Dave-sensei will be on Radio MOMO (79.0FM) with D.J. Chiaki Kamibeppu on Thursday, August 26th (today!), at about 5:40 pm. They will talk in English and Japanese about vaccines, the Japan High School Baseball Championship and other summer activities.
8月26日（木）5時40分ごろにDave先生がRadio MOMO (79.0FM) に出演します（DJは上別府千晶さん）。英語と日本語の両方でワクチンや甲子園、夏休みなどについて話します。
Recently I went to Tea Time, an art exhibition downtown made by Team Lab. It is in an old soy sauce storehouse near Korakuen. At Tea Time, you have 20 minutes to enjoy tea in a dark room illuminated by colorful lights and water reflections. What is special about this experience are the glasses that you drink out of. They continuously glow and change a range of colors such as white, blue, pink, and so on.
It was short, but a fun and refreshing experience. The only downside…. You don’t want to finish your tea because the light stops!
Japan north Alps hiking trip: day 2
Sunday, July 18 -
This was probably the easiest hiking day of the four-day trip.
10.3 km and just over 800m both up and down.
I woke a few times in the middle of the night shivering with cold. It wasn’t too cold when I went to sleep around 8pm the previous night, but the temperature dropped a lot during the night, I ended up covering the foot end of my sleeping bag with my rain jacket to prevent tent condensation from getting my sleeping bag wetter and then cinching the bag closed to full-on mummy style and then I could get warm enough to get back to sleep.
We got up at 4am, cooked breakfast (yay, hot coffee!), broke camp and were ready to hike by 6am.
We first climbed to the peak of Mt. Sugoroku (双六岳, 2860m) and then over the peak of Mitsumatarenge (三俣蓮華岳, 2841m) before descending down to Mitsumata Hut (三俣山荘).
Our plan was to hike to Kumono Daira hut to stay on night 2, and circle back to the campground attached to Mitsumata hut to camp on day 3, which meant that we didn’t need our camping gear for the next 24 hours. So, we rented space for 1 tent, set up our biggest tent and stashed all our extraneous gear in the tent.
Thus lightened, we continued on down a valley and up the other side, traversed the side of a mountain and finally came to Kumono Daira, our hut for the night. It’s not really fair to call this place a hut. It was like a jazz cafe fused with a mountain lodge and had a very cool bohemian vibe going on. The hut itself is built on a high plateau that is actually a fragile alpine marshland, so the walking paths are all on raised boards.
Just as we arrived it started to rain and most of us made it inside before the heaviest of the rain started. The rain intensified and then lightning and thunder started crashing quite nearby. We felt dry and comfortable inside charging our phones and sipping hot coffee. We began to wonder about hiking and camping in the rain the next day when just like that, the rain stopped and sky cleared up just in time for a gorgeous sunset.
After dinner and the sunset, we were shown a slideshow by the son of the founder of the hut, explaining the history of the men and women who opened most of the current trails in the area starting in the 1940s.
We went to bed in warm futons and slept very comfortably.
NEOの夏休みが始まりました。コロナのせいだけでなく酷暑すぎて外へ行く気が失せていましたが、今週は台風到来で梅雨の様相を呈しています。
我が家には五月蝿い男児たちがいるため、静かにしたい大人にとっては神経が尖ります。そんなわけで気を静めるために自宅に余っている漢字ノートで目に付く漢字を片っ端から書いていきました。
罫線があると空間認識がしやすく、なんでもそれなりに見えます。満足いく字が書けていなくても消しゴムを使うのは面倒なのでひたすら書くのみ。お盆休みの間に1冊書けそうです。お習字となると半紙には目印になる線がないから硬筆と比べてハードルが高い。だからお習字の方が本当の集中力が養えるんでしょう。
筆跡はその人の性格や傾向を映しやすく、レッスンでの宿題をしてくるキッズの筆跡もある程度記憶に残っています。大人しそうな印象でも英語を書かすと筆圧も強く枠いっぱいに書くUちゃんは意外に何ごとにも動じない。自発的に発言をしないから講師が当ててようやく発言するMちゃんの字は細い。けれど丁寧。
宿題の内容を確認しているとこんなあるあるもしょっちゅうです。促音（小さいツ）の後に来る濁音という組み合わせがくると、日本人の耳にはその濁音が聞き取れず清音になっています。
bagを「バッグ」ではなく「バック (back)」と書いてしまう、あれです。
bedと書かせたいのにbetと書く子は数知れず。普段から「ベッド」ではなく「ベット」と言っているのでしょう。毎回これを見るたびに「bet」（お金や命を）賭ける⇒金でも賭けるんかい？と言うと子どもたちは笑っていますが、いや、笑えんのじゃよ。ほんまに。
日本語母国語話者にとっては、柔らかい音の大和言葉と少しキツイ印象の濁音の関係性もあるのか、濁音の聞き取りが多言語より弱いかもしれません。
但し、赤の”red”を”ret”と書いてきたのにはさすがに言葉を失いました。
A new ramen place called Yamaokaya opened in Okuda recently. I don’t eat ramen very often, but once in a while it hits the spot. This one is very close to my house, so I decided to give it a try.
Yamaokaya is a chain from Hokkaido, but this is apparently their first branch in the Chugoku region. The building is not especially big (it used to be a Yoshinoya), but it’s got a bold, red sign that you can’t miss. In fact, you’ve probably already seen it if you drive on Route 30 near the Toys R Us. Since it’s a new shop, you might have also seen a long line of people stretching outside the building.
The ramen itself is pretty good. You can adjust a few things about the noodles and broth, including the amount of oil. Since I don’t like oily foods, that’s a big selling point for me!
If you live or work in the area, I think it’s a good place for lunch or dinner. Just be aware of the crowds for the first few months.
Japan north Alps hiking trip: days 0 & 1
July 16 - Bullet train to Nagoya, local express train to Takayama (高山), where Wakana picked us (Melissa & Sara) up and we drove to meet Masashi and his wife Mutsumi. Stayed at a cabin near the trailhead, ate the local famous Hida beef for dinner and soaked in a hot spring. We sorted our gear for the 4-day hike ahead of us and distributed some shared food items.
July 17 - 4am wake up and in the cars at 5:30 to drive to the trailhead. Bonus 1.5km hike from the parking lot to the trailhead 😂! Started hiking around 6:45am.
Starting pack weight: 13.6 kg
We hiked from Shin Hodaka Onsen (新穂高温泉登山口) to Sugoroku Hut (双六小屋) and camped there.
The first day was almost all up, the trail started as an old logging road and quickly turned into what we would be walking on for 98% of the hike, rocks. Small pebbles, big boulders, step like rocks, loose rocks, flat rocks, steeply angled rocks, there was hardly a patch of flat earth on the whole hike. Just a few sections were dirt trails, but this route is super popular and well-marked the whole way with signposts and circles spray painted on the rocks.
13.2 km in 8h40m with 1707 meters of elevation gain.
Highlights from day 1:
- stopping at a mountain stream and dipping my hands into ice cold snow runoff water, so refreshing
- getting shaved ice (strawberry flavor) at the first manned hut that we passed, it really hit the spot
- being surprised that there was so much snow left on the mountains. Before my hike somebody asked me if there would be snow and I confidently replied that there wouldn’t be, oops…
- seeing our destination from a distance, a hundred colorful tents dotting a valley hillside
- Masashi’s chili con carne for dinner
- a little after 6pm we felt an earthquake, I heard a rumble that was similar to distant thunder and then a hard jolt from below. Then so many heads popped out of tents to figure out what had happened.
- While watching the sunset, we spotted the next manned hut that we would pass on day 2, it looked so far away in the evening light (actually, it was pretty far away, lol)
