Chibi's ワン-Point English: "White Day"

Hi everyone,

I'm sorry that it's been such a long time since I've given you advice. Of course, it's Alan's fault for not typing for me.

Anyway, I'd like to teach you some useful expressions for White Day, which was this past Sunday, March 14th:

義理チョコ - Obligatory chocolate:「義理」means "obligation." When used as an adjective (形容詞), it changes to "obligatory."
本命チョコ - Chocolate for someone special: We cannot translate this directly (直訳できない）because in English「本命」means "favorite," as in "Pre-race favorite" 「レース前の本命」. Of course, we could say "Chocolate for my favorite person."
三倍返し - Return three-fold: The "fold" in "three-fold" means "times."

By the way, White Day was started by the National Confectionery Industry Association (全国飴菓子工業協同組合) and was first celebrated in Japan in 1978. These days, South Korea, Taiwan, and China also observe White Day. In fact, in South Korea there is also a "Black Day" on April 14th, when single (独身) or broken-hearted people (失恋した人）get together to eat jajangmyeon (white Korean noodles with black bean sauce).

Enjoy your chocolate,

Chibi

The Future of Films

Last week Alan, R.T. and I went to see the new hit movie "Avatar". The film was directed by James Cameron famous for directing one of the most successful films of all time Titanic.

As many of you may know, what is so special about Avatar is that it uses the latest 3D technology. I didn't know what to expect, but I can now say that is was one of the most exciting cinema experiences that I have ever had.

The 3D effects used in Avatar are very natural and after 30 minutes or so you forget that you are wearing 3D glasses. Though the story is not that original, the visual effects are stunning and Cameron creates a truly beautiful and original alien world.

Avatar has been incredibly popular all over the world and is now the biggest grossing film of all time (史上最高の興行収入を上げた映画). I am looking forward to more 3D movies like this.

I also have a film-related website recommendation. Rotten Tomatoes collects together many different film reviews (映画批評) and tells you an average score (平均点) for the movie. It is a very good way to find out if a film is good or not before you see it (and good English practice too!).

Going through airports is going to change?

Hi Guys! It's R.T. here. We had a really interesting discussion in the Monday night Advanced Class on January 11 about how air travel is going to change. In the near future, we might have to go through these new scanners at airports. This video shows how they work. Also, many people asked, "Are they safe?" Well, according to this video, it looks like they are very safe. This is mainly for advanced students.

Click >>>HERE<<< to look at the transcript.

(if you RIGHT CLICK, you can choose to open the transcript in another window. Then, you can look at the transcript and listen to the video at the same time.)

Happy New Year!

We would like to wish all of our students a very Happy New Year.
We hope you had an enjoyable holiday and wish you all the best for 2010.

At the new year we often make a "New Year's Resolution" (新年の誓い). I think the resolution for the E-Style teachers must be to write on this blog more often! We are sorry that we haven't been posting so often but we promise to try harder this year.

Lessons start again tomorrow (January 4th) and we look forward to teaching you all again this year.

Halloween

This is a little late, but a few weeks ago my wife and I had a Halloween party for her students (she teaches elementary school kids). We do this every year and the children really seem to enjoy it.

We played games based around Halloween characters and gave out sweets (candy). My wife also came up with the idea of a Halloween piñata (pictured above). The piñata is originally from Mexico and is a paper shape usually filled with candy. The children hit the piñata to break it and the sweets fall out. You can read more about piñata here.

Halloween is a big event in America but is actually not that popular in the UK. My wife and I only started celebrating the event since coming to Japan. The roots of Halloween are however from the UK. It is a pretty interesting history and you can read more about it here.

Click here to read a full report about our party from my wife's blog.

Keep It Simple

Something I always tell students is that in English you don't need to know "big words" to make interesting phrases. Using very small and simple words you can make many different expressions.

One good example of this is the phrasal verb (句動詞).
We usually make phrasal verbs using a verb (動詞）and a preposition (前置詞) or an adverb (副詞).

Here are some examples using the verb to go:

go out - 出掛ける、付き合う、消える、人気がなくなる　などなど...
go on - 進み続ける、起こる、時間がたつ、しゃべり続ける　などなど...
go off - 立ち去る、～に興味を失う、腐る、爆発する　などなど...

As you can see, using 2 very short words we can make many different phrases with many different meanings.

Exhibition Report

My exhibition finished last week. I'd like to thank all of the students who visited the gallery. I hope you enjoyed the show.

As always there were many different things on display. This time I mainly exhibited paper toys. It was a challenge to display the toys in an interesting way, but I think I was successful in the end.

Here are a few pictures of my papercraft and you can see the full photo gallery by clicking this link: