Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning
I am a native Japanese speaker who used to teach Japanese in a university somewhere on this planet. Currently I don't work but stayed in my house in Northern part of JAPAN. I hope that you could enjoy reading my posts and know what life in Japan is like.
The mountain is Kakuda-yama whose altitude is 482 meters.
As the rice grows, the top becomes downward due to the weight.
People always say that Japan is small. But I think the Niigata Plain is very wide area.
Red cockscombs are blooming by the Rice field. Farmers like to plant flowers at the spare area.
The train has only 2 cars, because it is a local train in rural area.
I can’t get things in the past back. Most of the memory is just in my head. Some are still vivid, some have disappeared already. But here are some digital photos which I took in September 2019. I just upload them, because I haven’t been outside today due to rain nor took any photos.
Though I hadn’t lived there for three and a half years because of the Pandemic, the rooms were mine for six years. While I was a Japanese company employee, I had moved so many times from city to city with interval of two to three years. So, six years in one place is a long experience in my life.
I think I was privileged because there was an air-conditioner in my bed room. We had many hot days in June and July. But unfortunately, there is no air-conditioner in the rooms of student’s dormitory. I feel sorry about that.
It is better to lock me up in the air-conditioned room, but I just wanted to check my bank accounts. Where I live is a small town, so, there are a few financial institutions only, like a bank, credit union, post office, and Agricultural Association. I picked up two deposit passbooks, and headed to two places in order to print the record onto the passbooks. It was just to insert the books into an automatic teller machine (ATM).
On the way back, I walked a path along riverbank, though it was a detour to my home. There was a small Shinto shrine. There are some shrines in my small town. They were the playground for kids when I was a child a half century ago. I don’t believe Shinto, but I admit that Shinto shrine (Jinja) is deeply rooted in Japanese psyche, tradition, and habit.
The explanation board in the Shrine says the shrine was established in 1639. Probably that big tree has also been standing there for centuries.
The highest temperature was 32 Celsius today. It was 4 degrees lower than yesterday. Still it was hot, but looking at weather forecast, it seems that the highest temperatures from today are going to be slightly lower than that in August and until yesterday.
In the morning today, I had planned to go to a supermarket to buy food in the afternoon. But it was still hot and sunlight was strong in the afternoon. So, I changed my mind and decided to go shopping in the night as usual.
I got out of my house after the supper. The night air was cool. I felt good. In the supermarket, I found that bread and pork were already sold-out. I thought I was going to bake pancake tomorrow morning instead of bread, and I bought a little more expensive beef instead of pork.
The distance from the supermarket to my house is 1.3 kilometer, a little shorter than one mile. I hung two carry-bags from my both shoulders, and walked all the way home. I got to my home a little before 8pm.
I have got another hot day today. Highest temperature of the day was 35 Celsius degrees. I worked in my garden at 5 a.m. and planted seeds of green vegetable this morning, but other than that, I had spent most of the time in house, turning on the air conditioner.
Since some of my students take a look at this blog, I think it would be better for me to take pictures and upload them so that my students could know what my current life is like. But it was too hot to go outside to take pictures these days. The followings are photos that I took five years ago.
Month of September started today. But I didn’t take any pictures today, so, I just upload pictures that I took ten years ago. It’s not exactly 10 years ago, because I took the following pictures on September 3rd in 2015.
Today’s post is not about today, but about what I saw in the last days of my staying in the campus. At that time, I walked around the campus and took a lot of pictures. There is a pond at the northeast of the campus. When I went there on July 14th, I saw some lotus flowers.
Tomorrow is the first day of the school year 2025-2026. I just imagine that Japanese major students whom I know are coming to the classroom as they did in the last semester.
I planted seeds of cabbage ten days ago. But I was disappointed by the result. As shown in the photo, I got very few sprouts. Although I want to plant those sprouts in my garden, they are insufficient in number.
So, I went to a different shop today, and bought another package of cabbage seeds. It costed 440 JPY, not cheap. I hope this time I could get more sprouts.
I hadn’t written a blog post for three weeks from 4th to 24th this month. During those days, I was making a system of microphone, amplifier, and speaker so that my mother can talk to me from the first floor to the second floor in my house. Making it from the scratch is impossible. I just connected several circuits that were already assembled.
Not only because I was making this, but I had to get rid of weeds and to cultivate the soil in the garden, and I had to bear the severe heat of the level of disaster. These are the reasons why I could not post anything these three weeks.
And I realized that I had lost viewers from the country where my students are. From coming Monday, they are going to the classroom again. But they will not see me there. I am wondering if some of them would remember me, or just forget because I will not be there.
One month has already passed since I left the campus. I think that students are coming back to the campus this week for the fall semester. I had retired, so I am just spending days without doing any preparations for the classes of coming semester.
Anyway, in the last days for me to be there, I walked around and took many photographs in the campus. On July 19, I found one cat lying on the pedestrian road. As I was taking photos of her (him?), she stood up, looked at me, and laid down again.
It is said that a stray cat lives short because of harsh environment of outside. I hope she can live long.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 