Asahikawa American English Conversation School
for February 2009
NOTE: The OBJECTIVE of this BLOG is to help my students with their study of English.
AND
For all of you, out there, around the world to;
SEE HOKKAIDO
2009 February 22 Sunday thru February 28 Saturday.
Meet Buffy!
The
photo you can see on the left is of the newest member to my Family Classroom.
It is a floor polisher, also known as a BUFFER, which I have named "Buffy the
Grime Buster".
My classroom and living room, both have white linoleum flooring. When we first moved into this location in June of 1996, the flooring was is in beautiful condition, because it had just been cleaned and waxed by professionals in that business.
After about two years, with many students coming in and out of the classroom, the floor began to look dark and dirty. Just using a vacuum cleaner and mop on the floor was no longer enough. It would not restore the look of the floor back to its shiny white origins. So, I got out a hard bristled hand brush, a bucket of hot soapy water, got down in my hands and knees, and cleaned up the entire floor by hand, during the winter vacation of 1998.
Finally about two weeks after starting the cleaning job, the floor was bright white again and with a shiny new wax job on top. Not only did this take an extraordinary amount of time, but I had sore muscles from head to toe. However, the floor looked great and I had a deep sense of satisfaction from living in a beautiful room once again.
Unfortunately, as time went by and more and more students came through my classroom, the floor again became dirty and spotted with grime. I had no choice but to live with it, or get down on my hands and knees once again for a major scrubbing marathon.
So, during the winter vacation of 2000, I decided once again to get the floor cleaned up and back into pristine shape. However, memories of the strenuous task of two years ago got me to thinking about how to make this job easier. I had been looking for a floor polisher in Asahikawa, but I couldn't find one anywhere. So, I went to HOMAC and bought a vibrating sander to help me with the scrubbing operation.
The vibrating sander in conjunction with a very rough nylon scrubbing pad, did a wonderful job of cleaning up the grime on the floor, but it was only slightly less time consuming than doing it with a stiff bristled brush, and the strain on my older body was just about the same.
There must be a better way.
Again,
just as before, the floor looked nice for about one year, and then started to
look worse and worse during the second and third year until it became unbearable
to me. I was not looking forward to cleaning it again by getting
down on the ground, and scrub a dud dubbing it, but I had no other choice if I
wanted to live in a room with a clean floor. So, during the winter
vacation of 2003, I got out the vibrating sander again and went to work.
And work and work I did.
I greeted to new year of 2004 with a beautiful shiny floor and a sore body. I knew I wouldn't have to do this again for another two years, and during that time I kept on searching every store in Asahikawa that I could think of which might have a floor polishing machine that I could rent or buy.
Finally during the winter vacation of 2006, I was able to borrow the floor polisher that is used in this building to keep the hallway floors clean. I don't like to borrow things from other people, but the thought of cleaning my classroom floor by hand again, was just like seeing a nightmare, so I reluctantly asked the building manager if I could borrow the buffer for about 3 or 4 days. She said that I could, and my floor cleaning job for 2006 was much easier on my body than in past years.
Again, as before, the beautiful clean and shiny floor only lasted for about one year and then began to revert to its old dirty and grimy appearance, which I really don't like. In 2007 I tried to borrow the floor polisher again, only to discover that the machine was no longer available, because the job of cleaning the floors in the building had been contracted out to another company, after an abrupt change of the management team for this building.
I was not willing to get down and scrub the floor by hand again, especially after my experience with the floor polishing machine the year before, so I just let it slide and didn't clean the floor at all.
Two years after that in 2009, the floor looked so bad that I just couldn't stand it anymore. I had looked everywhere in Asahikawa to buy or rent a buffing machine but couldn't find any. So, I turned to the internet in hopes of finding a website where I could buy one online.
Thank gawd for the World Wide Web! I located a company in Osaka that has a wide variety of building maintenance tools and found the buffing machine that would make my dreams of a clean and shiny floor come true once again. You can visit their website by clicking here.
As you can see from the photographs above, they sent me my buffer in only three days after I had ordered and paid for it. I wasted no time in getting started. From Saturday afternoon of February 21 until Wednesday night of February 25, I spent every spare moment of my free time doing a complete cleaning of the floor in both my living room and classroom. My new family member BUFFY made the job so much easier, and I will never again have to dread doing it all by hand in the prone position.
Never again will I have to live with dirty grimy floors. BUFFY is always ready to get to work and be a Grime Buster. Welcome to the family, Buffy!
2009 February 16 Monday thru February 21 Saturday.
The
winter season has made a comeback with below freezing temps and more new powder
snow. Good news for those folks who love to slide and glide on the slopes
of the ski grounds.
Again this week, more new students joined my little old classroom. I also had a one time private lesson with one of the members of my Monday class at the 神楽公民館で英会話を楽しむ会. She took the written exam for the Eiken level Pre 1 英検準1級 and passed it, much to her own surprise. The second part of the test, is an interview exam 面接試験 and will be held tomorrow, Sunday February 22.
Therefore, this nice lady was in a bit of a panic because she didn't expect to pass the written exam, in the first place. She came over to my classroom on Wednesday morning to practice for the interview test, and she did very well during our lesson together. I have no doubt that she will pass her interview exam on Sunday.
On Saturday, I had a private lesson in the morning with a young girl who just celebrated her 10th birthday last weekend. After that lesson was finished, I got to work cleaning up our living room which is right next door to our classroom. I spent a good 6 hours on this job, and I will write more about it in tomorrow's blog.
At about 18:30, I packed up my video camera, tripod 三脚 and another digital still camera, and walked on over to the music bar Good Luck. It is also known by the name Good 楽. I wrote about this place in my October Blog of 2008. Click here to visit their website.
The reason I went back again today, is because there was a live acoustic performance by 4 different groups, scheduled to start at 20:00. One of those groups, known as DEN3, has a guitar playing member, who also comes to my classroom every week for private lessons.
I got there early and bought a bottle of Iichiko Barley Shochu いいちこ麦焼酎 which is very smooth and tastes great, either straight or mixed with water.
Just
a few minutes after 20:00, a solo guitarist who calls himself YAMA, took the
stage and put on the most amazing solo guitar performance that I have ever seen
LIVE! I swear to god, it was awesome. He plays the
acoustic guitar in the style of
Michael Hedges of the
Windam Hill Records Label. I had
chills running up and down my entire body while listening to his excellent
playing.
Click here to see a YouTube Video of Michael
Hedges playing his original song Aerial Boundaries, in order to get an
idea of how YAMA plays his guitar.
After he was finished playing I asked him if he was a professional guitar player, and he said that he was not. Really? He certainly could be if he wanted to. Totally amazing.
The next group to play were two guitar players who call themselves Coconut Crush ココナッツクラッシュ. To my surprise, they suddenly asked me to get on stage with them and play the electric bass guitar. I only knew about half of the songs there were scheduled to play, but I agreed to join them on stage. Fortunately for me, they had lyric sheets with the guitar chords written above the words to each song. That really helped a lot.
After Coconut Crush was finished, DEN3 took the stage and played Japanese Folk music from the 1970s and 1980s. I know most of the songs that they played and I really enjoyed reliving those moments, long long ago, when I first heard this music as a much younger man.
Just before DEN3 took the stage, I set up my video camera on a tripod and filmed the entire performance. I will make it into a DVD and present it to my student when he comes for his private lesson next week.
After DEN3 was finished, another solo guitarist took the stage and sang many Japanese Folk songs that I know well. He calls himself SHIGE, and he has a very strong and clear voice. His guitar playing was very good also. I used up the remainder of my video tape filming SHIGE.
After all of the scheduled artists had performed, the remaining customers and artists got together and played many songs off of the top of their heads, for the rest of the evening.
This Saturday night was another wonderful experience, in this MUSIC CITY of Asahikawa. I have said it before, and I will say it again, Asahikawa has a very large number of truly talented musicians. Most of them are unpaid amateur musicians who PLAY FROM THE HEART!!!! Phuck Yeah! This is just one more, of the many reasons why, I really love living here. Japan, Hokkaido, Asahikawa.
2009 February 13 Friday thru February 15 Sunday.
They
say that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day, and this week it was a bit unlucky
for me. My teaching day started out at 09:00 at the Hokkaido Prefecture
Nursing School here in Asahikawa, and then continued at my classroom from 13:30
until 17:00. By 17:00 I had developed a very sore throat and was
sneezing up yellow mucus from my nose. So, I canceled the rest of my
classes for that day.
I usually have a private lesson on Saturday mornings, but earlier this week the mother of the student called us and canceled this week's lesson because they had some travel plans.
That turned out to be a good thing, because I needed to spend a lot of time in a hot bath and sleeping more than usual in order to recover from my nasty cold.
Speaking of cold, the weather this week wasn't. There was a warm wind blowing, and blowing hard, that was melting all of the snow and ice. In Japanese they call this southern wind, Haru IchiBan 春一番. Where I come from in the Pacific Northwest of the USA and Canada, we call it a Chinook Wind.
Whatever you call it, the effect is still the same. It means warmer than average temperatures which melt a lot of the snow and ice, if there is any still around.
Here in Hokkaido, February is supposed to be the coldest month of the year, but this weekend put a big dent into the statistical averages. I hope we still have enough snow for the Vasaloppet Cross Country Skiing Competition which will be held here in Asahikawa on March 7 and 8. In years past, they always held this event on the day of the Spring Equinox, March 23, but since several years ago, the date has been moved up to the beginning of March, because there was never enough snow for the courses in late March, anymore.
If this Haru IchiBan thing keeps up, they may need to move the Vasaloppet up into early February for the years to come.
2009 February 9 Monday thru February 12 Thursday.
On Monday, I went out to the Chestnut Tree Kindergarten
くりの木幼稚園 for my last gig of this school year. This day, the crowd was
smaller than usual, because the 3rd year students 年長 we off to the Asahikawa Winter Festival
by bus with their teachers.
Because this day was my last gig of the school year, I used the opportunity to
review almost all of the material that I had presented during the previous
school year. I used my acoustic guitar for some sing along songs,
and before I knew it, the one hour class was finished. When I went
back to the school office after my presentation, the school owner said; "Thank
you for your presentation again today. We want you to to come back again
for another year. We will send you your schedule for 2009 in the
near future."
Was I glad to hear this? Of course I was! Now, with the economy in the toilet and many people losing their jobs all over the world, I was asked to continue one of my gigs that I have been doing for a total of about 15 years up to now. Another surprise for me was that Asahikawa University increased my work schedule from only one class, to two classes for the 2009 school year. In effect, doubling my income from that source. All of my other outside jobs will stay the same as last year, but there are more and more new students coming to my classroom, almost every week. I love my life's work and it shows in the results that can be seen on the bottom line.
Wednesday was a National Holiday called 建国記念の日 or Building of
the Country Memorial Day, if I had to translate it directly into English.
As a result, all of the schools and many other businesses were closed.
Some people, including myself, display the National Flag of Japan 日の丸 at the
front door of their homes. However, when compared to the USA, the
number of people who display the National Flag in Japan is far fewer than the
number of people who display the Stars and Stripes 星条旗 in the USA.
If you go to the USA during a national holiday, or even just a regular work day, you may be surprised by the number and size of the National Flags on display almost everywhere. In front of homes, businesses or even by the side of a road with no other buildings near by. Americans really love their flag.
In the USA, it is the custom to take the flag down after sunset, and then hoist it up again the next day just after sunrise. Here in Japan, they leave the flag up all day and all night too.
I'm not sure why each country has such a big difference in the way they display their National Flags, but the differences do exist.
I wonder if Japanese people will begin to display their National Flag on more occasions and in greater numbers in the future, the way Americans do now. I guess I will have to set my own example and see how many other people decide to do the same. Nobody should ever be ashamed of their National Flag, for any reason.
2009 February 1 Sunday thru February 8 Sunday.
Again
this week, more new students joined my classroom and started coming for weekly
lessons. Sometimes I wonder if I am the only English Conversation
School in this city. I know that there are several others, but they
are actually decreasing in number, as time goes on.
On Saturday afternoon at about 17:00, I walked over to the Asahikawa JR train station to take photos at this year's Asahikawa Winter Festival. I was surprised to discover that the ice carvings along the pedestrian mall 買物公園 were not yet finished. In fact none of them were finished yet.
I can't remember a year when this has happened before, so I was a bit bewildered by the situation. I continued on walking down the pedestrian mall until I got to Midori Bashi Dori. I stopped in at the lobby of what used to be called the Palace Hotel to warm up, and do some unauthorized surfing on the internet. While I was there, I noticed a young American man with his mother and father, and his young Japanese girlfriend all together in the lobby. Later on, when I looked at the announcement board at the entrance of the hotel, I saw a notice about their Wedding Party listed there. Happy wedding guys. Will you be living here in Asahikawa, or going back to the good old USA? I guess it depends on where the jobs are, doesn't it.
After leaving the Palace Hotel, I walked on over to Tokiwa Park to look at the night time illuminations there. It was pretty much the same as it is every year and I took a few photos of the scenes. Of course, I was carrying chemical hot pads with me to keep my hands warm enough to operate the camera. After walking around for about an hour, I went back into the center of the city and ate some hot miso ramen at 山頭火, which is not too far from the train station.
On
Sunday, I again went to the Asahikawa Winter Festival at Tokiwa Park at about
14:30. This time I brought my video camera and tripod with me,
because one of the students who comes to my classroom for private lessons every
week, also plays guitar in a band called
LIBERTY. They play Japanese Popular
Music/Group Sounds from the 1960's and early 1970's. His guitar
playing sounds similar to that of the Ventures. Very nice to listen
to, and I really enjoyed it a lot.
Anyway, I video taped the entire 40 minutes performance, and will present him with a DVD of the recording when he comes for his next private lesson.
The Asahikawa Winter Festival will continue until the end of February 11, Wednesday, which is a National Holiday. I think I will go again on Wednesday evening so that I can photograph all of the ice carvings along the pedestrian mall. See you there!
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