It’s been almost 4 years since I began working at Neo.

Back to one day before the day I started to work as an assistant, I had butterflies in my stomach because I had never officially worked at any companies as an assistant who spoke both Japanese and English.

I didn’t have any working experience. Honestly, I didn’t know what had caused them to decide to hire me, but I couldn’t be happier.

I can’t (and seem like our students also can’t ) believe that I joined Neo in 2020!!

I’ve had a lot of experiences that I can’t even describe in Japanese, but all of them are my precious memories.

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE GREAT 4 YEARS!!

GWの連休を皆さまはいかがお過ごしでしたか？今年は祝日の並びがあまり良くなく、遠出外出には少し不便だったかもしれません。

後半私は岡山ドーム前で開催されていた肉祭りにちらりと行ってきました。鶏肉、豚肉ありの中の牛肉に一番人が並んでおり、そのお肉の量はちょびっと。牛タン焼きそば、900円なり。牛タンは3切れ。お値段にひえぇと言いたくなるものばかりで物価高騰がここでも幅を利かせていました。牛肉いりコロッケを買うのに40分待ち。しかも夕方6時を回っていてもそれだけ待ちました。皆さん根気強く、人を抜かす事なく、じっと並んで待ちます。日本だなぁ。

こういった列に並ぶという表現を、英語では「並ぶ」という動詞を使いません。Are you in line？ですね。be動詞と前置詞を使うところが日本語と英語の言語差を感じます。

このフレーズは私、大昔にきちんとした英語の表現をしらず耳で聞きかじったままで使ったことがあります。お土産を買おうと並ぼうとして、私の前に居たおじちゃんに聞きました。

Are you a line？(Are you in line?が正しい表現とは知らず）

No, I'm not! I'm a human being!

ドびっくりです。10代の子に向かってそんな言い方をせんでもよくない？そのおかげでこのフレーズは一生忘れません。

日本人講師のMarinaが退職・離岡にあたり、Goodbye partyを以下にしたいと思います。

5/18（土）NEO終了後　18:30～　2時間ほど　NEOの駐車場にて

NEOでピザ等、テイクアウトできるものの準備をいたします。ご参加の方は食べたい物をお持ちください。

人数制限を行いたくないため、この時間内にお立ち寄りになれる方は是非お立ち寄りください♪

Marinaの勤務はフルで5/18（土）まで。翌週は少し時間短縮の可能性で勤務は5/25（土）までの予定です。4年も頑張ってくれました！

One of our students recently visited Melbourne in Australia for a short time. Talking to them reminded me of my childhood where I lived there for about six to twelve months. At the time I was only about seven years old, so my memories are not so clear. Even so, I still remember many things about that time. Time also felt slower when I was younger, and it feels like I had lived there for much longer than I did.

My family moved there because of my father’s work at the time. It was only temporary, so we had someone look after our house back home. In Melbourne we stayed in a big house in a nice suburban neighborhood. It was the first time abroad for me and my siblings. You may think “New Zealand and Australia are not very different, right?”, but when you are a seven-year-old kid, even small things can feel very different. The brands of snacks, the variety of shops, or even what was on T.V were different and that felt very exciting to us. I remember there were cartoons on T.V we did not have in NZ, and we felt Australia had many cool things we would never be able to get back home. Of course, I also had to go to school there. I was lucky as my classmates were lovely and thought it was super cool I was from a different country. It made my school life there a great experience.

One of the best parts of living there was all the sightseeing we were able to do. I remember visiting many different zoos and even a safari in the area. Australia has a lot of unique animals, and we enjoyed getting to see all of them for the first time. There were many other famous tourist spots around the city but my memory of them is a little hazy. Maybe the best part of being in Melbourne was that we could easily visit other places within the country. The most memorable for me was our trip to the Gold Coast. I was amazed by the beautiful palm trees and the beaches. I had never been to such a place. We were able to visit several big amusement parks there too. NZ only has one very bland amusement part, so for me this was very exciting.

We were there in the year 2000. This was when Sydney hosted the Olympics. Being in the atmosphere of it during the time was quite special. I remember the mascots being various Australian animals, and I became curious about learning more about the real ones. I was particularly interested in platypuses. I thought they looked so cute, and when I finally got to see a real one, I was very excited. Sadly, we were not in Sydney, so we did not actually see any of the events ourselves, but the excitement in the media and around us was very high. I did have to apologize to my classmates as I was certainly not cheering for Australia at that time.

While many of my memories of that time are a little hazy, I do have one last one. After I returned to NZ, I went back to my primary school. I remember all my friends saying my accent had changed and it was strange. I did not sound like an Australian, nor did I sound like a normal New Zealander to them. Even these days I sometimes meet other expats in Japan who have a hard time figuring out my accent. This is maybe the most long-term affect this experience had on me….

Last Sunday NEO held a cherry blossom viewing party by the Asahi River near Korakoen.

I put the ground sheet out at 7:30 in the morning. I used a 24 tatami sized sheet. After saving our space, I went back home to relax until noon. On my way home, I stopped at the farmer’s market in Kyoubashi for some peach juice.

It was a gorgeous day, so many people were out enjoying the blossoms and pleasant weather. The food stalls had long lines around lunch time. I bought some fried sweet potatoes for my son and a chicken leg on the bone for myself.

Some people stopped by for just few minutes to say hello, and other people spent time with us all day, chatting and sharing some delicious food.

People were coming and going all afternoon. I did my best to say hello and goodbye to everybody and to also talk and take pictures with everybody. I think I missed some photo chances with some people, though. Sorry if I missed you.

The sakura trees were in full bloom, I was worried about that earlier in March.

Many NEO students were outgoing enough to chat with strangers and foreigners at the party. It was a great chance to use English in a real conversation!

Ayumi enjoyed all of the cute children that came to the party.

It was hot around noon, but then some clouds came and the temperature cooled down a bit. In the evening, it got chilly as the sun went down.

A portion of the trees are lit up at night, my picture here is not doing it justice at all….

The trees look like fluffy pink popcorn at night.

At Neo, our students can take two different kinds of lessons every month.

One of them is called as Regular lesson. The other one is addressed as Bonus lesson.

Since I joined Neo, I had always been curious what they did in their bonus lessons.

As I work at Neo, I never take any lessons because Neo is my workplace, not a place where I can learn English.

I had even talked about my wish for taking part in a bonus lesson in class, because of their good personalities, they were always like “You should take a bonus lesson with us！”.

Last week, one of my dreams that I had wanted to make happen by the time I left Neo finally came true!!

Ayumi 先生 gently accepted my request to join her bonus lesson.

As I had anticipated, the bonus lesson itself was very fun, but against my expectation, what we were asked to do in the bonus lesson was way more difficult than I had guessed！！

I had so much fun with the other students！

If you wonder how well I did in the bonus lesson, ask me in class！

See you in my next blog post ◎