Dave-sensei was on "Let's Enjoy English!" on Radio MOMO (79.0 FM) . Dave and D.J. Chiaki Kamibeppu talk in English and Japanese about vaccines, baseball and summer activities. Click the button below to listen.
我が家では毎晩お布団へ入ると本の読み聞かせをせがまれています。毎晩、はてもう何年でしょうか。朗読は得意なのでそれはいいのですが私は自分の目で活字の印象から物語を消化するのが好きなので、逆に読み聞かせはしてほしくない派です。
読みきかせをする本は簡単な絵本から小学高学年向けの物語など手あたり次第。英語でも日本語でも、短い絵本であれば万々歳です。英語ではCurious Georgeシリーズ、Clifford the Big Red Dogシリーズ、The Berenstain Bearsシリーズ、Richard Scarry’sなどが我が家に転がっています。
その中で最近買ったのは”Frog and Toad”の小シリーズです。短編がいくつかありますが、そのうちのThe Letterという物語は小学生の国語の教科書に翻訳が載っています。これがまた、得も言われぬ可愛いお話なのです。というよりもその他のお話も読んだ後に「ほぅっ」っと言いたくなるような温かいものがあります。
英語では題名がFrog and Toadですが、日本語翻訳版では「がまくんとかえるくん」となっており原作と逆です。Toadはガマガエル（=ヒキガエル）と訳され、Frogは日本語ではアマガエルですが「かえる」のみに訳されています。が、「かえるとがまがえる」という題名よりも、逆にした方が日本語では音節的におさまりが良いのでしょう。
私が読み聞かせをする際は、ToadのセリフがやってくるとToadらしく低い声を出してやっています。Frogのセリフは軽くて高い声音です。
子供たちは記憶力が良く、セリフなどは聞いているうちに一語一句覚えてしまいますが、ただ読んでいるだけの私はお話の全体像を覚えていてもセリフの細部なんて覚えていません。面倒になり早く終わらせたい夜なんて、やれ、ちょっと端折ってしまえ、とするとすぐバレるのです。心がこもっていないとこうなるのです。
Dave-sensei will be on Radio MOMO (79.0FM) with D.J. Chiaki Kamibeppu on Thursday, August 26th (today!), at about 5:40 pm. They will talk in English and Japanese about vaccines, the Japan High School Baseball Championship and other summer activities.
8月26日（木）5時40分ごろにDave先生がRadio MOMO (79.0FM) に出演します（DJは上別府千晶さん）。英語と日本語の両方でワクチンや甲子園、夏休みなどについて話します。
Recently I went to Tea Time, an art exhibition downtown made by Team Lab. It is in an old soy sauce storehouse near Korakuen. At Tea Time, you have 20 minutes to enjoy tea in a dark room illuminated by colorful lights and water reflections. What is special about this experience are the glasses that you drink out of. They continuously glow and change a range of colors such as white, blue, pink, and so on.
It was short, but a fun and refreshing experience. The only downside…. You don’t want to finish your tea because the light stops!
Japan north Alps hiking trip: day 2
Sunday, July 18 -
This was probably the easiest hiking day of the four-day trip.
10.3 km and just over 800m both up and down.
I woke a few times in the middle of the night shivering with cold. It wasn’t too cold when I went to sleep around 8pm the previous night, but the temperature dropped a lot during the night, I ended up covering the foot end of my sleeping bag with my rain jacket to prevent tent condensation from getting my sleeping bag wetter and then cinching the bag closed to full-on mummy style and then I could get warm enough to get back to sleep.
We got up at 4am, cooked breakfast (yay, hot coffee!), broke camp and were ready to hike by 6am.
We first climbed to the peak of Mt. Sugoroku (双六岳, 2860m) and then over the peak of Mitsumatarenge (三俣蓮華岳, 2841m) before descending down to Mitsumata Hut (三俣山荘).
Our plan was to hike to Kumono Daira hut to stay on night 2, and circle back to the campground attached to Mitsumata hut to camp on day 3, which meant that we didn’t need our camping gear for the next 24 hours. So, we rented space for 1 tent, set up our biggest tent and stashed all our extraneous gear in the tent.
Thus lightened, we continued on down a valley and up the other side, traversed the side of a mountain and finally came to Kumono Daira, our hut for the night. It’s not really fair to call this place a hut. It was like a jazz cafe fused with a mountain lodge and had a very cool bohemian vibe going on. The hut itself is built on a high plateau that is actually a fragile alpine marshland, so the walking paths are all on raised boards.
Just as we arrived it started to rain and most of us made it inside before the heaviest of the rain started. The rain intensified and then lightning and thunder started crashing quite nearby. We felt dry and comfortable inside charging our phones and sipping hot coffee. We began to wonder about hiking and camping in the rain the next day when just like that, the rain stopped and sky cleared up just in time for a gorgeous sunset.
After dinner and the sunset, we were shown a slideshow by the son of the founder of the hut, explaining the history of the men and women who opened most of the current trails in the area starting in the 1940s.
We went to bed in warm futons and slept very comfortably.
