英会話教室Pure English（旧ファングリッシュ）

Hello my peoples!

Today couldn’t have been a better day. Ok, maybe it could have but it was pretty damn good. How about you? I hope you had a good day today.

This morning it was raining and cool which was a very welcome change. The temperature was nice and because of this I slept like a baby. Then just as I was getting bored of sitting indoors during a day off, the sun came out and it got hot again. Awesome timing!

So I headed down to the beach with my son. There were quite a few people there but it wasn’t crowded. We hung out on the boardwalk for a short while then walked down to the water for a swim. The water was cool but not cold and easy to swim in, very refreshing. I was trying to teach him how to swim for a while then we played a game which was basically jumping into oncoming waves. After about 30 minutes of this he became a bit tired so he waited for me on the edge of the beach as I wanted to go for more of a swim. I did one lap out to the floating buoys (the balls that mark the limit of the swimming area) then headed back to the beach. It’s been about a year since I’ve swam in the ocean and I almost forgot how enjoyable it can be. I highly recommend it. Hiratsuka has a great beach with a nice boardwalk and facilities and I’m always surprised there aren’t more people there.

As we were washing the sand off of our clothes and packing up, it started to become cloudy again. Great timing again! Now it has cooled off again and it’s a very nice temperature for the evening. We were feeling a bit lazy about cooking so we went out. The boys like to go to Kappa Sushi so we used this as an excuse to go there, haha. My favourite for the night was negitoro. Delicious!!

So all in all it was a great day for this crazy Canadian in Japan. The only problem is that I’ve nothing to do for the evening, but that’s ok. I’ll think of something. I hope you had a good day and week. Thanks for reading!

-Paul

Good afternoon. How’s it going today?

I took the kids to the train and bus museum by Miyazakidai station today. The trains actually weren’t that busy. I was expecting more travelers during Obon week, but that’s fine with me!

It started out raining pretty hard this morning so of course we took umbrellas. Later on however it became sunny and hot so our umbrellas were just extra weight to carry around. Crazy weather!

The train/bus museum is a great place for kids and the boys really enjoyed it. There are a lot of interactive displays there. There are some old trains and buses that you can walk through and sit in, and also many displays of old equipment. There was a huge and very detailed diorama with electric model trains. The kids lined up to have a chance to drive one. On a couple of the model train there is a small camera. There is a booth which looks like a train control console with a TV screen that’s connected to the camera. So they can control the train with realistic equipment and watch it on the screen as it goes around the track.

After some time in the museum we had a quick lunch at a nearby pasta place. It was quite good. I had some spaghetti with crab and cream sauce and garlic bread and soup as a side. Yummy!

The trip home was very quiet as everyone was tired. It takes just over an hour to get there from Hiratsuka and you need to transfer twice. We transferred from the Tokaido line to the Odakyu line at Fujisawa, then from the Odakyu to the Tokyu Den-en-toshi line at Chuo-Rinkan station. It wasn’t too bad actually.

Today I’ll provide some captions for my photos, starting from the top and moving down.
Photo 1: Arriving at Miyazakidai station – woohoo!
Photo 2: Outside the museum.
Photo 3: The big interactive diorama. In the top right hand corner you can see where the
kids control the moving trains from.
Photo 4: The crazy ticket man. “Tickets please. The train leaves in five minutes!”

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Bye-bye!
-Paul

Hello again!

Here’s just another quick update for today. I saw this on the internet somewhere so I decided I had to try it. Tonight’s dinner is Ofuro curry rice (made by me). I need a little more practice cutting nori, but I think it turned out ok.

It’s pretty easy to make and everyone likes to eat fun food! Enjoy!

-Paul

Hello!

It’s Monday afternoon and hot again. The weather can’t seem to make up its mind today. It’s raining then sunny then raining then sunny again. But that’s ok!

Today I had a rare day off with my older son. So I asked him where he wanted to go and he said “Olympic”. So off we went. He wanted a hamburger for lunch but McDonald’s was very busy. We would’ve had to wait in line for about 15-20 minutes, which wasn’t very appealing to me. So after some convincing he settled on MosBurger. Here is a photo of our lovely meal.

After that we looked at some books, went to Toys’R’us (of course) and spent a little time in the game center. The game center was packed with kids trying to win their precious prizes and parents who were mostly chasing after their kids and looking a bit tired. I tried to win a prize for my son but had no luck. I was defeated by the stingy machine. Maybe next time I’ll have my revenge, haha.

Now we are just hangin’ out at home. My son is reading a new book purchased today and I’m trying to catch up on my email backlog. I haven’t sent any messages to family and friends for a while and some of them are becoming impatient. So it’s a good time to get that done.

We might go out for a short while later. I can’t decide whether to go to a park or the beach (haven’t been to the beach for a long time). Any suggestions?

I hope you’re having a good Obon week! Take care.
-Paul

Hello one and all!

I haven’t blogged this week and I’m sure I have an excuse. I just haven’t thought of it yet.
Probably I was hot, tired and a bit lazy. Anyway…

I had Funglish classes at Mishima on Tuesday and Thursday. I thought everything went very well and as always enjoyed chatting with the students. On Tuesday night there was a sudden rainstorm just as the class ended. It was coming down very hard and the students needed to be escorted to a waiting car (with me holding an umbrella). I hope they made it home as dry as possible. Thursday was all good and thankfully there was no rain!

Next week is the Obon festival so there will be no classes. Many people will be travelling during this time to visit family. If you’re one of these travelers I hope you have a safe journey and enjoy your week! To all my students, I’ll see you in two weeks.

It’s strange feeling when I have a few days off from teaching. Sometimes it’s nice to get a rest but at the same time it feels like I’m forgetting something. You know when you just have that feeling that something is missing? That’s the same one.

It cooled down for a few days which was a very welcome change, but now it’s back to hot and humid. Take care!

Tonight I went for coffee at Starbucks in Hiratsuka station/Lusca. I went to meet a former student who happens to be an English teacher at a high school. We had a nice chat about teaching and many other topics. So thanks if you read this! I forgot to take a picture of Starbucks and I was too lazy to go back inside, so I just took one of the Station entrance in its nighttime glory.

And finally I decided that it’s much too hot tonight. I needed some ice cream to cool down and by coincidence 7-11 happens to sell ice cream. Just remember that this isn’t dessert, it’s survival. If I don’t eat this I could die from the heat. So be safe and eat your ice cream!

Well that’s enough for today. If you made it through this entire post then good job! See you later!
-Paul