I was thinking about the fact that my students are young and Japanese, and more easily impressed by flashy things than non-flashy ones. I am not a graphic artist, really, so I decided to rebuild my phonics shmup in Unity. The ease of grabbing things from the asset store aids Continue Reading
I am trying to get in the habit of changing how I talk about this project. Apparently shmups don’t count as shooters to some people. The way I see it, you’re shooting things, ergo it is a shooter, but I prefer to use terms in standard ways, so here we Continue Reading
Graduation season has rolled around again here in Japan. I don’t remember how much I’ve talked about graduations on here offhand, but today was the graduation at my elementary school. Back home, the idea of graduation from elementary school seems silly. Here in Japan, though, it’s a big rite of Continue Reading
I had my first elementary school classes since winter break today. The 6th grade class went well, but the 5th grade class went amazingly. Today we started a new chapter. It has 26 vocabulary words, so I made today a lazy play-with-words day. One of the boys made it even Continue Reading
In this third and final post (see also Part 1 and Part 2) about my junior high school’s festival last month, I am going to talk about student involvement in planning the event and then launch into the last third of the school festival.
Okay, the students didn’t say that. I’m making titles up now. But I see no reason not to continue the grammatically incorrect titling. Besides, I’m about to talk about the students’ singing. With a bit about their music education in general. This is the second post I’ve written about this Continue Reading
It’s been a while since I posted anything here. I’ve been busy — I’m now writing articles for IndieGames.com regularly. I also went to Tokyo Game Show (the first event of its kind I’ve ever been to). Coming back from Tokyo Game Show, I came down with a cold. It’s Continue Reading
This is a story one of the parents in my town posted on his Facebook wall. お父さんの仕事 仕事帰り娘と二人、夜道を家路につく道すがら、娘が唐突に「お父さんはどんなお仕事しているの？」と聞いてきた。 小学3年生の娘に林業をどう説明したらよいかと、一瞬頭は躊躇ったが、気づいたら「お父さんは中川の森を守っているんだよ」と答えていた。 「木を調べたり、植えて育てたり、たまに伐っていたりしているんだよ。森は水や空気をきれいにしたり、動物たちのおうちになるんだよ」と続けたら、娘が「じゃあお父さんは中川を守ってるんだね」と嬉しそうに笑った。 ｶﾞｽ欠間近の心に、力が湧いてきた。 明日もがんばろう。 And here is my translation.
I make a lot of stuff for my classes. Some of it is great, some of it sucks, some can be reused, and others are just one-time things. The ones that can be reused aren’t always things I feel others would want. I have come up with a few things, Continue Reading
I sometimes make board games for use in my English classes. Today I’d like to tell you about the most recent of those, Cross-Country, which was designed to use a map of U.S. states as the board.