英会話プライベートレッスン

Hello there everyone, this is a very tired and sore Anand with this week’s update! Hope you all are feeling better than I do. But there is a reason I am feeling under the weather and there is a reason I am in a bit of pain. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I went running on Saturday. In fact I broke a couple of records for myself. On Saturday I ran my very first 60 kilometer race. I went to Miura Peninsula to try my hand at my first ultramarathon. An ultramarathon is any distance over the full marathon distance of 42 kilometers, but I really don’t think it counts as anything special until you reach 60 myself. In some ways it was a pretty fun experience. The weather was great, the scenery was beautiful and the people were very friendly. However, in some other ways it was pretty awful. I was running (well, lightly jogging) pretty well until 48 km when I suddenly died a horrible death in my legs. I wanted very much to keep running but my body wouldn’t let me. I felt unbearable pain in my knee and thought I would have to quit. ?Thankfully I was able to walk and managed to keep moving for a few more kilometers, and even more thankfully I was able to dig deep at the very end and run the last few kilometers to the very end. I’ve ?never felt so close to quitting as I did on Saturday ,but I am glad I kept going because it let’s me know that I can will myself to things that seem too difficult for me at first. In any case, I think I will be retiring from running for the next week or so, but rest assured, you’ll see me on the road soon enough!

Until next time!

Anand

Hello everyone, hope you are all doing well. ?Have you been following all the talk with Shinzo Abe and the Jietai controversy. ? I have been learning about it in one of my Japanese classes and it is quite interesting. ?I see both sides of the argument – the Japanese constitution does provide an ideal way of thinking – that we cannot have an army designed to go to war. ?At the same time, it’s a pretty hard thing to justify when everyone else has an army and Japan’s allies and using theirs to help Japan. ?Is it so unreasonable to have to be able to help those who are helping you? ?On the other hand, is this whole thing just a ploy to get Japan into the arms race again? ?I have no idea since I read basically one article a week.

Anyway, on to something lighter. ?I have been telling myself I am studying hard. ?How true this is I can’t really say, because my study method is not particularly good. ?I have switched back to reading manga – specifically, back to my favorite manga, namely JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. ?It’s been making a bit of a resurgence lately because of the anime, but I first discovered it through a fighting game for the Playstation.

I wanted to read it when I first got to Japan, but my Japanese wasn’t good enough. ?Now I am giving it another crack. ?I have made it through the first two series and now I am on the third. ?I am not sure the vocabulary I am learning is so useful, but I find the best benefit is that it trains my attention and keeps me from falling asleep while I read kanji.

Anyway, if you have lots of time and nothing better to do, give it a read. ?It’s pretty interesting!

Hi there everyone, this is Anand for Awesome English as usual. ?I went running this weekend but for once that isn’t what I am going to talk about. ?For once I managed to make some time to study Japanese, which I haven’t done in a while. ?As you may or may know, I do a lot of my studying through and application called Anki. ?Basically you make (or download) sets of flash cards and Anki presents them to you on a schedule. ?If you get the card right, it reschedules it for you and increases the interval. ?If you get it wrong, it reschedules it and makes it shorter. ?It’s a very useful for learning large amounts of data, especially for vocabulary and kanji. ?However, I guess after almost 7 years of being in Japan, I have amassed over 20,000 cards in my collection…What this means is if I miss a few days I end up with a huge set of cards that I need to review. ?With all the work I have to do, coupled with the fact that I now study French on top of Japanese, I find myself becoming a slave to the program, to tell you the truth. ?But with that said, I blocked off six hours of my time and sat down with some coffee and managed to get through almost all of my due cards. ?I have forgotten quite a few, but it’s good to see that “zero” under cards due.

Hello everyone, this is Anand updating during Golden Week! ?I hope you guys are all enjoying your time off. ?I can’t say my holiday was particularly long, but I still managed to catch up on some much needed studying. ?Yes, I am about as boring as they come. ?On the other hand, I didn’t spend all of my time at home. ?Even a boring guy like me couldn’t help but get out when I heard that there was a Cinco de Mayo festival going on on in Yoyogi Park.

The odd thing about this festival is that it was held on the 3rd and 4th when traditionally it is held on the 5th. ?I mean, the very name “Cinco de Mayo” means “The 5th of May”, when the Mexican forces fought off the French army in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. ?But I guess that Children’s Day is a little more important here, so it was moved over a day. ?I guess it doesn’t really matter here, as long as the tequila is flowing and the tacos are sizzling.

I ate tons, but actually I didn’t end up eating tacos. ?I mostly ate delicious sausages and steak which were being sold in some smaller stands. ?See the trick, I discovered, is that any stand with the word “taco” or “burrito” in it would instantly draw long lines because that is mainly what Japanese people consider “Mexican food”.

But besides food, it is always great to go to these cultural festivals which always seem to be going on at Yoyogi. ?In any case, it was good to get out of the house for even just one day and take a break from which is usually an unending study fest or wave of lesson prep. ?With work starting up again, unfortunately it means I have to get back to those instead.

Let’s hope for another vacation soon.