This Is Japan
Explore everyday life in Japan
Despite years of mandatory English education in Japanese schools, English proficiency is very low in Japan.
The exact reasons for this are hard to pinpoint, but I think a lot of it can be blamed on the lack of opportunity most Japanese people have to interact with native and non-native English speakers. I also think that much of the poor English proficiency here can be attributed to the lack of phonetic sounds in the Japanese language itself. Many Japanese people have a very hard time producing and hearing a lot of the sounds that are required by the English language.
For someone like me, who is trying to raise near native-level English speaking children, the quality of English education here and the general lack of opportunity to use English anywhere outside of our house creates a lot of stress for me. One of the main ways I counteract this stress and teach my children English is through daily walks.
I find that the city we live in provides endless topics of discussion and opportunities to teach my children new vocabulary.
Or another conversation might go something like this:
Since I started writing this series for Steemit, and subsequently started taking a lot more pictures, my son has also begun to develop a slight interest in photography.
His eyes have begun looking at the things all around him in a different way. Occassionally, as we walk and talk, or more accurately, as he rides his bike ahead of my daughter and I and calls out for me to catch him, he stops me and says, Daddy, look at this. Take a picture of this. It's pretty. Or, Daddy, look at the sky. It's berry, berry pink. I like pink.
For me, walking, and more specifically wandering up and down new streets, is something that I have always enjoyed doing.
Now that I am a father, being able to share this hobby (if you can call wandering a hobby) with my children is very satisfying; and being able to put the time that we spend together wandering to good, practical use is pretty much a dream come true.
For those of you who are living outside of your native countries and trying to teach your children your native language, I can't recommend taking daily walks together enough.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.
Then other side of Japan .. !
Yep. There's that side too. My children and I haven't talked about that yet:)
I love all the strange things the Japanese build for various "needs". Haven't tested that one yet :D
I'm pretty sure there are clubs here where you can pay real girls to sleep on their lap. Maybe this is the economy version:)
I think part of the bad english is the emphasize put on repetition in Japanese (or generally asien) schools. You may learn words, but even with 2000 words you may not be able to build a sentence.
I myself had about 2 years of english. Bad marks. Then I played english Daggerfall. Lots of text. Learned a lo. Don't ask me how hard it was to find out what gotcha meant without internet back in those times.
Yeah, not having an opportunity to make original sentences that actually pertain to real-life situations is a big problem. Daggerfall? I don't know that game. I'll have to look into it.