Many students travel overseas. Traveling overseas is what I recommend for all my students to do. There is only so much you can learn by staying in one place and reading books. As a university student, you’re finally old enough to be able to get on an airplane and travel to another country by yourself. This is the time to see what the real world is like. There are so many different languages and foods and cultures and perspectives and museums and animals and the list goes on. It is time to take all that you have learned from the textbooks and go out and see it firsthand. Indeed, the reason that I live in Japan today and teach English is because of the time in college when I went overseas and was so moved by that experience. I feel it is my duty to give my language to others and empower them to explore their world. 

When the brain stays in one place for a long time, everything becomes easy and automatic and the brain can work on auto-pilot. By placing yourself in a new situation, the brain has to return to its original state that it was as a newborn baby—when you didn’t know how to do anything. In a different country, you often don’t know how to speak, don’t know how to eat, where to go, how to get there, even how to properly function in the society. So your brain goes into overdrive and uses all that you have learned to figure out how to live. This wakes up the brain and it feels happy. It is finally being stimulated and used again. This is how the brain is supposed to function. With the brain in this state, there is more circulation flowing through the different quadrants of the brain and new, expansive thoughts more easily come to mind. This is an opportunity to think deeply about those pivotal questions such as, “Who am I? Where am I going in life? What do I really want to do in this lifetime?” Those types of questions rarely surface in our everyday routine lives, and when they do surface, they are difficult to answer because the brain is sleeping. But now is the time to ask those questions and to come up with the answers. 

During this time of COVID-19, it is more challenging to travel or do some of the things that I mentioned. But it is not impossible. Understand the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity you have with these extended sessions of free time. Commit yourself to designing your method of enrichment. It is no longer the school’s responsibility to decide how to navigate your education. Only you know yourself best. Look inside and figure out how you can put yourself in a new and challenging environment so that you can wake up your brain and grow. Your life may move in a completely different direction because of the decisions that you make during these precious university years.

Photo Credit: author

Blog Quiz

Q1. Why does the author live in Japan today? 

Q2. How is the brain supposed to function? 

Q3. What is the challenge that the author gives to the reader at the end of the article? 

Scroll down ↓ for the answers to the quiz.

Quiz Answers

Q1. Because when he was in college, he traveled overseas and was moved by that experience.

Q2. In a new environment where it has to work hard to figure out many things.

Q3. To find a way to put oneself in a new and challenging environment during the school break in order to wake up the brain and think about life's important questions.

Why do we have such long vacations as university students? It is not customary for Japanese to have a lot of time off from work. Even mothers are often asked to do many things by the PTA. So, why does a culture which takes pride in working hard give so much free time to university students? The Ministry of Education discusses the school calendar in Tokyo and they have made a conscious decision to keep this time open and available for university students. There is a reason. 

In the time of life as a university student, you are neither an adult nor a child. You are leaving childhood and getting ready to embark on adulthood. It is your final chance to live with your primary responsibility, almost your duty, to educate yourself as much as possible. Before college, you could say that teachers knew what was best to teach you. There are basic things in life that all people should know. Things like reading, writing, math, science, art & music, and other core subjects. Granted, the standard curriculum could use some “updating” to include subjects like homemaking, personal finance, sustainable living, civic engagement, etc. But students still get the basics. The reason that you have time off in college is so that you can decide what you would like to do to educate yourself. You are free to explore anything and you have the knowledge and self-awareness to be able to direct your efforts responsibly. 

Some students do an internship. This gives you a chance to experience what it is like to go to work and to put your efforts towards a company or a project. This is an invaluable experience as you think about entering the professional world after college. 

Some students volunteer. There are numerous volunteer projects available through JICA to help Japanese students go around Japan or the world and put their efforts towards helping the common good. This is also a profound experience as it may motivate you as to how you would like to direct your efforts as a working adult. The world needs its people to follow their passion and contribute towards a better world. Gone are the days of getting a desk job at Panasonic and working idly for 30 years to collect a paycheck. 

Photo Credit: author

Blog Quiz

Q1. According to the article, what is one thing that the Japanese culture takes pride in?

Q2. Why do students have a lot of time off during college? 

Q3. What are two examples of things that students do during their time off? 

Scroll down ↓ for the answers to the quiz.

Quiz Answers 

Q1. Working hard.

Q2. So that students can decide what they would like to do to educate themselves.

Q3. Do an internship and volunteer. 

There are a number of good ways to develop your English language skills. Reading a lot of books, listening to news programs or interviews, watching movies, talking with native speakers, studying for the standard exams such as TOEIC and TOEFL, etc. are among the most common ways that are often recommended to the students who are studying English. I am sure that you are habitually doing at least one or more of these in your language training, and I hope that you will continue doing so. However, it is sometimes difficult to stick to routinized practices like these because it is easy for us to get bored with the same types of exercises.

Therefore, I would like to recommend something that helps to refresh your routinized approach. That is collecting good quotes in English as you encounter them in the course of your study. Quotes mean a group of words or a short piece of writing taken from a book, speech, movie, etc. and good quotes provide us with wonderful discoveries and new insights. When you are lucky enough to encounter a good one, I highly recommend that you save it and add it to your personal list of good quotes. I believe that good quotes provide 3 major benefits to your learning.

The first one is giving you good lessons on English vocabulary and grammar. In order to fully appreciate the meaning of a quote, you must accurately grasp the exact meaning of vocabulary as used in the quote, as well as comprehend its grammatical structure. Without accurate understanding of both, quotes would mean nothing to you, or even misguide you into a wrong direction. In other words, your English ability is tested by a quote. The second major benefit goes far beyond assisting linguistic training. Good quotes will give you profound wisdom about your life and may assist you in your struggle to overcome problems you may encounter in your personal life. They have the power of cheering us up in the midst of difficulties and hardships. These two benefits will inevitably lead to another benefit, that is, to motivate you to continue learning English. If your acquired knowledge on English vocabulary and grammar gives you the power of overcoming your life problems, you will naturally feel like learning more and more of English, which will put you on the steady path toward becoming an expert on the English language. Good quotes, in this way, will take you into the virtuous cycle of learning.

Here are some of my favorite quotes that I have collected in the last 30 years. Some are taken from books, others are from movies, and still others are from the professors of an American university I had attended in my youth. They still give me a great deal of encouragement to continue learning not only English but also how I should live my life. Please try to see how accurately you can understand the messages conveyed by these quotes and how much you can appreciate them as I do.

“Try not to become a man of success but rather a man of value.” (Albert Einstein)

“Asking right questions is far more important than finding right answers.” (President of University of Minnesota)

“Study for its own sake.” (Professor of University of Minnesota)

“To whom much is given, much is expected.” (The New Testament)

“Evil is ‘live’ spelled backward.” (Book “People of the Lie” by Scot Peck)

“There are no mistakes in life, only lessons.” (Book “Women Who Love Too Much” by Robin Norwood)

“Things you own end up owning you.” (Movie “Fight Club”)

“Love is like a language. It has to be taught and learned.” (Movie “Beautiful”)

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” (Henry David Thoreau)

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” (Nelson Mandela)

Photo Credit: Binti Malu @pexels.com

Blog Quiz

Q1 Which of the following language learning methods does the author not mention in the blog?

A Watching movies

B Talking with native speakers

C Using a language learning app 

Q2 The word ‘profound’ in paragraph 3 is closes in meaning to which of the following: 

A Distant or remote

B Very great or intense

C Useful 

Q3 What do you think the following phrase from Fight Club means: "Things you own end up owning you.” 

A We spend our life in soulless jobs working to buy things we think we need

B If you work hard and you can be rich and successful 

C Rich people are more attractive

Scroll down ↓ for the answers to the quiz.

Quiz Answers

Q1. C

Q2. B

Q3. A

Every time I pass by a café near my house, I see, through the glass-wall, many students studying over a cup of coffee. I used not to be that type of student who can concentrate on studying in a public place like them, but I can relate to them as a coffee lover. While many of them probably drink coffee simply because they like it, some of them (like me in the past) might do so to get the effect of caffeine stimulation.

Caffeine is widely known as a substance that is contained in particular foods and drinks including chocolate, tea and coffee. It may also be added to soda and energy drinks. It acts as a stimulant for the central nervous system, thereby keeping us awake. Studies have shown that an appropriate intake of caffeine promotes learning and memory performance.

People often choose coffee as a beverage to aid concentration due to the effects of caffeine. In fact, according to Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan published by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 100ml of coffee contains 60mg of caffeine, which is the second highest proportion of caffeine among familiar drinks next to refined green tea, or gyokuro in Japanese. You may be surprised to learn that in terms of caffeine intake, just drinking a small-sized canned coffee is sometimes much more efficient than drinking an energy drink.

If you want to gain the full benefit of caffeine, be careful about the timing of drinking coffee. Some people mistakenly believe that they can get the stimulating influence of caffeine immediately after drinking coffee. Actually, it is about 30 minutes after consumption that caffeine takes effect, and some more time is needed before this effect reaches its peak levels. This means that you should start drinking coffee 30 minutes before you begin studying, or you have to overcome sleepiness without the help of caffeine for at least 30 minutes. It would also be beneficial to keep in mind that the effect of caffeine lasts for longer than 5 hours. Unless you have to finish your homework staying up late, you should not drink coffee before going to bed.

Last but not least, remember that drinking too much coffee can be harmful. Typical symptoms caused by immoderate consumption of caffeine include an increased heartrate, chilly feeling, and numbness in limbs. There is also a fatal risk due to acute caffeine poisoning in the worst case. To prevent these, it is recommended by Health Canada that healthy adults limit their caffeine intake to 400mg per day, which means they should not drink more than three mugs of coffee. 

As long as moderately consumed, coffee can be a great study companion. Keep up your good work over a cup of coffee!

References:

{Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology [https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/syokuhinseibun/1365420.htm]}

{Health Canada [https://www.healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2010/13484a-eng.php]}

Photo Credit: Chevanon Photography @pexels.com

Blog Quiz

True or False

Q1. Coffee contains the most caffeine out of all drinks.

Q2. The effect of caffeine usually lasts for no longer than 30 minutes.

Q3. Even a healthy adult should be careful not to drink too much coffee.

Scroll down ↓ for the answers to the quiz.

Quiz Answers

Q1. False

Q2. False

Q3. True

I remember when I learned to read the Dick and Jane books back in the 1960s. The illustrations showed never-changing white skies and two kids who always happily got along and played politely with each other. Neither child was ever sad, and the parents were always cheerful and attentive. Many stories included eating ice-cream cones and riding shiny red bicycles. I found the short stories enjoyable and I felt like I was achieving something because my mom praised me after reading each one out loud. As I got a little older, I found that the stories were more interesting than my real life. Before I met my best friend in 5th grade, I spent most of my time reading alone, escaping the dreariness of my neighborhood and the dull kids around. Reading was a form of companionship for me. 

Then in the upper grades of elementary school, I got "too good" at reading. The teachers told my mother that I shouldn't take the books home from school because I was getting ahead of my classmates. My mother was told to encourage me to abandon books and play more outside, even during the icy winters in Wisconsin. 

The turning point came in sixth grade when Mr. Dean, our handsome Language Arts teacher, took 12 students out for a special class to increase our reading rather than decrease it. He challenged us to read as many books as possible, keep detailed vocabulary lists and share with the class what we were reading. And, he taught us how to read and write poetry and published our poems in a newsletter. He stretched us. He made us competitive, voracious readers. He praised us when we used our new words in conversation. And because we were reading so many books, we became aware of how many worlds of adventure were available on the printed page. This teacher had us entering different worlds joyfully, and he was excited for us, as though he was sending each of us off on a trip when we had time to read silently in class. 

My advice to students is to read to escape your reality. Read in a foreign language to escape Japan further. It is important to alternate reading and nonreading throughout the day, to maintain the architecture of the mind. When you read, you pull another reality around you like a blanket. While you're *not* reading, you inhabit "actual" reality. Too much reading weakens your relationship to the world; too little saps your imagination. You need both to inhabit reality and to flee from it.

Have you ever felt that what is common sense to you is not the same for everyone? If you’ve ever been abroad, I’m sure you’ve thought about it. Today I’d like to share some stories from my own experiences.

Taking photos at museums

In Japan, we are not allowed to take pictures at a museum. Anyone who gets too close to a painting will receive a warning from museum staff. In America, taking photos at a museum, or even during a show like Cirque Du Soleil, is allowed. The video I took at the show enabled me to not only preserve the memory but to share it with my friends when I returned home.

No ticket gate at train stations

Japan’s train system is highly sophisticated. The ticket machines never make mistakes. When I visited Vancouver, Canada in 2004, there were no ticket gates at any of the Skytrain stations. You buy a ticket, but no one ever checks it. I thought, “Canadians are very trusting people.”

Egg whites

Like many Japanese, I love TKG (raw egg over rice). Eating raw eggs is part of Japanese culture but not in every country. Some Canadians don’t eat egg yolks. Believing the egg white is a healthier choice, some people make scrambled eggs using only the egg whites. You can even buy just “egg whites” at the supermarket.

Garage sales

A garage sale is similar to a flea market with one exception. Flea markets are held in public places. Garage sales are advertised in newspapers or on flyers hung on utility poles by families who hold the sale in their driveway or on their front lawn. 

Traveling exposes us to cultural differences and is a great way to expand our horizons.

Photo Credit: Tim Sevage @pexels.com

Blog Quiz

Quiz 

Q1. Do you think the author has a positive or negative view of taking photos in a museum or at a show in Canada?

A. Good because you can preserve memories.

B. Bad because you will receive a warning.

Q2. Why does the author think ‘Canadians are trusting people’?

A. They don’t eat egg yolk.

B. There are often no ticket barriers at stations.

C. They like maple syrup. 

Q3. How are garage sales different from flea markets? 

A. They usually take place on private property

B. They sell car parts.

C. You can buy egg whites.

Scroll down ↓ for the answers to the quiz.

Q1 A

Q2 B

Q3 A

Is PowerPoint just a ‘user-friendly’ software for presenting information?  Actually, it’s much more: it’s a design tool. At a basic level, the PowerPoint software menu offers choices for putting together slides that are organized into a slideshow presentation. But understanding PowerPoint as a design tool gives you practice combining speaking, writing, images, color, and spatial organization. Designing is learning how each of these different forms of meaning come together to communicate. Perhaps the most important idea of designing is collaboration (co = ‘together’ and labor = ‘work’). Design is powerful when each part contributes to the overall meaning.  

So what are the essential parts of a PowerPoint presentation? What does each part contribute?

Message

There is no PowerPoint presentation without a message. A powerful presentation starts with an engaging topic and ideas that you want to convey. Designing a PowerPoint presentation starts with asking the question: “What’s my presentation about?” and “What’s my message, and what’s special about it?” The next step in designing the message is to gather information, develop new ideas and questions, and begin to organize that information and ideas. Some of the messages will be in spoken words, some in written words and some in images, and other visual meanings. 

Presenter 

The presenter, of course, is the central component of the presentation. There is no message without a messenger. The presenter has more work to do than just ‘talk’ to the audience: interacting is the key to real communication. Designing for the audience will include the choice of words, intonation, eye contact, and gestures, all working together. The presenter also coordinates the slides on the screen and has the power to control the focus and pace of the presentation.

Screen 

The PowerPoint screen works to display writing, images, charts, video clips, and other forms of information on the screen. This makes it very different from other kinds of face-to-face communication. Usually, the most important part of the message is what the presenter is saying. But at times the most important part of the message could be what the audience is seeing on screen and, at that time, the speaker has a supportive role. Throughout the presentation, the screen and the presenter work collaboratively.

The Audience

Designing a PowerPoint presentation means creating it for a real audience. Making a PowerPoint presentation just for yourself wouldn’t make sense, would it? It is the audience that makes designing purposeful. The audience shaped the message of the presentation. When designing your PowerPoint presentation, ask yourself these questions: “How much does this particular audience know?” “What information do I need to include and what information should I leave out?” “How can I show the audience that my message is worth their time and attention?”  And most importantly, “What design elements can I use to clearly convey my message to this audience?”

Photo Credit: Austin Distel @unsplash.com

Blog Quiz

Q1. In paragraph 1, what does the word ‘collaboration’ mean?

a. To collect information. 

b. To design a presentation. 

c. To work together.  

Q2. Which of the following is NOT essential in a presentation? 

a. Eye contact

b. Intonation 

c. A sense of humor 

Q3. According to the blog, why is consideration of the audience important? 

a. It will help you decide what to wear.

b. It will help you design an engaging presentation.

c. You will know when to stop talking.  

Scroll down ↓ for the answers to the quiz.

Quiz Answers

Q1. c

Q2. c 

Q3. b

Ask many Japanese people to name famous or important shrines and the list will be very familiar: Ise Shrine, Itsukushima Shrine, Heian shrine, Yasukuni Shrine, Izumo Taisha, Fushimi Inari. One shrine that very few will mention is Omiwa shrine. Few people will mention it, and many don’t even know about it. That is surprising because it is likely the oldest shrine in Japan.

Omiwa Shrine, sometimes called “Miwa Shrine,” is located in Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture. It’s very easy to find because the shrine is on Mount Miwa and a giant 32-meter torii gate marks the entrance. Access is very easy as there is a Miwa Station on JR’s Sakurai line. 

How old is Omiwa Shrine? Nobody really knows. The shrine is so old it is difficult to find an exact date of origin. There are records of Omiwa Shrine being an important shrine back in the early Kofun period (around 300AD), so it might be older than that!

Looking at Omiwa shrine there are many familiar sights. Torii gates lead to the main shrine area, and there are small side-shrines, a prayer hall, and other buildings. What is a little unusual is that there is no main hall. The main hall is usually the key feature of a shrine, it’s where the kami (deity) is housed. However, Omiwa shrine is so old that it was used before this tradition even started. The entire Mount Miwa is the home of the kami (deity). 

Many people enjoy sightseeing and visiting famous places in different parts of the country. Many of the historical sites are beautiful to look at, and you can enjoy them for themselves; however, some of them have stories that can make them even more interesting.

Zuiganji Temple in Sendai provides a good example of this. It is connected to the famous warlord Date Masamune, who paid for it to be restored. Its rooms are beautifully painted with a variety of designs. In one of these rooms, the paintings meant something more.

The walls (and sliding doors) of the Hawk Room (Taka no Ma) are decorated with paintings of hawks and other birds in natural surroundings showing trees, rocks and water. This was the room where Masamune’s followers would wait when he was visiting the temple.

Hawks were a popular motif with the samurai. They represented the ferocity and strength of the warrior. These paintings had additional meanings – it is believed they were meant as instruction for Masamune’s followers, explaining how samurai should behave.

The paintings contain puns – a kind of joke where a word has two meanings – as well as straightforward illustrations of sayings or proverbs.

One painting shows a hawk catching a duck. This is a pun, because the word kamo, means both ‘duck’ and ‘to be made a fool of.’ The hidden meaning is ‘Samurai should not allow themselves to be made fools of.’ 

Another painting shows a hawk catching a kind of bird called an egret or heron. In Japanese it is called sagi. Of course, sagi has another meaning – fraud, so this is a pun that means ‘Don’t get involved in fraud.’ 

Another part of the paintings shows a pheasant being chased by a hawk. There is a saying in Japanese: ‘If the pheasant didn’t cry out, it wouldn’t get shot.’ This probably means you should not speak if you don’t need to. Good for the samurai, but not so good in English class.

Finally, there is a picture of a hawk staring at a rabbit. Maybe there is another one we can’t see. This illustrates the saying: ‘If you chase two rabbits, you won’t even catch one.’ This means you should focus on one thing at a time, rather than try and multi-task. This may be good advice, but it seems more and more difficult in today’s busy world. Who knows? Maybe Date Masamune’s samurai felt the same way.

Photo Credit:

(No attribution required from Pixabay.com)

Blog Quiz

Q1. What does the author find particularly interesting about Zuiganji Temple?

A. It is surrounded by beautiful countryside.

B. The paintings contain hidden meaning.

C. You can learn about the ferocity of the samurai.

Q2. What is a ‘pun’?

A. A soft sticky type of bread.

B. A play on words. 

C. A small duck.

Q3. According to the author, how can Samurai teachings be applied to today’s modern world?

A. Stay silent when you are hunting animals.

B. Speak more in English class.

C. Try to focus on one task at a time. 

Scroll down ↓ for the answers to the quiz.

Quiz Answers

Q1. B

Q2. B

Q3. C 

Are you a dog person, or a cat person? If you had asked me this question three years ago, my answer would have definitely been that I was a dog person. I believed that cats never felt attachment towards humans but rather their houses. Moreover, I was scared of cats and couldn’t even touch them, but now I’m a typical cat person living with three cats. 

Two years ago, when I got home after work, my daughter and her friend showed me one tiny kitten in a cardboard box. The kitten was under the wooden deck in my garden with my dog. I couldn’t hold the small monster, which was meowing and had a thin and dirty body. I had no idea what I should do, so my daughter and I left her in the bush of a temple in front of my house. Keeping cats was out of question to me at the time. In a couple of hours, we heard a cat meowing again; she had returned to my house. Fortunately, one of my coworkers wanted a female cat, so I took care of her fearfully for several days until my coworker adopted her. After she left, I was suddenly sad and realized the cat was something special to me. That was the beginning that opened the door to my new world of cats.

Cats are independent, clean, and soft, and they don’t bark like dogs. Whenever I go upstairs, my three cats follow me. We sleep in the same bed during winter. They are definitely affectionate toward their owners, which went against my expectations. In addition, their body parts, eyes, tails, ears, and paws etc., are extremely cute. Among all of them, I like their tails which are very different from dogs’. They move flexibly, slowly, and elegantly. Every cat has a different tail with a different color and shape. My third cat has an unusual tail called “a kinked tail” (see the photo). It is said that genetic mutation causes kinked tails. When I saw her for the first time, I thought she might be a defective cat with a meandering tail. Afterward, I learned that since the shape was similar to a hook, some people in Western countries believed that cats with kinked tails could hook you good luck. If you find cats with a kinked tail, the cat might bring you good luck and happiness.

Sometimes we judge people or animals based on our preconceived ideas or by their appearance. I had never thought something I disliked would have made me happy. You can easily understand how soothing three cats are under these tough coronavirus outbreak conditions. My everyday life is full of joy and smiles thanks to them. Now I’m waiting for more happiness and good luck, which might be brought about by the kinked tail. Setting aside and overcoming our preconceptions can lead to greater happiness.

Photo Credit: Author

Blog Quiz

Choose the best answer.

Q1. How did the author get to like cats?

A. She started keeping a stray cat.

B. She temporarily took care of a stray cat.

C. She was attracted by cats’ eyes.

Q2. Kinked tails are considered to bring happiness because…

A. they are caused by genetic mutation

B. they are popular in western countries.

C. they are said to hook good luck

Q3. What is the key to becoming happy?

A. Having a cat with a kinked tail as a pet 

B. Sticking to our ideas we already have.

C. Not being haunted by fixed ideas

Scroll down ↓ for the answers to the quiz.

Quiz Answers

Q1. B

Q2. C

Q3. C