I was booked today by the Shiga Prefectural Board of Education for a 3 hour workshop in the afternoon. In the morning a university professor was presenting. Hence I made sure I was there to check that anything stupid wasn’t taught ( e.g. one university guy goes round the country telling people not to teach…

Seeing as I have 4 hour train journeys nearly everyday this week I figured I might as well fly up today. This route uses one of the really tiny planes “Aisle or window seat? They’re both!”. Which is actually really fun being able to look out the window and see everything below. Kyushu and Shikoku…

Over on the Genki Japan site we have lots and lots of people learning Japanese. The main reason for most of them is so that they can experience Japanese culture in real Japanese. Certainly no one in this day and age would say “Right, I want to learn Japanese so I can tell Japanese people…

Sometimes in higher grades kids will have taken on board influences from teachers, parents and TV and sometimes in class will gladly boast “Eigo wakaranai!” – “I don’t understand any English”. Obviously you need to stamp this thinking out before it spreads. I’ve just written up an idea I use that works really well, and…

I’m getting a bit fed up of this. I’ve known the teacher at today’s school for quite a while and she’s really nice. Initially the school refused to let her have the travel expenses for me to come, which of course isn’t a good thing. But they came up with the idea of inviting the…