Hey y’all!

So over break I had the opportunity to eat the famous Ise shrimp. Fun fact though, it’s not a shrimp! It’s actually considered to be a lobster. Anyways, they said they could cook it in two ways. Number one, they could grill it up, and number two, they could serve it raw. I went with the later. 

BIG MISTAKE. When they said they were going to serve it raw, they weren’t kidding. It’s head was still moving when it was served! It scared the life out of me, BUT for 6,000 Yen, I had to eat it.

I then paid a little extra for them to turn the head into a miso soup. It was incredible, but I don’t think it was worth 6,000 Yen. Moral of the story is- DON’T GET ISE SHRIMP RAW. 

See y’all in class! 

英語学習をしてきた、今もしている自分から、特に中学生以上の皆さんへのアドバイスは

「英語に触れる機会を学校の勉強以外に持つことと、それをとことん楽しむこと」です。

音楽が好きな子には子にはEd SheeranやCharlie Puthなどを紹介します。

The Beatlesももちろん素敵ですが、なるべく興味を持ってもらえるよう、

比較的最近のアーティストやバンドが多いです。

「推し」が出ているから、日本語字幕がないけど英語のインタビュー動画を見る

「推し」がSNSにアップしたものを理解したくて英語を読む

…など、好きだという気持ちに引っ張られてどんどん自分から機会を見つけられます。

「かっこいい」「かわいい」「おもしろい」と思ったら、他の作品もチェックしてみてください。

楽しみながら英語学習ができるのが一番ですよね！

「テスト」

聞くとどうしても定期テストや試験のようなイメージを持ちますが

英語の「test」にはそれらの意味の他にも

「検査」や「実験」の意味もあります。

この時期に「test」と聞くと

コロナの検査がまっさきに浮かぶかもしれません。

この週末、いくつかの県内私立高校の入試が行われるようです。

感染対策をしっかりとし、テストを頑張ってほしいと思います。

For Christmas, my mother got me this tiny, little waffle maker. I’m not usually a waffle person, personally, but I’m hardly offended by them. Sometimes, it’s just nice to have some warm, syrupy, homemade waffles. I can’t do that without a waffle maker, so I haven’t had waffles in…at least three years now, possibly longer.

However, I decided to take out the waffle maker on a whim, and I didn’t check that I had all of the ingredients on hand before I started. So, when I realized I was missing something pretty crucial, I had to get creative.

On this particular waffle day, I was out of milk. So, I scoured my cabinets and discovered a can of coconut milk. Coconut has a pretty strong and distinct coconut flavor, and I knew there’d be no hiding its presence in the batter. So, why not embrace it and make my waffles completely dairy free? Since I was already replacing the milk with coconut milk, I decided to also substitute the butter with coconut oil, which I also have rather a lot of. And just to further the coconutty flavor, I greased the waffle maker, not with butter or canola oil, but with yet more coconut oil.

This whole process resulted in some fantastically coconutty waffles, which is not a flavor I’d previously tried haha. However, it was a flavor I found that I quite liked. I think in the future, even if I do have milk on hand, I might just continue making coconut waffles instead. I’d also like to try it with other dairy substitutes, like almond milk or soy milk or something. That seems like it’d add another interesting flavor. I see many waffle adventures in my future…