb will get bigger!' 

From the way the korean students talked, I felt they really liked Japanese animations.
When the foreign students go to Japanese vocational schools and universities,
'the difference of the culture' is pretty big problem even for students from Asia.
You understand the language from their culture and you will see the culture from their language.
If you want to come to Japan for further education, I recommend you to study ' Language and culture' first.
And we are always welcome to have you here^^!

Rice cake (MOCHI) party^^

We call new year ' SHOGATSU'.
When I hear the word, the first thing that come into my mind is rice cake,in Japanese 'MOCHI'.
So we had a rice cake party at school^^
And, we also had fried vegitables together. Please don't ask why..
It was just easy to cook and without a proper kitchen, we couldn't do anything else.
Well, anyway our students ate them all, so it means it was good after all^^

 We can almost hear what they say from the picture..'Isn't it coming up yet?'

 Miss Chin from Taiwan and Miss Pop from Thailand.

   'The rice cake looks good!' Miss Cho from Taiwan.

We had quite a few kinds of taste for MOCHI.

  ' I like this one the best!' Miss Shokin from Taiwan.

 Miss Inseon from South Korea was always the first person to notice

when the rice cake should be flipped over.

 Miss Keimin from Taiwan is trying 'ISOBE' which is MOCHI with seaweed.

It takes a little time to cook MOCHI.
We were a little sorry for them waiting ,though they were very hungry.
After eating the meal, we played games as usual.

 'Hukuwarai' is one of the new year's games in Japan.

 The rule is simple. There are pieces of face parts and what you need to do is place it on the face sheet with

your eyes blinded. The others  try to lead the player to put the pieces on the correct place by saying 'Right, left, up and down.'

 But the difficult thing was the our special optional rule.

The people from the other teams could try to avoid the player from placing them right.

There were 4 groups and each group had 3 or 4 students.

They were quiet while eating and listening to the teacher explaining the rule.

But once the game started... we didn't know how noisy they could be!

The pictures below are the arts they made.
 I'm sorry for them and their fans.

Happy new year!

2011 has come!
In Japanese era, it's Heisei 23.
I might be saying everytime in this blog, but I'm surprised how quickly time goes by.
Time seem to pass faster  as I get older.

In Japan, it was a fine day on New year's day.
I hope I could stay in Japan during the new year's holiday, but actually I'm in Seoul now.
 It's so cold in Korea this year!
Well, I don't know how cold it is here in winter,though.
This is my first trip to Korea^^!
It's been a while to come to such a cold place... it's minus 4 degrees celsius!
My finger tips, nose, and cheeks turn red and as I see them, I feel like singing the well-known
chrismas song, 'Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer~~~'.

In Japan, there was a Shimenawa 'a sacred straw festoon' on the chair at my desk.
It's a kind of lucky charm, but since it's not on the right place ,looks a little ominous for me;


We call the first dream of the new year ' Hatsuyume'
and it is said that the year will be a good one if you dream of something nice.
My first dream was a little strange, it was about my job but latter half was about me meetiing a nice person.
So I'm looking forward to see how this year will be^^
We are going to make our school better, well  even better this year, so please keep up with us^^!

Christmas party!

2010 is almost over.
This blog was meant to be updated once a week,
but you can see how difficult to do it such often!

The atmosphere is not like Christmas anymore,but
since it's still December,I'm going to write about
the christmas party we had at school.
I don't know if I can call it a party because there were
only few students and teacher there.
We had pizza and juice while enjoying small talk.
We ofcourse played some games,too.

The first game was ' Word association game'
The original words were ' School', 'Tokyo' and 'Christmas'!
There were people from several countries, so their idea was different.
Some think the word is associated, but the others don't.
They were all a little shy and passive. I guess it's because they were from Asian countries?

The second game was ' Let's switch the role'.
Usually teachers teach students, (though teachers learn things from students,too.)
but in this game, students taught teachers. Interesting,isn't it?
The students taught how to say the words from' minnano nihongo1 Lesson1'in their own language.

I was dissapointed at myself...
Was I such poor at remembering things?
It was very easy expression, but everything was over my head.

It would be even more fun if there were students from Western countries,too.
Though I'm not sure I could handle it....

It was very interesting to see students teaching teachers.
All of them were great teachers!
I'm relieved that they don't hate us for difficult tests we set them!

Junsin(from Taiwan) and Inseon(from Sounth Korea) look so cute with the red round noses.

Junsin has a humor,too.
Santa is climbing the christmas tree.↓

Santa doesn't climb up trees.^^..!

Every year,I go to a temple to strike a bell on Dec 31st, and
buy the written oracle on Jan 1st.
Last year, it said I would have the best luck this year!
Well.. as it said, I guess it was  a satisfactory year.
Hope I'll get the ' best luck' next year, too^^
Have a happy new year!!

29/12/2010

Sports Festival

It's already December. Can you believe that the new year's coming soon?
Time flies.

We had a sports festival last month.
It wasn't like something big like a soccer or tennis game.
We just did running and throwing balls in a classroom.
Our students needed to use Japanese in the game and
they said it was rather hard^^;;;

1．Read Hiragana correctly!( and run )
　「ばぱ」「はば」「ぱは」や「しゃひゃ」「ぴゃちゃ」 and so on..



They definitely know it but can't say properly..
They think thye are saying it correctly but their partner doesn't understand..
Even intermediate students had a difficulty in the game;
THAT'S what we wanted!
For the teacher who made it, it was amusing.
'See??It's difficult,isn't it!?' ...........^^

2.Find our teachers!

This game is to find teachers in the various pictures.
I had a lot of fun to make these.
The people who are UNNATURALLY in the pictures are our teachers.
Ms.Pop from Thailand was surprisingly quick to find them.



3. Throw and Catch
This game was very simple but difficult.
They crumpled paper into balls and throw them into wastebaskets.
It was hard for the people who catch them with the baskets too.
They had to put the baskets on their backs.



After the game, we did 茶道 ' the tea ceremony'.

You say ‘お先にいただきます。’to the person sitting next to you.
It means..' Sorry for drinking before you.'
The tea for ceremony is very bitter.
Ms.Pop from Thailand had a frown on her face^^

Some students and our principal tried making tea by themselves.

It seemed quite hard for them.

Just drinking tea someone made for you is the best thing, I guess^^

Ms.Cho from Taiwan and                                       our principal!

Japanese traditional green tea is great after all.

But for the students, what they cared the most was...the prize for the winners.

They are looking in the prize bag.

What's inside??You'll see....^^