Recently, one of my students at my English conversation school 英会話, Smith’s School of English, Kawanishi スミス英会話川西校, mentioned to me that the movie Invictus had been released in Japan, and that she was keen to see it. She told me about this because I was born and brought up in South Africa, and Invictus is the [...]
As Al from Smith’s School of English, Okamoto mentioned in an earlier post, we have been helping each other distribute flyers for both his school and mine, Smith’s School of English, Kawanishi スミス英会話川西校. In addition to this, we are now working on a series of TOEIC+ listening excercises on ssejapan’s youtube channel. You can see our [...]
Unlike Adrian of Smith’s School of English, Hirakata, (see his post) I am not at all a “techie”: I’m still trying to master the remote of my TV, which I have had for almost 2 years. A few months ago, I was looking for something to use to listen to music on my train journeys [...]
My wife, めぐみ, and I were lucky enough to spend our last 12 years in England, before moving to Japan, in the delightful small town of Lymington. I can think of few more fortunate towns to live in; with its beautiful coast to the south, giving views across the Solent to the Isle of Wight, and the [...]
I often use “Let’s Talk” type question lists during lessons in my English conversation school, Smith’s School of English, Kawanishi スミス英会話川西校. Sometimes I base most of a lesson on these lists (some from the Smith’s School of English curriculum, and some lists that I have made myself to augment these), or sometimes to occupy the last [...]
Whenever I ask students at my English school, Smith’s School of English, Kawanishi スミス英会話川西校, which cities in Japan they would recommend for a visit by overseas visitors, they invariably say Kyoto 京都, occasionally adding Nara 奈良市, and even more rarely, Tokyo. Only one has ever suggested Osaka 大阪市, which is also my choice. Why? Well, to me, [...]
I have had a great love for photography ever since the first time I saw an image appear on a piece of photographic paper (as if by magic), in a friend’s darkroom. For several years I produced monochrome photographs in my home darkroom, and had some success, exhibiting and winning awards in several countries. That [...]
When we first explored the Kobe 神戸市 area as possibly somewhere to live when we moved to Japan, Kitano-cho 北野町 immediately struck us as a very special sort of place.
I have just finished reading the “Rabbit” tetralogy by John Updike. At over 1500 pages, this had been a marathon read. I had read the first of the four novels, Rabbit Run, as a young man, but had not read any other of his works since, before I tackled reading the whole set a little earlier [...]
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