Do you like playing musical instruments? I do. I used to play the piano when I was little although I was not a good player. I also tried playing the guitar in college when I enjoyed listening to Avril Lavigine. I wanted to sing while playing the guitar like her. However, it was so difficult to press guitar strings with my little hands. So, I have given up the guitar and just enjoyed singing at karaoke.

 

Recently, however, I have started playing a new musical instrument, the ukulele. Unlike the guitar, the ukulele is smaller, cheaper and has fewer strings. This time, I felt like I could play some chords. At first, I tried to learn how to play the ukulele by reading a practice book for beginners. On the first day, I was already able to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” On the second day, I was able to play “Happy Birthday to You.” Wow. I was impressed. On the third day, I was bored. These are adorable and nice songs. What was wrong with me? I simply did not enjoy singing the songs.

 

I changed my approach to practicing the ukulele, and this new way worked well for me. I used Youtube videos. Visual demonstrations and step-by-step instructions were much more helpful for me than just following my practice book. I can even use Youtube videos to tune my ukulele! What attracted me more was that Youtube provides many videos for learning how to play famous pop music. At first, I hesitated to practice those tunes, remembering my failure in playing the guitar, but I tried. It was free anyway.

 

I practiced playing “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran. It sounds difficult, doesn’t it? Relax. The video I used was for beginners. For a week or so, my clumsy fingers were a lot slower than my singing, which annoyed me a little, but I was very pleased and satisfied when my fingers caught up with my singing speed. It felt so good. After all, I was able to sing while playing an instrument. Of course, I cannot play the ukulele as professionally as Jake Shimabukuro or Grace Vanderwaal, but I am quite satisfied.

 

What’s better, I got another benefit from practicing the ukulele on Youtube. I learned some new English words and expressions because I kept watching the same video in English and singing the same song over and over again. You may be able to pick up vocabulary in a foreign language as a by-product of practicing a musical instrument. The approach is extremely simple. Watch Youtube and practice. You may be able to kill two birds with one stone.

 

 

Photo Credit: Pixabay@pexels.com

 

Blog Quiz

 

1. How did the author practice playing the ukulele?

A.   She used a practice book.

B.    She used Youtube videos.

C.    She used a practice book and Youtube videos.

D.  She used songs played by Jake Shimabukuro and Grace Vanderwaal.

 

2. What does the passage indicate about Jake Shimabukuro and Grace Vanderwaal?

 

A.  They are professional guitarists.

B.   They are professional singers.

C.    They play the ukulele as skillfully as the author.

D.  They play the ukulele very well.

3. What are the “two birds” in this passage?

 

A.  the ukulele and English skills

B.    the ukulele and guitar skills

C.    the ukulele and Youtube

D.  the ukulele and karaoke

 

 

Scroll down ↓ for the answers to the quiz.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quiz Answers

 

1. C

2. D

3. A

In Japan, curry rice is regularly found by surveys to be the most popular dish. Even more popular than ramen and miso soup! To foreign visitors it may be surprising because Japan is not traditionally world-famous for its spices. Actually, Japanese food is famous for avoiding strong flavours. So how did Japan fall in love with curry?

The story begins soon after the Meiji Restoration (明治維新) around 150 years ago when Japan began to rapidly modernise and change. Before that, Japan was a very isolated country. In a very short period of time Japan became a very modern country and made alliances with lots of other countries. In 1902 Japan and the United Kingdom became allies. A big part of this partnership included the British Royal Navy and the Japanese Navy (海上自衛隊) sharing weapons and military advice with each other.

 

Japan had a big problem with their Navy during this period. The young Japanese men in the Navy often had Beri-beri disease (脚気) and nobody knew why. However, Mr. Takaki Kanehiro, who was a naval doctor and went to university in England, discovered that the reason so many Japanese sailors got sick was because the young men only ate white rice and nothing else. These young men were not getting enough Vitamin B1 and were often dying very young.

 

The Japanese government needed to find a cheap way to give their men Vitamin B1, so they asked the British Royal Navy for advice. One of the foods served on British ships was curry, so they introduced curry to the Japanese Navy to see if this would help stop Beri-beri. The British Navy had been controlling India as a colony for over 100 years and had adopted the Indian national dish. The British Navy never suffered from Beri-beri, so they recommended curry to the Japanese Navy and it worked very successfully. Mr Kanehiro was given the Order of the Rising Sun (旭日章) for saving many Japanese lives.

 

After the British Navy shared the curry recipe with the Japanese Navy, the Japanese young men took the recipe back to Japan to eat at home. The Indian spices were imported from the UK in exchange for Japanese silk. But in 1931, there was a big scandal. Some Japanese shop owners were arrested by police for selling cheap Japanese curry powder but pretending it was expensive UK curry powder! Actually, it was good news for Japan because people couldn’t taste the difference between the UK version and the Japanese version. Then Japanese spice companies like S&B became very popular with their domestic curry and British spices stopped being imported.

The Japanese then added their own white rice to the curry and also adapted the recipe to suit the Japanese. For example, yuzu was sometimes used in Japanese curry instead of lemon to make Japanese curry a little sweeter. In more recent years, Japan has created its own unique styles of curry, including curry-pan, curry-udon, curry-nanban and the very popular instant curry blocks. The Japanese Navy still eat curry rice to this day – every Friday. Each Naval ship has its own unique recipe!

 

Photo Credit: Buenosia Carol@pexels.com

Blog Quiz

 

1. What is an alliance?

           

A.   An enemy

B.    A partnership

 

2. Which fruit is sometimes added to Japanese curry instead of lemon?

           

A.   Yuzu

B.    Mikan

 

3. Which country did the British adopt the curry dish from?

           

A.   India

B.    Nepal

 

 

 

Scroll down ↓ for the answers to the quiz.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quiz Answers

 

1. B

2. A

3. A