Dave-sensei was on "Let's Enjoy English!" on Radio MOMO (79.0 FM). Dave and D.J. Chiaki Kamibeppu talk in English and Japanese about the Okayama Marathon and hiking. Click the button below to listen.
Pizza may be the most perfect meal on the planet. It’s always delicious - even when it’s heated up from last night’s leftovers. Sometimes that’s actually the best. Even when pizza is bad, it’s still good.
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about pizza thanks to a certain Halloween costume I found at Don Quixote. So without further ado, I now present to you my favorite pizzas of all time. Or at least, the ones I could find pictures of.
NEO is off this week, so we celebrated Halloween last week during children’s classes. The staff dressed up in costume every day and so did a lot of our child students. My sons carved our jack-o-lantern and displayed it in the lobby. On Saturday night I went to a Halloween party at a friend’s home and had a fun time hanging out with a very international group of people all in costume. On Tuesday (actual Halloween), I dressed up to go to the optician’s college that I teach at, and I handed out Halloween candy to the students.
ネット時代に生きていている現代ではお店の営業時間外でもクリポチとしたら商品が玄関口まで届く。100年前の人はこんな世の中を想像できなかったでしょう。いえ、50年前の人だって想像には及ばなかったでしょう。そのネットショッピングを支えている日本の配送業者さんは世界一です。ですがそれぞれ少しずつサービスが違います。必ず手渡しの方、宅配Boxへの置配。この写真をご覧あれ。はて、この配送担当者さんは…どうしたんでしょう。郵便受けがあるのに、その中には入れず、わざわざ外に置いていかれています。「郵便受けのすぐ外に置いておきました」という伝票を出すのではなく、この方が受取主の目に留まると思ってのことかもしれません。
ちなみにこの郵便受けには小包parcelと印字されています。学校英語でも割合よく導入されているかと思います。主にイギリス英語圏で使われることが多い単語であること、また北米では郵送されてくる小包はpackageと言うことが多いです。私は個人的にはparcelという単語はほぼ使わずpackageという単語一辺倒です。ググった結果、やはりparcelは在米であれば郵便局であるUS Mailが発送する荷物のことをparcelと呼んでいます（⇒そうそう）。またparcelは箱に入れられている物がどれもparcelと呼ばれるのではなく、あくまでも配送・配達される小包が対象です。
さて、今回買ったその中身は小学生なら誰もが知る「うんこ」ドリルシリーズです。よく知られているドリルですが私は今回の購入が初めてです。さて、この日本語で書かれたブログを英語に自動翻訳して読んで下さっている方たちもいらっしゃいますが、この「うんこ」ドリルという下品なくだりを一体翻訳機はどのように差し支えない表現にするのでしょうか。楽しみです。
Dave-sensei will be on Radio MOMO (79.0FM) with D.J. Chiaki Kamibeppu on Thursday, October 26th (today!), at about 5:40 pm. They will talk in English and Japanese about the Okayama Marathon and hiking.
10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岡山マラソンとハイキングについて話します。
http://www.fm790.co.jp/
This week one of our students gave us some Mikage Manju, or what many others (including myself) call ‘Konko Manju’. Konko Manju is a well-known manju from Konko in Asakuchi city. You can find the city in western Okayama. I lived there for about five years. Not to mention I was a teacher in the area. During my time there, I would often be given Konko manju as a snack and it quickly became one of my favorite types of manju.
One of my strongest memories of Konku Manju is connected to a mascot character named ‘Konko Manjuman’ (google it and you might get a good laugh). Throughout my first few years in Asakuchi I had a few interesting run-ins with him. My first encounter was during a somen festival in my first few months in Japan. I took a picture of one of my friends eating somen. What I did not realize until later was that Konko Manjuman was sneaking in the background of the picture. Several months later, I was at a local festival watching the school’s brass band play. Part-way through the performance I looked to my right and noticed the mascot standing right next to me pretending to be the conductor of the band. I can only imagine that the one foreign person at the event standing right next to a man with a manju as his head conducting was quite the sight.
Several years passed and I did not have many encounters with him, but one day I was checking writing assignments of some students. One of them piqued my curiosity. “My friend’s father is Konko Manjuman”. This line stuck in my head. I asked some of the teachers of their grade. They immediately responded with “Oh yeah, …’s father is Konko Manjuman”. I had never realized a student I had taught for about two years was his child the entire time. It was certainly quite an amusing memory for me.