Show 211 Thursday 30 November

Watch today's show at YouTube or BlipTV.

Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.
Someone sent me a message asking about tatami and I’ve also read a few comments asking asking about tatami ... so I thought I’d talk about it today.
As it says in wikipedia: Tatami mats are a traditional Japanese flooring. Made of woven straw, and traditionally packed with straw (though nowadays sometimes with styrofoam).
It also says: Most modern Japanese homes still have at least one tatami room, the washitsu.
I really like tatami but not everybody does. One of my students built a house this year – and he said that they decided not to have any tatami rooms and I asked him why not and he said that he likes tatami but it’s kind of hard to look after so they decided against it.
And one of the things I think is interesting about Japan is that the measuring system for rooms is different. So, in NZ people talk about the size of a room in square meters but in Japan it’s by tatami-size.
For example my old room in Tokyo was a six mat room or roku jyou. It didn’t have tatami - it had a wooden floor - but you still talk about the size like that.

STICK NEWS

Kia ora in Stick News today while Americans celebrated Thanksgiving Day on another part of the globe thanks were also being given for the internet.

Thanksgiving Day was celebrated by millions of people in North America today. In Japan major celebrations were also underway after a package arrived at tdes studio.
The Daily English Show staff weren’t expecting to be able to connect to the internet until the 5th of December.
But a few moments after tearing into this box these magic lights signaled that tdes staff were back amongst civilization.
The Daily English Show’s producer especially enjoys the opportunity for intellectual stimulation the internet offers and rushed to catch up on the latest world news.

The Daily English Show is now scheduled for regular daily uploads. However the production team announced today that due to circumstances such as exceptional snow conditions throughout winter there may be occasional delays in the production of the show.
And that was Stick News for Thursday the 30th of November.
Kia Ora.

the snow report

Today it snowed quite a lot. We cleared the snow in the afternoon. I wrote tdes in the snow. The t was easy but the rest of the letters didn’t come out so well.
And this is my other great piece of art. I hope it’s not illegal to trample in the snow on someone else’s property.
I think the mountain is going to open tomorrow. Excellent!

conversations with sarah
#125 Do you have any rooms with tatami in your place?

Step 1: Repeat Luke’s lines.
Step 2: Read Luke’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Luke Do you have any rooms with tatami in your place?

Sarah Yeah, there are three. I’ll show you if you like.

Luke OK, thanks.

Sarah This room has 6 mats so it’s called roku jyo in Japanese.

Luke The tatami looks a bit old.

Sarah Yeah, it is. It’s not too bad though. There was one really bad one that the landlord replaced before we moved in.

Luke Wow, I wouldn’t want to sleep on that.

Sarah Yeah. Come upstairs. I’ll show you the rooms up there. We haven’t done any cleaning upstairs so it’s still pretty dirty. This room has 6 mats, so it’s the same size as the room downstairs, 6 jyo.

Luke Oh, OK.

Sarah And this one has 8 mats.