Hot Pot

In Manchester, I can enjoy having hot pot in July. Unbelievable!

Japanese Level 1

I’ve started to teach a Japanese Level 1 class since last week. Before this job offer, I experienced teaching Japanese at the International Society. As the institution’s name suggests, all of my students were non-English native speakers. However this time, I teach at a local language institution so all my students are British. Among non-native speakers, speaking English is rather relaxing. However it’s a bit hard for me to speak English in front of British people as a teacher.
I started to explain with how to introduce your name in Japanese. I explained it as usual and said, “As the characteristic of Japanese grammar, the verb comes last. So, you say Watashi wa Eriko desu, and Watashi refers to ‘I’. Wa is a topic marker and desu refers to the be-verb.” However, the students seemed to not understand what I said and asked me, “desu refers to ‘am’?” So I said, “Yes, desu refers to ‘am’ and other be-verbs.” After the class, I noticed that English native speakers do not refer to them as the be-verb. It’s the word for non-native speakers to understand English grammar. This week I found out that the word “copula” in the textbook refers to the b-verb, however my students said “Never heard of it.” Finally they said, “the be-verb make sense, no problem.”

A Music Concert

Last Friday, I went to a music concert held in Victoria Baths. My friend from the chorus always finds interesting concerts and introduces them to me. Victoria Baths opened in 1960 and was used until 1993 for swimming pools, Turkish Baths, laundry and so on. These days the facility doesn’t work as it used to and is just open for tourists. The place was used for a music concert. There is no water in the swimming pool and instead they put in a piano and other instruments. Musicians play instruments or sing songs. The place used to be a swimming pool or bath, so the sound echo is great and it is very interesting. The baths used to be used for female pool, male pool, male second class pool, and so on. However, on the concert day each pool was used for different music performances. Around 150 musicians gathered for the performance and some performances were played at the same time in different spaces. So I had to choose which one I should listen to. I don’t know much about music so I usually rely on my friend who is a piano instructor, and has joined two or three chorus. However she always asks me for my favorite and I found out a Japanese composer’s name Toru Takemitsu on the program. It was my first time to listen to his music live. I thought modern music is beyond my understanding however it sounded very nice. I feel some European instruments sound like Japanese traditional instruments, for example, the harp sounds like the Koto and the oboe sounds like the Shakuhachi. Therefore, I enjoy listening to it very much.