少人数制で楽しく身につく英会話教室・英会話スクールなら「アミックインターナショナル」

If your family is like mine, you didn’t grow up owning fun pets. Sure, we had cats, fish, and hamsters, but not any pets that you could actually do anything with. Much like cats, fish, and hamsters, neopets are also quite boring. 

If you are unfamiliar with Neopets.com, I’m not surprised. Developed in the late 90’s, Neopets quickly gained popularity in a time when flash animation was incredibly popular. Visiting Neopets.com today is like entering a portal into early 2000’s internet. It was a simpler time; eBaum’s World is where we got all our viral videos and MySpace was still relevant. Neopets gave kids with social anxiety a nice quiet place to play games, own and decorate a virtual home, and, strangely, buy and sell stocks in the Neopian stock market.

Most importantly, you could create your own neopet, strange creatures that didn’t quite do anything. You can customize your pet by painting it or buying it clothes…and that’s it. They’re fun to look at, I guess? The strange thing is; despite Neopets.com’s frozen-in-time setting, it still has a thriving community of active players, myself included. I think it’s precisely the nostalgia for a simpler time that keeps people coming back for more, and, if it’s not broken, why fix it?

みなさん、こんにちは♪

アミックブログをご覧いただきありがとうございます。

5月に入り、気持ちの良いお天気が続きますね。

先日近所を散歩していると、何やら道後温泉付近が大賑わいでした。外国人観光客もたくさんです。

どうやら、4年前に道後温泉本館改築120周年を記念して開催された道後オンセナ―トというアートフェスティバルが、今年もまた行われているようです。

愛媛みかんの試食会も行われていました🍊

日本ブームの今ですが、2018年の訪日外国人数は約3200万人の予想となっているそうです！😲

そこで気になるのが、外国人観光客とのコミュニケーションですね。

道で地図を広げて迷っている外国人、見かけたことはありませんか？　ぜひ声をかけてみましょう！

基本のフレーズは

May I help you?（お困りですか？）

Do you need any help?（お手伝いしましょうか？）

次のような質問を聞かれたら、
How can I get to ～？（～にどうやっていけますか？）

Could you tell me to get to ～？(～に行く方法を教えてください)

このようなキーになる表現を使って道案内できます。

・go straight～（～を、まっすぐ）
・go along～（～に沿って）
・turn right／left～（～を右／左に曲がって）

・go past～（～を通りすぎて）
もしくは、
Shall I go with you?　(一緒に行きましょうか？)
と、一緒に案内してあげるのもいいいかもしれません。

少しの勇気で国際交流、ぜひおススメです(*^-^*)

Make and Do

Use make:

• when we create something : I just made a cake. 
• when something causes a reaction: This film makes me happy.

Use do:

• when we talk about activities: I’m not doing anything. What do you want to do?
• when we talk about activities in general: What does he do? He’s a lawyer.

私は今、このブログを東京行きの飛行機の中で書いています。次の日曜日に横浜で開催されるトライアスロン大会に出場するためです(^^)v

During Golden Week, I made my first trip to Osaka. I always regarded Matsuyama as a big city (any place with over 500,000 people is considered large in America), but visiting Osaka and the surrounding area really put things into perspective and made Matsuyama feel like the small town that my students insist it is!

While there, I did all the usual Kansai tourist activities such as visiting the castle, shopping at Dotonbori, taking a day trip to Nara, going to the top of the Tsutenkaku Tower, and of course eating plenty of okonomiyaki, takoyaki, and kushikatsu. 

However the highlight of my trip was  ̶e̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶T̶a̶c̶o̶ ̶B̶e̶l̶l̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶f̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶s̶  going to the small (by comparison) town of Ikeda to tour the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum. Not only do you learn about the interesting history of Cup Noodles there, you also get to create your own noodle recipe to take home and enjoy. 

Overall, I feel about Osaka the way I do New York: a fantastic city to visit and be entertained by for hours just by walking in any random direction, but a little too hectic of a place for me to live.

–Andrew

I’m very fortunate and excited to be able to attend M.E.S.H.’s (aka James Whipple) audio visual set in Kyoto this coming Sunday. He’s been one of my favorite experimental electronic producers over the past few years but he is also a highly capable DJ that will conjure your catharsis whether you expect it or not, after the ambient washes give way to monstrous drums. Here’s one of his more upbeat compositions called “Search. Reveal.”. Enjoy! 😉

– Joe

こんにちは、今日もアミックブログを訪れていただきありがとうございます！

GW中にハワイ島のキラウエア火山が噴火しましたね

被害が今もなお拡大しているとのことですが（）、

実は私もこのGW中にハ・ワ・イへちょっくら出かけてきました

「ハワイじゃないじゃん！？」とツッコミが飛んできそうですが、、、鋭い

これを付け忘れました。

「瀬戸内の」ハワイ・・・・・・Suō-Ōshima(周防大島)

江戸時代中期以降島の人口増加が著しく生活が困窮する中、

明治以降に始まったハワイ移民政策により、

当時の島民の約1/3に上る3900人以上もの人たちがハワイへ渡ったそう

こういった歴史から、島では現在でもハワイに親戚を持つ人が数多くいるそうです。

街路樹にはヤシの木、お土産物屋にはアロハシャツが売られていました

海の澄みきった色はとっても綺麗　そんな時に使える表現は、、、

The water is crystal-clear.

（crystal clearは、「透明で澄みきった」という意味）

今回は駆け足でまわったので、次回はゆっくり滞在したいなぁ

英会話スクールアミック

While I was having a conversation with a fellow teacher about how we spent our Golden Week we came across some English words that I thought was unusual. Somewhere in the conversation, I mentioned taking a ‘ropeway’ up a mountain. It seemed that he had only come across this word in Japan. I questioned myself too and believed that I had picked it up since I had been living here for a long time. As it turns out, it is an English word. They may operate differently however, they are also known as gondola lift, cable car, aerial lift, aerial tramway…the list goes on. When I picture cable car, I imagine the trams that run on the hills of San Fransisco, and since he was from America I asked him about this. He also said that it is called a trolley. I couldn’t help but laugh because where I come from a trolley is what they would call a shopping cart or a supermarket cart.

Beatrice Helen Worsley was destined for greatness. An academic star from a young age, Beatrice won many awards in math and science. Her scholastic prowess eventually won her multiple scholarships to Trinity College, a part of the University of Toronto. She majored in mathematics and physics, eventually graduating in 1944. Beatrice held the distinction of having the highest marks in every class in every year she attended Trinity College.

After graduation, she enlisted in the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRENS), where she studied harbor defenses and torpedo guidance. Worsley was eventually promoted to lieutenant before ultimately leaving the military in 1946. She is known for spending 150 days at sea working as a minesweeper, a record which stands to this day. 

After her time in the military, she completed a one-year Master’s program at MIT. Her thesis detailed nearly every computing machine in existence at the time and is considered one of the most detailed works in early computing. 

Her time at MIT made her realize that computers were the way of the future. Eventually, Canada developed a computing industry beginning with the University of Toronto. Worsley applied to provide computational support for Atomic Energy of Canada. While working at Cambridge, Worsley built a differential analyzing machine and helped write a program to calculate squares. She later applied for a doctorate at the University of Toronto, writing her dissertation in part on her differential analyzing machine as well as Turing machines. Her dissertation is considered to be the first written about modern computers and earned her a PhD in computing. Beatrice then began teaching at the University of Toronto. 

Unfortunately, Worsley’s genius was not celebrated during her lifetime. She was repeated passed over for promotions while working at the University of Toronto. She received far less recognition than her peers in the field of computational sciences. In 1972, Beatrice Worsley suffered a fatal heart attack at the young age of 50. She was finally recognized posthumously for her service in computation with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Association of Computer Science. 

Although the exact genesis story of soft serve ice cream is contested, my favorite story begins with a flat tire. 

One weekend in 1934, Tom Carvel got a flat tire in his ice cream truck in New York. He pulled into a parking lot and began selling his melting ice cream to people driving by. Within two days he had sold his entire supply of ice cream! In 1936, Tom opened his first store on the original broken down truck site and developed a secret soft serve ice cream formula.

The secret to making soft serve is to introduce air to the ice cream while it’s freezing.  The amount of air introduced in the freezing can change the taste of the finished product. Product with low quantities of air has a heavy, icy taste and appears more yellow. Product with higher air content tastes creamier, smoother and lighter. While Tom Carvel patented a number of machines to facilitate the creation of soft serve, today the process is much easier with air pumps included for extra aeration within the soft serve machine.

So, whether you’re enjoying a Mr Whippy in the U.K, a Merry Cream in Lebanon, or a Soft Cream in Japan, Mr. Carvel’s soft serve has been delighting people around the world; all thanks to a happy accident!