Rudolph The Tuneless Reindeer

Sorry that it's taken me so long to upload these, but it's never too late to enjoy beautiful beautiful music...

Last Christmas

Jingle Bells, But Who Smells?

Egg Drop Drama

Egg-cellence

Egg Drop Losers

Egg Drop : Engineers in Action

Whatever

The brilliant "My United States of Whatever" by Liam Lynch - a song that Teppei's punk band should have covered:

Lost in the Desert

There’s this man,
and he’s travelling across the desert,
and
he suddenly finds he hasn’t got any water left.
So he’s starting to get worried,
and he’s very thirsty,
but luckily,
a man comes towards him on a camel.
So
he says to the man,
“I’m thirsty.
Have you got any water?”
and the other man says,
“No I haven’t,
but I’ve got a wonderful selection of ties.
Would you like to buy one?”
So the other man says,
“No, of course not!”
and the man rides away on his camel.
After about another hour or two,
he’s desperately thirsty
and he sees a beautiful 5-star hotel.
So he slowly goes up the steps, crying
“Water! Water!
And the hotel manager says,
“I’m sorry, sir,
you can’t come in here without a tie.”

How To Recycle A Goat

Give a widowed mother a goat.
The goat produces milk.
Her children don’t go hungry.
The goat produces manure.
The widow sells more crops.
The goat produces more goats.
The widow keeps a goat.
The widow gives a goat back.

Agreeing and Disagreeing

Some expressions from today's class...

Agreement:

- I couldn't agree more.

- You took the words right out of my mouth.

- My thoughts entirely.

- I know exactly what you mean.

Diplomatic disagreement:

- I see where you're coming from, but...

- I know what you mean, but...

Advent

Today, the 1st of December, is the first day of advent, which you can find out more about here. To me, it's only about advent calendars - a way of eating a different piece of chocolate per day for twenty four consecutive days. Why not?

I searched for online advent calendars and found a cute one for kids here and one with stupid games each day here. Enjoy.

Questions

The questions you answered in class today:

WHEN did you last feel frightened?

HOW MUCH money do you have on you now?HOW MANY hours did you sleep for last night?

HOW did you come to school today?

HOW did you feel on your first day at this university?

WHAT was the name of your first pet?

WHO is your hero?

WHY did you choose to wear those shoes today?

Limmericks

There was an old man from Peru
Who dreamt he was eating his shoe.
He awoke in a fright
In the middle of the night
And found it was perfectly true.

There once was a girl from Great Britain
Who carelessly sat on her kitten
Imagine her surprise
and the look in her eyes
when on the behind she was bitten.

There was a young man from Shizuoka
Who was famous for being a joker
He won lots of mates
And went on thousands of dates
But he lost all his money at poker.

There was a young woman from Gunma
With a wonderfully good sense of humour.
She told great jokes
To hundreds of blokes
And even told one to a puma.

A nice young man from Miyazaki
Thought that bright colours looked tacky
He dressed in grey sack
Or completely in black
And once every month he wore khaki.

There was a girl from Yokohama
Who once went to school in pyjamas
Her friends said "no way!"
So on the next day
She dressed up as Barack Obama.

A young girl from Yokohama
Was talented on the piana
She played it with great style
Cause her fingers were agile
Until her brother hit them with a hammer.

Freedom, Aye, Freedom

Countdown

Feeling bored?  Play the word game Countdown here and time will fly...

Norwegian Wood

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me...
She showed me her room, isn't it good, Norwegian wood?

She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere,
So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair.

I sat on a rug,  biding my time, drinking her wine,

We talked until two and then she said, "It's time for bed"

She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh.
I told her I didn't and crawled off to sleep in the bath

And when I awoke, I was alone, this bird had flown
So I lit a fire, isn't it good, Norwegian wood.

Have you ever? Would you like to? Would you ever?

Today's conversation:

A: Have you ever eaten dog?

B: No! Why? Have you?

A: Actually no...but I'd be curious to try.  Would you ever eat dog?

B: Oh no...I don't think so.  I have a pet dog so I couldn't eat one.

A: What about if you were at a dinner party and it was served to y

ou?  Wouldn't you eat it just to be polite?

B: Hmmm...no...I'd have to just politely refuse.

A: Would you eat it for a hundred thousand Yen?

B: No way...I wouldn't eat it if you paid me a MILLION Yen.

A: Ahh...but what about if...

Questions from today's class:

Have you ever...

- had a fight?

- dreamt in English?

- met an Italian?

- performed in front of an audience?

- climbed Mount Fuji?

- been to Europe?

- worn a Spiderman costume?

- kissed a stranger?

- ridden a camel?

- done a bungee jump?

- cried in the cinema?

- been to Disneyland?

- eaten an insect?

Would you ever...

- steal money?

- hit a child?

- kill a kitten?

- cheat in an exam?

- go on strike?

- move to Hokkaido?

- get a tattoo?

- date a much older man or woman?

- eat dog food?

- lie to your boyfriend / girlfriend?

- beg?

Proverbs

Proverbs from today's EC:

Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Don't count your chickens until they've hatched.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

There are plenty more fish in the sea.

A stitch in time saves nine.

More haste less speed.

Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.

There's no use crying over spilled milk.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Do you ever / Have you ever...?

Questions from today's class:

Do you ever...cycle to school, talk to strangers, get angry with members of your family, sing in the shower?

Have you ever...eaten whale meat, fallen in love at first sight, been to Hokkaido, won a competition, broken something valuable?

Weather Vocabulary

A HEATWAVE is a continuous period of unusually hot weather.

A SHOWER is a brief period of rain.

A BLIZZARD is a storm with a lot of snow and strong winds.

SLEET is partly melted falling snow.

FOG is a thick cloud that forms close to the ground or to water and is difficult to see through.

CHILLY is an informal adjective meaning cold.

MILD is used to describe weather which is warm and pleasant, especially warmer than usual for the time of year.

THUNDER is the loud nouns that you sometimes hear in the sky during a storm.

LIGHTNING is the bright flashes of light that you see in the sky during a storm.

DRIZZLE is rain that falls in small, light drops.

A FLOOD is a large amount of water covering an area that is usually dry.

A BREEZE is a light wind.

MIST is a thin fog.

A DROUGHT is a long period of time when there is little or no rain and crops die.

HAIL is rain that freezes in the sky and falls to the ground as small balls of ice.

A HURRICAINE is a violent storm with extremly strong winds and heavy rain.

The picture above is an illustration of the following story - a simple fable, but one of my favourite stories:

The Sun and the Wind once had a quarrel as to which was the stronger. Each believed himself to be the more powerful. While they were arguing they saw a traveler walking along the country highway, wearing a great cloak.

"Here is a chance to test our strength," said the Wind; "let us see which of us is strong enough to make that traveler take off his cloak; the one who can do that shall be acknowledged the more powerful."

"Agreed," said the Sun.

Instantly the Wind began to blow; he puffed and tugged at the man's cloak, and raised a storm of hail and rain, to beat at it. But the colder it grew and the more it stormed, the tighter the traveler held his cloak around him. The Wind could not get it off.

Now it was the Sun's turn. He shone with all his beams on the man's shoulders. As it grew hotter and hotter, the man unfastened his cloak; then he threw it back; at last he took it off! The Sun had won.

from Stories to Tell to Children by Sara Cone Bryant

Lateral Thinking Puzzles

If you like lateral thinking puzzles like the one about the man in the bar in Texas, you can spend some time reading more here. I have to warn you, though, some of them are terrible. Don't forget these phrases:

It can't be...
It could be...
It might be...
It may be...
It must be...
It has to be...



And if you want to practise with sporks again:

· Sporks are used by children and adults.
· Sporks can be found in many different colours.
· Sporks don't grow on trees.
· Sporks can be made from plastic.
· Sporks are usually found in pairs.
· Some sporks are expensive.
· Sporks aren't dangerous.
· Sporks can be found in almost every home in Japan
· Special sporks can be used in cars.
· Sporks are necessary for some professional footballers.
· Some sporks are made of leather.
· Many sporks are woollen.
· Sporks have fingers and thumbs.
· Everyone must know what sporks are by now!

UK Forms of Address

Just in case you ever get the chance to meet a VIP in the UK, you can check this Wikipedia list of ways to address people according to their social status.  

Do you know the very handsome man in this picture?  He's 60 years old today...

Just in case you missed it, here's the vocabulary from today's class:

JOBS: prince, refuse collector, doctor, professional sportsperson, soldier, police officer, company director, waiter, construction worker, yakuza hitman, cleaner, high school teacher, prime minister, actor, nurse, beggar, shop assistant, taxi driver

QUESTIONS and PREFERENCES:

Would you rather be a _______ or a _______?

Who do you respect more: _______ or _______?

What do you call your _______?

How do / would you address _______?

I'd rather b a _______ than a _______ because...

If I was a _______ I'd...

I have more respect for _______ than _______

Personality and Qualities

- What do you think of Mino Monta?
- Actually I think he's kind of rude and bossy.
- Why do you say that?
- Well, he's always criticising people on TV...



- What do you think of Ken Watanabe?
- He's really talented and intelligent.
- Oh! Don't you think he can be a little bit arrogant sometimes?
- Not really...what makes you say that?
- Well...



Positive Adjectives:
- patient, honest, friendly, generous, sensitive, thoughtful, clever, lively, organised, intelligent, careful, imaginative, optimistic, confident, warm

Negative Adjectives:
- pessimistic, unimaginative, impatient, difficult, over-sensitive, disorganised, selfish, rude, lazy, nervous, bossy, jealous, arrogant

Other Expressions:
- She's mixed race. She's half Japanese and half European.
- He uses a lot of bad language

For more on personality adjectives related to your star signs, click here for an English language learning website, or here for Wikipedia.

Men and women find their partners the most attractive thing in the world

A heart-warming article from a British newspaper called The Daily Telegraph - this is a nice follow-up to our discussions about the perfect man and woman.

Identifying People

Expressions from today's class:
- The perfect man should have a six pack.
- He should be at least 180cm tall.
- broad shoulders
- playful smile
- beautiful facial features
- cute facial expressions
- I've got a black eye because someone punched me in the face.

I still don't know how to express the strange idea of SOFT LEGS, but "Western eyes" is a better expression than "two line eyes".

TOEFL Listening

Some extra listening practice for you via youtube:

Speaking Hypothetically

In class we played a game called Scruples (e.g. If you found a wallet containing 100,000 Yen inside, would you keep the money? Yes, no, or depends...). To take part in an online scruples noticboard, click here.

For the same kind of grammar set to music, you might like this Gwen Stefani track...the quality of this video is a bit poor but it starts with some Japanese! Incidentally, if anyone can explain the Harajuku girls to me I'd be very grateful.



...and better still if you want to practice English (or singing), here's a karaoke version...



For romantics and lovers of real music, here's a much better song - If I Were A Carpenter - first by Bobby Darin



and finally by the great Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter:

TOEFL : Word Endings

NOUNS (Things)
- membership, kindness, reality / realism, movement, humanity / humanism, election, breakage, intelligence, alcoholism, permanence, mileage, confusion, leadership, suddenness, improvement, equality

NOUNS (People)
- teacher, typist, beautician, idealist, inventor, clinician, speialist, rancher, perfectionist, programmer, electrician, builder, naturalist, advisor, mathematician

ADJECTIVES
- heartless, natural, athletic, mysterious, helpful / helpless, impressive, intelligent, comfortable, courageous, useful / useless. enthusiastic, motionless, traditional, changeable, permanent, attractive

VERBS
- darken, finalize, justify, separate, shorten, intensify, invetigate, industrialize, differentiate, intentify, lighten, glamourize, personify, sweeten, liberalize, demonstrate

A good place to check the meaning of any of these words is the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, which is online and free. It had good definitions, examples, and a guide to pronunciation.

Halloween

You can find out more about the history and traditions of Halloween here on wikipedia.

City Guides

As a follow up to today's class, you might like to have a look at these tourist information websites for Tokyo and Yokohama. Below is a video of an Oscar Wilde walking tour around London. For other city tours, just go to youtube and type the name of a city you're interested in

UK Q & A

Q & A stands for questions and answers, but before we get to those, here are the correct spellings of the people and places in the United Kingdom that you already knew about:

People: JK Rowling, Queen Elizabeth, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, The Bee Gees, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Prince Charles, Agatha Christie, Lady Diana, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightly, John Lennon, Harry Potter, Prince Harry, Prince William, Anne Boleyn, Winnie the Pooh, Elton John

Places: Birmingham, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Cornwall, Cambridge,

Things, groups, and football teams: The Lord of the Rings, the Glastonbury Festival, going to church, scones, tea, coffee, oatmeal, fish & chips, mashed potato, rabbits, The Beatles, cricket, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United (there are two teams in Manchester - United and City - so it's not enough just to say "Manchester"), Tottenham, West Ham

And by the way...

Frankfurters are German.
U2 are Irish.
Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, The Black-Eyed Peas, and The Backstreet Boys are American.
Escargot (snails) and frogs legs are French dishes.

What food is famous in the UK?
A TV Channel called uktvfood has created a list of its top ten British dishes here but the country's FAVOURITE dishes, according to a survey, are here.

Which do you like - Japan or the UK?
I like them both. Britain's far from perfect, but it's home.

Kaiser Chiefs, Blur, or Bloc Party - which band is the best?
Although I hated them 16 years ago, I think Blur are the best of those three. I was pleased to see that at least one student wrote "The Arctic Monkeys" because I think they're the best band in Britain at the moment.

What do British people do when they have free time?
A recent Euro stat survey, the EU's statistical office, discovered that people in Britain spend about 45% of their free time watching television, 24% of their free time socializing, 22-23% on sport and hobbies, and 10% on other activities. Other popular leisure activities are listening to the radio, listening to pre-recorded music, reading, DIY, gardening, eating out and going to the cinema.

What are the most famous sights to see in London?
There's a London website with a brief summary of the capital's sights and various links to other information here. The ten most popular London attractions are detailed here.

How often do you have parties?
I never have wild and crazy parties but we often invite people around for dinner, drinks, and conversation. If enough alcohol is consumed, there may also be some dancing.

Finally, a couple of videos linked to some of today's conversations...enjoy!

Movie Scenes

Making a Complaint

As a follow-up to the complaints you made in class (especially those of you who had to discuss "dead kitty"), you might enjoy this sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus:

Dragon's Den : A Sales Pitch

As a follow-up to today's classes, you might like to have a look at some other sales picthes. This one comes from a popular British TV show called Dragon's Den, in which "entrepreneurs" pitch to a group of millionaires in order to win investment in their companies or products.



This musical pitch was actually successful and you can find Reggae Reggae sauce on the shelves of supermarkets all over the United Kingdom.

The Surprised Panda

As mentioned in yesterday's class, this is the best thing I've ever seen on the Internet:

The Kaiser Chiefs on 6 Music

As we discussed in class, an online recording of the Stephen Merchant Show hosted by The Kaiser Chiefs is available from the BBC until Sunday. Click here to go to the programme website, and select LATEST SHOW under LISTEN AGAIN. You can use the BBC media player to access any BBC radio broadcast from the last week. Enjoy!

TOEFL

If you go to this website and scroll down to the bottom of the page, you can download some pdfs that might help you with your TOEFL preparation. The sample writing responses might be particularly useful.

Giving Advice and Making Recommendations

In class we used expressions like "you need to", "you should", and "you might like to" but if you want more variety of expressions, or just to explore the topic further, you could have a look at what kind of advice British readers of the Guardian newspaper give about Japan, or try the lonely planet website. And just in case you're wondering, the picture on the left is of Kurashiki!

Crash-Landing On The Moon

In case you missed the class, or even if you'd like to try the activity again, this website allows you to take the test online. There are also some more educational activities available here on the NASA website.

How to...

Make pancakes:



Make an origami box:



Use an abacus:



Want more? Go to Youtube and just type "how to" followed by anything you want to learn how to do. Let me know if you find one that tells me how to learn Japanese more quickly.

Essay Writing : Feedback

I've received a nice essay on whether it's better for children to grow up in a city or the countryside, so I've started a writing project on a separate blog and I'll start it off with a few lessons related to the essay.

Click here to go to the new blog.

What's It For?

A: What's this?
B: It's a garlic press.
A: A garlic press? What's it for?
A: It's for crushing garlic.

A: What on Earth is this thing? I've never seen one before.
B: It's a garlic press.
A: A garlic press! Hmmm...what is it used for?
B: We use it to crush garlic.

Vocabulary:

A cheese grater is for grating cheese.

A clothes peg is for hanging up / out your clothes.

A rice cooker is for cooking rice.

A pasta maker is for making fresh pasta.

A rolling pin is for rolling out pastry.

A potato peeler is something we use to peel potatoes.  

We use flashcards to learn vocabulary.

Shopping Dialogue

A: Good morning.

B: Good morning.

A: How can I help you?

B: I'm looking for some bananas. Do you have any?

A: I'm sorry. We sold out this morning.

B: Oh I see. Do you have any pasta?

A: Yes we do. What type of pasta would you like?

B: What types do you have?

A: Let's see...spaghetti, linguine, macaroni.

B: Ooh. Can have some macaroni please?

A: Certainly. How much would you like?

B: 500 grammes plase.

A: 500 grammes. There you are. Is there anything else you'd like. How about some tomatoes to go with the pasta?

B: No thanks. I think that's all I need. How much is that?

A: That'll be £1.19 please.

B: Can I pay by credit card?

A: I'm sorry. It's cash only for purchases under £10.

B: OK, no problem. Here you are. Sorry I don't have anything smaller than a twenty.

A: Thank you very much. Here's your change...and your receipt.

B: Thank you.

A: You're welcome. Have a good day.