a typical fun-packed friday

This is Uchi-san cooking a mean sukiyaki for the weekly college outreach dinner. oishisou


























Here is my Friday English conversation class for Chiba University students. We conducted another pass-along story, but this week I gave each student two words (those little white slips of paper) to use in their contribution. Words ranged from "dolphin" to "sinister" to "Michael Jackson." Of course, most students first consulted their English-Japanese dictionaries which they always carry around. I need to get one too, if I ever hope to learn kanji.



Left to right: Uchida-san, a prospective pastor on my team. I always get into interesting conversations about music with him - the cultural and religious roots of jazz and rock, for instance. James, my "mentor." Neither of us have quite figured out what a "mentor" is yet. Regardless, we share a lot of projects together. James is teaching the class in this picture. Or at least touching his face. Hisa is a high school sannensei. Sannensei = senior in the U.S. The two of us met while barbecueing at a social function - we took turns pointing to the various charred vegetables we were grilling and naming them in our respective languages. I'm a beginner in Japanese and he's a beginner in English, so we make it a point to swap vocab words whenever we see each other.