Halloween tea party

The barm brack was a hit. I even showed Yoshihara-sensei how to stick your pinky out when you drink tea.

More Fun Halloween Cooking

I am trying to write out my brack recipe in Japanese so I looked online for some recipes so that I could copy the format. You have to check out this site where (I'm guessing) Japanese child-bakers send in their creations. Pumpkin face seaweed bento anyone? Will someone tell me how Hello Kitty fits in with the Halloween theme??

Halloween Cooking

Last week in our Japanese class our teacher, Yoshihara-sensei, brought in some sweets from Kyoto and green tea. This week, as it's Halloween, I thought I'd bring in a barm brack. I've just taken it out of the oven and it smells yummy. I had never had this before I went to Dublin, but it's the thing to have at Halloween in Ireland. It's basically a fruit tea cake not unlike the one I usually make. It's a bit bigger and you bake it for longer. It's nice with a strong pot of tea. One thing mine is missing is a hidden ring and other charms. Traditionally in Ireland at Halloween or Samhain (pronounced sow-an David tells me - Irish for November) a ring is hidden in the cake and the person who gets the ring in their slice will get married that year. The word brack comes from an old Irish word, 'breac', and means speckled (i.e. with fruit) and barm probably comes from 'aran', which means bread. Here is an easy to follow recipe fairly similar to mine http://www.dochara.com/eat/traditional/barm-brack.php












I'm going to have to work out how to say all this in Japanese before tomorrow so I can tell Yoshihara-sensei.

Flower shots

I have been bitching about this camera for almost 2 years as I have been unable to get it to take proper close-ups of flowers without blurring. I think I sussed it out today (click to enlarge). I was so happy. I wish I had a smell camera as they smelled to sweet, I want to remember the scent.

Club BBQ

Today was the hiking club's autumn BBQ at Shonai Ryokuchi Koen and we had perfect weather for it. When I think of BBQs, I think of rain, burnt burgers and wilted salad. I had no idea that the Japanese version would be so sophisticated! Ito-san cooked kajiki maguro (marinated tuna) and other fish on the hot plate, Takashi brought sushi, Masa made a Thai curry and there was also chicken, squid pasta and yaki soba (meat and noodles). Yum! I made some new friends including a lady who has tea parties, a girl who lives on my street and another lovely woman who spoke wonderfully slow, clear, simple Japanese so that I could understand everything :-)

BBQ photos here

After the BBQ a few of us went to see the roses in full bloom in the rose garden. It was also a good chance to see dogs decked out in their finest.

Want to see my etchings?

We just saw a lovely exhibition of over 100 of Rembrandt's etchings at the Nagoya-Boston Museum of Fine Art. My favourites were the biblical ones as they were so detailed. I also liked the way he portrayed street people, often sneaking in a self-portrait of himself as a beggar or something (see pic). I think that if Rembrandt were around today, he'd have great fun making etchings of people in Japan as there are some great costumes and hairstyles.

See more etchings on this website.

Again and again

We loved The Bird and the Bee! After the show we bought their EP and even got it signed by Inara and Greg. We were the only non-Japanese in the audience and I think we took them by surprise. Check them out on MySpace

Za ba-do ando za bee

Tonight we are going to a gig at Club Quattro. I had to ask for the tickets in my best "katakana" English (za ba-do ando za bee) because the girl didn't understand "The Bird and the Bee". I wonder what kind of crowd we will get...

Our local

We have a local pub. A real local pub like one you'd find in Ireland that does draft Guinness and has big wooden tables. You have to edit out the apartment block above it. The place is always, dark, empty and plays jazz. We went there last night for the second time with Michael, Dan and Wilailuck. It was nippy outside so felt nice and snug inside. The barman is frosty but pulls a good pint and knows his whiskeys. We think he's modeled himself on a character in a Haruki Murakami novel. We think the bar should be called Murphy's or Finnegan's, but we asked the barman again about its name: it's Frando (フランド) "because it is like a French bar". No, we couldn't work that one out either. There's nothing French inside, just lots of things with Guinness on. Strange place, but we will be back.

Another year, another school festival

Check out more pics here

Spooky forest

Cool truck

Isn't this truck amazing? We followed it a for a while on the Chuo Expressway

Ena-san, 2190m

Yay! Mountain climbing season has started again! We drove into Gifu with Justin and Jeff from the hiking club and stayed overnight the night before the hike. Justin cooked nabe (stew) with seafood and chicken and we had a nice mellow night in the toasty warm room. I had a pretty good night's sleep too.

The next morning we climbed Ena-san. We were lucky with the weather and we so excited about seeing the first autumn colours. The hike took us about 8 hours including breaks. We really earned our hot spring visit on the way home. All in all a really lovely weekend.



Us at the top

More photos here

“So how’s the Japanese going?”

I hate being asked this as I am forced to admit how slowly I am progressing. But, it’s a new academic term and time for a fresh start. We began classes again this week after having a break for the summer. I am attempting to apply (for once) some of the tricks that I encourage my own students to try. For instance, I have reevaluated my needs. The original plan was to study for the Japanese proficiency exams, but that meant classes focused on studying things like kanji and particles. This is all well and good, but when I think about what my needs are, these are things that are well down on the list, so not a good use of class time. Basically I want to improve my speaking and listening comprehension. Studying grammar and vocabulary will help with this. We talked to Yoshihara-sensei, our teacher, about these goals and she prepared a brilliant class recycling what we know and building fluency. I came out of the class feeling really good about my Japanese abilities! I know I have a LONG way to go, but I feel I am getting somewhere.

I have also done some study outside of class! Last semester, we were usually assigned practice exercises for homework. We almost always did them half an hour before class started or on the subway. How lame is that? This week’s homework was simply to “practice” the little dialogues we had studied - and we have! I have also started up my Japanese blog again (I just need to get someone to check my writing before I post) and I found some podcasts in Japanese. Yesterday I listened to an interview with someone talking about craft-making (here). There was a transcript to go with it so I was able to read along and listen at the same time. I learned lots of new words and kanji this way – it was brilliant. It’s hard to find things like this. I wish I had access to the type of materials my students have. Japanese textbooks and websites are usually really dry and have very little listening practice. If you know of any good resources for learning Japanese - especially authentic listening - please, PLEASE let me know. Thanks!

Independent Learning Association Conference

We had a great weekend at the conference in Chiba. My presentation seemed to go OK, I went to some very good sessions (see the conference blog over the coming days for summaries) and managed to catch up with lots of friends. The weather was perfect too. Pictures on Flickr

I wondered what I would say to the famous Henri Holec if I actually met him. As it turned out, he was in front of me in the coffee queue. I could have made some intelligent remark about his keynote speech, but I’m afraid all I did was ask if I could have my photo taken with him. What a girl! He seemed like a nice man and I don’t think he minded.

Great Croissant Heist

We spotted one of David's students working in the bakery at our local supermarket yesterday (I'll call her M so that she doesn't get into trouble). She came out straightening her chef's hat seething in English.

"I hate this job. The boss is so stupid"

We looked into the back of the bakery and saw a guy making bread.

"Yeah, that's him. Don't worry, he can't speak English"

She's worked there for 5 months. 5 months too long by the sounds of it. I asked her if there were any perks? Did she at least get free bread?

M ran back into the shop and talked to a woman with a clipboard. She then came out with a big bag of croissants and tried to shove them into our shopping bag.

Woah! We weren't hinting. We don't want to get her into trouble, but she's on a mission. The croissants are in our bag and she's telling us to

"Get out of here."
"GO!"

We went.

That girl is trouble.

Nice croissants though - I'm having one right now for breakfast.

Conference Prep

Perhaps nothing much (apart from new KitKats) is going on in my life. Now, that is worrying.

I am getting ready for a big conference next weekend in Tokyo Bay. It’s an important conference for me in lots of ways, and the first one I have ever been to which is totally dedicated to my field. Usually when I go to conferences, 3 or 4 talks jump out as being relevant, but next weekend ALL of the talks are relevant. It’s going to be really difficult to choose which ones to go to when at times there are 18 concurrent sessions. I have initiated a blog project. Not just me this time; I have roped in a group of people to help be so that we can have a glimpse of the sessions we missed.

We are staying in a fancy hotel for the first time in the Tokyo area. It’s normally the Washington in Shinjuku for us. We wanted to be nearer the conference venue this time.

We just heard last night that one of the keynote speakers has had to cancel which is such a shame. James Lantolf is a bit of a hero of mine. How many days, no weeks did I spend trying to get my head around “Sociocultural theory and second language learning.” (Oxford University Press, 2000) while I was working on my thesis. And how grateful I was when I found the text that saved my (academic) life: “Vygotskian approaches to second language research” (with Gabriela Appel 1994, Ablex).

As far as I know Henri Holec is still coming. He’s often said to have started the (sub)field of learner autonomy in language learning. What on earth will I say to him if I actually meet him?

My own presentation is on Sunday afternoon. I am talking about my students’ blogs and how they promote learner autonomy, in particular critical reflection. Wish me luck.