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」

In Japan, the katakana alphabet is usually used for indicating loan words from other languages. However, be very careful when using them in speech because they may not be used in the same way and more over pronounced differently.
Can you spot the use of katakana English in the phone conversation between a hotel clerk and guest?

Clerk: Good morning, front desk. How can I help you?
Guest: Good morning. I have a claim about my cooler. The rimokon doesn’t work. I think it needs new batteries.
Clerk: We’re sorry about that. I’ll have someone come up and replace it with new ones.
Guest: I also have a request. I’m trying to use my note pasokon, but the consent is different. Do you have an adapter I can borrow?
Clerk: Certainly, sir. Could I please have your room number? I’ll have somebody bring an adapter and batteries to your room as soon as possible.
Guest: Oh, no. That’s okay. I’m going out now. Can I come down in five minutes and pick them up at the furonto?
Clerk: No problem, sir. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Guest: Thank you.
——————————————————————————————————-
Claim – is to say something is the case or is true. The guest should say complaint.
Cooler – is a container for keeping food or bottles cool, or a refrigerator. The guest should say air-conditioner.
Rimocon – is a shortened katakana word for remote control.
Note pasokon – is a shortened loan word for personal computer, but should be called laptop.
Consent – is to have or give permission to do something. In this case the guest should use plug or socket.
Furonto – is a shortened katakana word for front desk. The word reception desk can also be used.

How did you do? Were you able to spot them all?

What’s your favourite mythical creature?

Mythical creatures have long been a fascination for me. I grew up with tales of dragons, unicorns, imps, griffins, centaurs and a whole host of other creatures. One of my favourite stories as a child was the C.S. Lewis series Chronicles of Narnia. It introduced me to a world full of wonderful, and some frightening creatures. This led me to an interest in Greek mythology with creatures such as the Minotaur and Medusa, again quite scary but each story had a strong and ingenious hero to prevail over dark times. Following this I found a great interest in the Ancient Egyptians, I found the stories of their Gods to be captivating. Do you believe the dragons, unicorns or even a phoenix existed?

For general good health, the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommends that adults get a minimum of 2-1/2 hours per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity. Yet many people may need more than 2-1/2 hours of moderate intensity activity a week to stay at a stable weight.
The Women’s Health Study, for example, followed 34,000 middle-aged women for 13 years to see just how much physical activity they needed to stay within 5 pounds of their weight at the start of the study. Researchers found that women who were in the normal weight range at the start of the study needed the equivalent of an hour a day of physical activity to stay at a steady weight.
If you are exercising mainly to lose weight, 30 minutes or so a day may be effective in conjunction with a healthy diet.
If you currently don’t exercise and aren’t very active during the day, any increase in exercise or physical activity is good for you.

For more information please check out the following link:

Physical activity guidelines: How much exercise do you need?

How much do you exercise? How fit do you think you are?
Come rain or shine I almost always commute to and from school and work every day. I clock up to eighty minutes a day just on riding my bicycle alone. Add that to twenty minutes of daily housework and that adds up to a hundred minutes. It is healthy and I am burning off energy, but is that really exercise? It’s a routine thing for me and I wouldn’t consider it as exercise, so I try to run for at least thirty minutes on my days off, just to get my heart pumping. For me it’s not much and I wish I could do more. I’m not as fit as I used to be, however summer is my favorite season and I love going out and being active. One of my short-term goals for this season is to get fit.
How are you keeping in shape? Are you more, or less active in summer?

I went to the seaside yesterday and it was wonderful! I have always found something very relaxing, and healing from being by the sea. I love the feeling of walking on sand, it’s a connection with the Earth that I don’t experience when I’m wearing shoes. Although it is frustrating how sticky it can be – I know I’ll be finding sand everywhere for a while now.
I also enjoy paddling, it’s a lovely refreshing feeling. The water was still a little too cold for me to venture all the way in, but a paddle was enjoyable. I managed to catch most of the sunset before getting the last bus home. I hope that this was the first trip of many to the sea shore for this year.

As I mentioned in a previous post, June is my least favorite time in Japan. I found another reason other than it being the wettest month on the calendar. There are fifteen public holidays per year, but none fall in June! I know that it’s a measly little thing to complain about compared to some countries with less than ten public holidays a year. But, really? Why stop at fifteen?
Each month has at least one public holiday with five of them observing and honoring nature. There’s Spring Equinox in March, Greenery Day in May, my favorite one which is Marine Day in July, Mountain Day in August, and Autumn Equinox in September. If I could create a public holiday in June, I’d name it Rain Day or Water Day. Sound silly? What do you think? If you could come up with a public holiday in June, what would you name it?

There are so many great TV shows out there, do you have a favourite? I haven’t had a television in quite some time, but there are a number of sites, such as NetFlix which enables me to keep up with my favourite shows. One of the reasons that I prefer this method of watching entertainment is that I have the choice of when and, to a certain extent, where I watch these programmes. There is a large library of different categories – comedy, drama, sci-fi, documentaries – so I can choose my entertainment according to my mood and energy levels.
One particularly traditional area of British TV are detective series’. There are a great many detectives we grow up with, solving murder mysteries all over the country. Often, there are specials aired during a bank holiday weekend and we can watch as a family. Do you have a favourite detective?

Running and cycling are both excellent forms of aerobic exercise. Both allow you to engage large muscle groups in a sustained activity, which elevates your heart rate and delivers a wide variety of health benefits. Running burns more calories than cycling, and it can make your heart work a little harder. According to experts at Harvard Medical School, the heart rates of trained triathletes tend to be six to 10 beats per minute higher when they are running than when they are cycling.

This morning, as I opened my front door all ready to take my son to preschool, I was greeted with rain. Not just drizzling rain, but proper raining cats and dogs rain. I went back into the room to get my son’s raincoat and my 5-year-old raincoat and thought, “Bugger it. There’s no way I’m going to ride my bicycle holding an umbrella.” I arrived at the preschool a little later than usual only to discover that the waterproof coating on our coats had worn off. Oh, great!

The rainy season is my least favorite time in Japan. Although it doesn’t rain every day, it is a hassle when you need to commute by bicycle. Hopefully, after I invest in new raincoats and an umbrella holder for my bicycle, my attitude about getting around in the rain will change. I’ve never made a teru teru bozu talisman to bring fine weather, but I just might this year.

One of the biggest differences for me living in Japan is that I only make my own lunch once or twice a week. There are a few reasons for this. I think that the main reason is the selection of quality “to go” and “ready” meals is much greater and more reasonably priced in Japan. If, as in the UK, comparable meals are out of my price range, I would have to make more of an effort to prepare my own lunches.

Another reason is the difference in my schedule in Japan, whereas in the UK I could easily spend a big portion of one of my consecutive days off on meal preparation for the following week, it is more of a challenge here. Although if I had the same schedule in the UK as here, I believe that I would increase the amount of lunches I would make for myself to three or four times a week. This would be because my preferred method of cooking, to bake or roast, would be much easier for me to do. It is much more common to have an oven in an apartment or house in the UK – it is in general – a standard in every household. There simply isn’t the space for it in my accommodation in Japan.

This does allow me to experience more authentic – and delicious – Japanese food while I am living here, so I am quite happy, currently, to be buying in lunch!