Lesson 1 - 19:00-20:00 - 2 Students.
We started off by commenting on the drop in temperature recently in the mornings and evenings. It is easier to get sick during these times. I used a British term that is meant to ward of bad luck and we started talking about lucky customs in Japan. In Japan, I was told, people cover their thumbs when they see a hearse; in England we bow our head.
A student asked about the photos that had been uploaded to the Nano House Facebook page of myself and Emily-ちゃん carrying wooden beams back from the hardware shop. We spoke about Ahaya Dio and all the different things that can be bought in there, such as the pets. We then talked about the pets that we had owned - gerbils, dogs, cats, land hermit crabs. We spoke about the problems of having pets when you have a rental house before discussing any problems we had had when renting property in the past. The main problem was complaints about noisy children and we spoke about how young children never seem to be able to get on with each other.
Vocab:
Touch wood
Block head
Hearse
Curtsey
Lesson 2 - 20:00-21:00 - 2 Students.
We spoke about books that we are reading and admitted that, when we find a word we don't recognise, we skip over it. We discussed the British and Japanese authors we read and how hard it must be to translate books into different languages. We spoke about learning Japanese Kanji and how difficult it is and what other languages we had learned; all of us had learnt French in the past!
We then talked about slang in Japan, England and America and how difficult it is to understand.
The topic was changed as one student wanted to know why it was the UK for politics and finance, but in sport there are teams for England, Wales and Scotland. I explained no one had wanted to give up the chance to win a sport trophy and that England is, sadly, bad at sports. They felt it was cheating, but agreed that England needed the extra help. We spoke about Japan's success in the Rugby so far, before discussing other sports and how people tend to be interested in them only during events like world cups and the Olympics.
Thank you all for coming out tonight, I had fun and hope you did too. See you soon!