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」

Happy New Year!  

こんにちは、重信校　Hitomiです。

年が明け、新たな気持ちで生活をスタートされたことと思います。

朝活として朝に何か新しいことを取り入れた方はいらっしゃるでしょうか？

英語学習とか！(^▽^)/

英語では朝型、夜型人間のことを、それぞれlark(ヒバリ), owl(フクロウ)と表現するそうです

よ！そして自分がどちらのタイプかは、遺伝が関係しているそうです。でも家庭環境や、社会人

ならお仕事の時間に影響されることも多いですよね。

People can be divided into two types,　‟larks” or ‟owls”. 
‟Larks” means people who are early birds, whereas ‟owls” means people who lead nocturnal lives. Which type you are is determined by heredity. It is sometimes hard to adjust our sleeping rhythms and hours to our life.

ものすごく短く要約するとこんな感じの英語記事を目にしました。

夜型人間のことをフクロウに例えるのはしっくりきますね。朝型は同じ鳥でもなぜ、ヒバリなの

でしょう？ネイティブがこんなことを教えてくれました。

The term ‘lark’ comes from the old English expression ‘Up with the lark’ to describe getting up when the birds (one of them being the lark) start singing first thing in the morning. 

早起き鳥さんの中でもヒバリが一番乗りなのですね。

「早起きは三文の徳」と言います。（日本語の問題になりますが「得」より「徳」が定型のよう

です。）このことわざの英語版は、

The early bird catches the worm.

やはり早起きといえば鳥なのでしょうか。早起きの鳥はwormを食べられる！

ところで皆様は、ヒバリ、フクロウどちらでしょうか？

Are you a lark or an owl? I am a total lark! I usually get up at 4:30 and do many things in the early morning. I read a newspaper, do some cleaning, make breakfast, and study English.I can utilize my time in the early morning.

Early risers are more likely to succeed in the future!  One day I read an article which said this, and I tried to get up earlier. Finally I got up at 3:30! However, after I finished my work at 9:00, I felt really sleepy and almost dozed off while I was driving home. It was so dangerous that I had to stop getting up so early.

However, I still get up at 4:30 and enjoy my time. This year, I was able to see the first sunrise of the year. The early bird catches the worm!

Why don’t you try getting up earlier?

そういうわけで（？）Hitomiは朝派ですが、あまりに早いとアミックからの帰り道の運転が気絶しそうなほど眠いので最近は自制しています。皆さんもそれぞれの生活リズムに合わせたペースで、新年もアミックと一緒に頑張っていきましょう！

December of sophomore year of high school, I remember being in class and seeing several students huddling around my teacher’s computer. The video they described to the rest of us didn’t sound that exciting at the time, but it would go to spark a (arguably tacky) trend that adds even more to the spectacle of Christmas.

The video was of the home of Carson Williams, an electrical engineer from Mason, Ohio (about 25 minutes from where I grew up). Williams had rigged the 16,000 Christmas lights on his house to flash and dance in time with Christmas metal band Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Wizards of Winter”, which you could hear if you tuned to a specific radio frequency in your car. The light show became so popular that Williams had to shut it down for the 2005 Christmas season due to the traffic congestion it was creating in his neighborhood. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmgf60CI_ks

The following Christmas season, many others started to post videos of their own elaborate light displays, and Williams was even hired to do the lighting for a beer commercial. The buzz around the idea allowed Williams to start his own holiday lights company, and in the years that followed he was commissioned to do commercial-scale holiday light shows in cities like Denver and Chicago. 

Although the fad seems to be somewhat dying off (at least according to Google Trends), new light show videos still make the rounds every holiday season, often incorporating other pop culture trends. 

Even if these immaculate displays end up fizzling out and going the way of sending a family newsletter or actually singing carols to your neighbors, the decade of the light show will live on for a long time in Christmas lore. 

Around this time, as the end of the year draws near, you can’t help but look back and reflect.

I learn something new about Japanese culture everyday. As the new year is quickly approaching, I’ve said じゃね to learning about Christmas facts and 抗日わto New Year traditions in Japan. Last year, I learned that Japanese people visit their local shrine on New Year’s Day for hatsumode, or the first prayer of the year. People line up to pray starting at 10 P.M. at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo in preparation for the midnight prayer gong!  This year, I was happy to learn about the Japanese tradition of hatsuhinode, or viewing the first sunrise of the year. In both Shinto and Buddhism tradition, the god of the New Year, Toshigami, arrives with the sunrise on January 1st to grant your New Year’s wish. Tokyo Skytree is very popular sun rise watching destination in Tokyo as well as Goryokaku Tower in Hokkaido Prefecture. While most people in America will be watching the ball drop and then partying ‘til the sun rises, I like the idea of quietly watching the sun rise with a hopeful heart. Maybe my Western traditions will take a backseat to Eastern sensibilities this year and I’ll tone down the partying enough to stay awake past midnight! Although, I’m not sure I can stay awake until 7:00 A.M. regardless of when the partying ends. Although I live in a relatively flat part of Matsuyama, I’m thinking of climbing up the hill to my local shrine to catch the first golden rays of the new year. Who knows? Maybe Toshigami will bless this poor Westerner with a hangover cure and a nap!