You can understand Japanese history in 9 minutes.

Hi everyone.

I love this video.   Have you already check it out?

It's so funny and maybe, useful.  ww

↓Thank you very much for your click.

にほんブログ村

Happy New Year!

お花のお節？　

みなさま、明けましておめでとうございます。

今年も、このブログへのご訪問、ありがとうございます。

ブログタイトルの「I’m what I like」のように、

あれこれ興味のおもむくままに書き散らしてきましたが、

昨年は、半年以上も更新できない日々が続きました。

でもお陰さまで、１２月になってやっと復帰、復活！！！

また頑張って、英語で（ときどきは日本語でも）書き続けていきますので

お気軽に遊びにいらしてくださいね♪　　

【英語ライティング・私の勉強法】

ドメスティックに育った日本人が、ネイティブのような英語を書くのは大変です。どうやっても「日本人の作文」感がぬぐえず、アップをためらうこともしばしばです。で、打開策として、最近始めた勉強法がこれ。→　The Guardianを読むことです。ライティングのためにリーディング？　と思われるかもしれませんが、とにかくよいお手本をたくさん読まないと書けないということに気がつきました。（遅っ！）The GuardianはNYTimesみたいに難しくないし（意地悪くないし）、読みやすいですよ。オススメです。これを、意味がすんなり入ってくるまで２〜３回音読して、言い回しのリズム感みたいなのを掴もうと思っています。

英文としての正確さも大事ですが、コンテンツとしても面白いものができるよう
日々キョロキョロしながら楽しいことを探していきます。

今年もどうぞよろしくお願いいたします。

↓クリック、ありがとうございます。

にほんブログ村

Can you write down cursive?

As we know, IT devices totally have changed our writing style but I didn’t know it did to this extent. I’m surprised to know that many young people both in the US and Japan don’t know how to write cursive!

However, I have to confess that I didn’t quite remember how to write down cursive of D, G, H because I have never written them for many years. Well, I might not be qualified to say something about younger generations.

The other day, when I was reorganizing my drawer, I found some old writing implements that I almost had forgotten about owning. They were a fountain pen, a mechanical pencil and a ballpoint pen. They looked a bit rusty but still useable.

I brought them to Kinpendo to have them repaired and adjusted. Kinpendo is a kind of specialty store that specializes in high quality writing implements and it has a lot of good customers such as authors and journalists.

The master said that my pens were very rare items nowadays and it would be nice for me to keep using them. I might come up with some good phrases with these pens like great authors.

Now they are on my desk but I still haven’t had any chance to use them.

にほんブログ村

Ghost mental arithmetic or ゴースト暗算

Are you good at math? If so, can you do this by mental arithmetic?

62×7=

I was surprised to see that some kids answered this very quickly in a study room at a juku, cram school in Tokyo. An instructor of this juku is Kuniaki Iwanami, a medical school student at Tokyo University. Kuniaki invented his original “ghost anzan” method that enables you to get the answer fast and now he has set up an education company. It was reported by NHK.

Kuniaki emphasizes that with his method you can also do 2-digits ×２-digits multiplication until 99×99 by mental arithmetic.

Speaking of 2-digit multiplication, it is widely known that many kids in India memorized the multiplication table all the way to 19 × 19 as part of math education at school. The reason why India has become such an IT expert country is supposed to be their high arithmetic ability trained from their childhood.

“I think that a basic ability of calculating is one of backgrounds to raise resources like IT engineers. I’m convinced this when I worked at a juku as a part-time instructor. There were a lot of kids who said they didn’t like math, and if we leave the situation as it is, it would surely cause a crisis in the advancing technology nation.” Kuniaki added.

Kuniaki provides us with two courses to master “ghost mental arithmetic” for both kids and senior. I hope it’s not too late to activate my brains.

にほんブログ村