Saturday, November 30, 2013

Listening to the radio in English

I listen to English radio progrems every morning via TuneInRadio, usually BBC, NPR or VOA.
At first, I was not able to hear any of the words but I used to do that now. I enjoy some programs. My favorite program was the making of a nation by VOA. It was not only American history but olso democracy's history. I listened from the American Revolution to the Bush administration. It was so much fun and I learned a lot about the history of democracy. I used to look forward to listen to the program but it is over now.
The news thre is different from Japanese one. For example you can get lots of news about Middle East, Southern Asia, Europe and of course America. You can get what's going on all over the world.

Friday, November 29, 2013

A little about my city

I live in Matsue, Shimane prefecuture. The population here is 150,000 so Matsue is not a big city. You can easily find convinience stores but we have NO starbucks here until this year. Because of the few population we don't have good pubric transportation. Many adults own a car even very old person.
 Here, we have the sixth largest lake in Japan, called Lake Shinji. The lake is famous for beautiful sunsets and yamato shijimi, a kind of clam, and its water is brackish.
Matsue also faces the Japanese sea. Many kinds of fresh fish are sold at local fish markets. You can eat tasty sashimi or other sea products here.
Our city has a 400-year-old Japanese style castle called Matsue-jo. This castle is the second largest, the third tallest (30m) and the sixth oldest one in Japan. You can tour the inside of the castle and see the whole city from the top floor. In Spring, you can see beautiful cheree blossoms there.
If you like tasty sea food and are interested in old Japanese castles, why don't you come here!

Set a heater

It's getting colder and colder these days. I set a heater in the living room and bought a tank of kerosene yesterday. It cost astonishing 99 yen/l and that'll be killing me until next April. 

Thursday, November 28, 2013

The first blog in five years

This is the first blog  post in five years. Since the last post, I didn't write anything in English but just read books in English. To be honest I simply lost interest in writing because no one read my blog at all. But from now on I'll keep writing for the sake of simply improving my English ability.
Since I did not study English grammar I had my blog corrected by online teachers at that time but I'll do it all by myself as much as I can. I'd really appreciate receiving corrections from anyone, though.
Anyway, it's snowing over here but only a little bit. Please take care everyone,