What I Didn’t Do During the Summer Holidays －夏休みに私がやらなかった事－

Many parents were struggling over the same problem during the summer: how to finish their child’s homework.

Judging by the stories of my students, it is quite normal for a child’s summer homework to be in fact mostly or entirely done by adults. 

One of my students is the mother of a first grade junior high school student.  She told me that she mostly wrote her son’s account of visiting a museum, her son’s tutor mostly wrote his science report, and her relative helped him with his English homework.  Unfortunately, disaster has struck for the boy.  His science report was selected as the most outstanding work in the class, and now he has to do a presentation on it to the whole school.  He should have just copied and pasted a bland summary from Chat GPT.  The tutor did a lovely Power Point presentation, and now the boy has to work out how to use Power Point and to try to understand what the presentation is all about! 

Another of my students is the mother of a first grade elementary school student.  She forgot to keep a daily diary during the summer, noting each day’s weather.  Her mother had to go on the internet and research what the weather had been like over the last few weeks. 

My forth grade son was supposed to look at the night sky over Tokyo and draw the position of various stars from his vantage point.  The trouble was that every night seemed to be cloudy.  In the end my wife had to take him to the planetarium.

 

Tales from a Life with Too Many Flowers －花があり過ぎる人生からの物語－

I recently read Mark Boyle’s book, “The Way Home: Tales from a Life Without Technology.” 

The writer wanted to live without anything containing plastic, using electricity, or made in a factory.  So he moved to a rural farm in Ireland with his girlfriend, and had no tv, computer, phone, car or electric lighting.  He wanted to do this to show that it was possible to live in a simpler way than we do in developed countries, and have a happy life without damaging the planet. 

It was interesting to read about how he learned lots of necessary skills.  He had to learn to kill farm animals by hand and prepare the meat and other products.  He collected herbs to use in tea or as remedies for colds and fevers.  He started making his own alcohol, and growing vegetables organically. 

I wasn’t surprised, though, when this man’s girlfriend left him towards the end of the book.  Living so simply might have been his passion, but most people would find such a life very limiting. 

It reminded me of a song by the Talking Heads called “(Nothing but) Flowers”.  Two lovers in the song leave human towns and industry behind for an idyllic life in nature.  Everything starts well. 

“Here we stand, like an Adam and Eve -

Waterfalls, garden of Eden;

Two fools in love, So beautiful and strong…”

 

But then the practical difficulties become apparent.

 

“We caught a rattlesnake,, Now we’ve got something for dinner…

There was a shopping mall, now it’s all covered with flowers,

If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower…

I miss the honkey-tonks, Dairy Queens and 7 – 11s.”

 

Vocabulary:

idyllic – of a place, extremely peaceful and pleasant, especially a simple and natural environment

[eg., This riverside is an idyllic spot to have a picnic.]

a lawn mower – a machine for cutting grass

[eg., On a sunny Sunday afternoon in summer, you can see many people in their gardens, using a lawn mower to mow their lawns.]

a honkey-tonk – In America, a honkey-tonk is a traditional working class bar or dance hall where country music is played

[eg., I went into a honkey-tonk for some beer, music and a rowdy atmosphere]

 

 

What’s that you are burning? －燃やしているのは、なあに？－

I tell my son bedtime stories every night.  I listen to an audio book I think he might like, and then try to remember and summarise the story. 

Recently he has been enjoying listening to stories from “33 Strategies of War” by Robert Greene.  Each chapter has different anecdotes and examples from history to illustrate one strategy, such as “Know your enemy,” and “Don’t fight the last battle.” 

One strategy we talked about recently was “Burn your boats.”  When Cortez left Cuba with a small group of armed men, he was hoping to conquer the Aztec empire in what would become Mexico.  But he didn’t trust that his men would give 100 per cent effort if they had an escape route.  So after landing in dangerous territory, he deliberately destroyed the boats that had taken them there.  Now his men didn’t have the option of running away and taking the boats back to Cuba.  They had to fight and win, or else die trying. 

A non-military example of “Burn your boats,” was Dostoevsky.  When he started to feel too comfortable as a writer, he spent all of the money he had saved up.  Then he had no choice but to write and sell his writing at a fast pace, because he had no other money to fall back on. 

How does this strategy work for English learners, I wonder?  Burn Google translate, and force yourself to work out the meaning of English by yourself?

 

Back Streets or Luxury? ー裏道か、豪華さかー

My recent trip to Vietnam with my wife and 9 year old son reminded me of travelling through South-east Asia twenty years ago.  I could see at that time, and I spent about three months backpacking through Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia.  Since losing my eyesight, and also having a young child, I have taken easier holidays in Japan or in resort areas with good hotels and facilities for tourists. 

In Vietnam we stayed in three different hotels – a small, cheap hotel in Hoi An, then a more luxurious hotel in central Da Nang, then a cheaper hotel near the beach in Da Nang.  The switch from cheap hotel to luxury hotel amazed my son.  When he saw the second hotel, and we were invited to enjoy the free afternoon tea (with a chocolate doughnut), my son kept saying, “I am rich!  I have become rich!” 

The thing which reminded me of backpacking years ago was wandering around a place where people didn’t speak English, and having random encounters and experiences.  There was a banh mi, or Vietnamese style baguette restaurant just across from our hotel in Hoi An, and we decided to give it a go.  It was lovely, and much nicer than the banh mi restaurant recommended by guide books and frequented by tourists rather than locals. 

We wandered through the back streets near our hotel in Hoi An, looking for a launderette.  We found kids kicking a ball up and down a narrow street, dodged passing scooters, found a place to get our laundry done, and bought some wonderful coconut flavoured iced coffee from a street vendor. 

Things became much easier once we reached the luxury hotel in Da Nang.  The beds were bigger.  I broke a glass at our first hotel by kicking it because I was sharing a bed with my son, and sleeping with my feet next to his head, and the night stand with my glass of water.  We could all stretch out and relax in the second hotel. 

The breakfast was also a delight in the second hotel.  I tried dishes such as roast duck, sticky rice, dumplings, and pho noodles. 

But despite the greater luxury and convenience of Da Nang, my wife and I much preferred the back streets of Hoi An.

 

Hoi An Soup －ホイアンスープ

Our taxi arrived in the evening at T and T Villa, a small, three star hotel in Hoi An. 

We checked in, and walked up two flights of stairs, since there was no elevator.  The staff, seeing that I was blind, kindly asked if we would like to move to a room on the ground floor.  I said it would  be fine using the stairs – after all, there was a constant noisy beeping from car and scooter horns at ground level. 

After a short rest, we headed out into the city.  Our first task was to find a mini-mart, said to be about a ten minute walk away, so that we could buy supplies such as bottled water.  Imagine a Japanese lady helping her nine year old son along, with her blind husband tapping his cane and holding her shoulder as they make their way up unfamiliar streets.  The roads were very uneven, and there were many scooters parked on the pavement, meaning we had to constantly step into the road for stretches until the pavement became free again.  Crossing busy roads was very difficult the first few times, since there were no pedestrian traffic lights and several lanes of beeping scooters. 

But we did get used to it.  The locals were very friendly and helpful.  Sometimes a scooter would stop to block the traffic to allow my wife to get us at least half way across the road.  You could stop half way and just let the traffic pass in front and behind you until a gap on the other side became available.  At other times, local pedestrians would gesture for us to cross the road alongside them, as they zipped between the vehicles with a practiced ease. 

We made it to the mini-mart.  We got our water, some snacks, and a bottle of nep moi, a Vietnamese rice vodka.  It is about 30 per cent alcohol, and a few glasses each evening helped me sleep soundly! 

It was already getting late, so rather than look for any particular restaurant, we decided just to stop at a random restaurant that seemed to be selling noodles.  So we had our first meal in Vietnam in a pho restaurant that turned out to serve only vegetarian dishes.  I ordered something that was a light soup with noodles, vegetables and several different kinds of tofu.  It was delicious.  My wife shared a different noodle, vegetable and tofu dish with our son.  It was as nice a meal as you could hope for, and the total cost for the two dishes was 50,000 Dong.  That’s about 315 Japanese Yen or 1 Pound and 50 Pence in U.K. money. 

It was stiflingly hot and humid.  My wife said that as the lady cooking our meal was ladling vegetables and tofu into our noodle soup, a big bead of sweat was running down her face.  As the sweat reached her nose, my wife wondered if it was going to drip into our soup.  It didn’t, and she smiled as she gave us our meals. 

As we were walking back to the hotel, dodging scooters and bumps in the road, the sweat was dripping down my back too.  There were smells all around – coffee, spices and frying food everywhere.  The roads were a chaotic bustle of noises.  I felt like I was in a human soup.  And I loved it. 

As a blind person on holiday with others, I can sometimes feel quite left out.  Everyone else is sightseeing – literally looking at a beautiful view or statue or painting that I cannot see.  But on my first evening in Hoi An, I felt very much a part of the trip.  I could hear it in the bustle of life around me, smell it in the great variety of foods on offer all round, and even feel it dripping down my back.

Jumbo Questions and Jumbo Plans －ジャンボ問とジャンボ計画－

My nine year old son has finished school for the summer and is at home every day.  I usually go shopping on Friday mornings with a guide, who is a Japanese lady in her eighties.  Today I let my son join us on our trip to the supermarket, and we took him to Mr. Donut’s on the way home. 

My son gets on well with the guide, and was happily telling her about various topics that came to his mind, such as an English test he recently passed and a book he is reading about demons.  After talking about himself for quite a while, he started asking her questions.  Children can be amazingly direct.  Here are some of the questions he asked without feeling awkward: How old are you?  How old are your parents?  So how old were they when they died?  What did you study at university?  So why didn’t you go to university? 

I jumped into the conversation to stop the inquisition.  I asked my son if he was going to study something at university. 

“No,” he said.  “I’m going to leave school after junior high school.” 

“So what will you do for money?” my guide asked. 

“I’ll just win the lottery,”  said my son.  “700 million Yen on the summer jumbo lottery.” 

“700 million Yen is a lot,” said my guide.  “What would you do if you won less money, such as just one million Yen?” 

“I’d buy one million Yen’s worth of new jumbo lottery tickets,” he said.  “I only want to win 700 million Yen.” 

It is nice to have a well thought out plan for your future.

 

Play Like a Penguin －ペンギンのようにプレイするー

I read an interesting comment from the football World Cup this week.  A former striker from England, Chris Sutton, commented on Portugal’s 1 – 0 loss to Spain.  He was irritated that the Portugal manager continued to play Cristiano Ronaldo even at the age of 41. 

He said, "He's waddling around the field like a grandad, that's why Portugal are out. Cristiano Ronaldo does nothing; he did nothing. What is Roberto Martinez doing? How can you pander to a player so much?" 

His comment contains a couple of good words to talk about. 

1 – to waddle 

To waddle means to walk with short, clumsy steps, swaying the body from side to side.  The word is often used to describe the way that a duck or penguin walks. 

I like the idea of a football team playing with 10 humans and one penguin, just to confuse the opposition.  At least if his contributions on the ball were substandard, he would be able to convincingly dive in the box to win penalties. 

Example sentence:

Late into her pregnancy, she began to waddle.

 

2 – to pander to someone or something 

Pander is used negatively.  To pander to someone means to let them have what they want or indulge their weaknesses, to keep them happy or avoid upsetting them. 

In the case of Chris Sutton’s comments, he believes that the manager let Cristiano Ronaldo play, even though he was not the best option for the team, in order to please or avoid annoying the player. 

Example sentence:

The prime minister is pandering to members of his own party, rather than doing what is best for the country as a whole.