Show 1047 Monday 1 June 2009
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.
Hi, I’m Sarah, welcome to The Daily English Show.
Today’s guest is Liam. He’s from Brisbane in Australia and he now lives here in Niseko. I met him for the first time last week. He runs a really nice lodge up in the ski village and we went there to do the interview.
Liam said he’s been living in Japan for the last six years but he first came to Japan eleven years ago and he lived in a little town in Niigata called Kamoshi. And he lived there with a Japanese family for ten months. I asked him what he was doing then.
Ah, I was on student exchange, um, and I was studying Japanese at, at high school and, um, I guess the reason I started studying Japanese was at my school we had a choice of languages that we had to study. Um, and I surfed down at the Gold Coast a lot and there were always a lot of Japanese surfers in the, in the water and they were always so polite and friendly and so Japanese was just the natural choice for me to, to use.
STICK NEWS
Kia ora this is Stick News. Yesterday a clock in London celebrated its 150th birthday.
Big Ben is a famous clock that lives in London. Wikipedia says Ben is the world's largest four-faced, chiming clock and the third largest free-standing clock tower in the world. He started ticking on the 31st of May 1859 (I wrote/said 1959 by accident) and yesterday turned 150.
And that was Stick News for Monday the 1st of June.
Kia ora.
conversations with sarah
#661 Do you enjoy teaching?
with Liam Bartley
Step 1: Repeat Sarah’s lines.
Step 2: Read Sarah’s lines and talk to Liam.
Sarah How was your Japanese when you first got here?
Liam Ah, I wasn’t the best student. And, um, no my Japanese was pretty poor when I first came here, despite studying it at high school. Um, I’d say within three weeks of being in Japan, I’d learnt more Japanese than I had in all of my high school years. No fault at all to my teachers, it was all me.
Sarah I guess it improved a lot during the ten months.
Liam Definitely, yeah, yeah I was, I was quite fluent by the end of those ten months, probably better than I am now.
Sarah What do you think helped your Japanese the most?
Liam I think actually it was joining bukatsu, joining a club and making good friends that I, I hung out with and spent a lot of time with, who were all obviously Japanese, no one spoke any English. So it was pure immersion. Ah, yeah, by far and away that was … living Japanese was, was the best thing for it.
Sarah Why did you decide to come back to Japan later on?
Liam Yeah, that’s a good question, because I hated um, a lot of, a lot about Japan after my experience with, with that family. Um, but at the end of my trip I got to come to Furano on a skiing holiday. And I stayed at a pension called YAMANO-DOXSON. And the pension owner there, the master was an amazing, amazingly charismatic guy. And he said that I should come back and, and work for him. So for the next two seasons after that I came back every winter and worked in his curry shop and, and pension as a, as a lackey.
Sarah What do you do now?
Liam Now I’m the owner of Pension Captain, Captain Bed and Breakfast. Um, and in my spare time I, I guess I’m a web entrepreneur. So, we make, ah, we make websites for other people and then we have our own projects that we work on.
Sarah Has the current economic downturn affected your business here in Niseko?
Liam It hasn’t affected the pension business here at all yet. Because we’re a very, very small place, so we can only take 16 people at the most. And, um, and every year up until this year we’ve always had way many … way more enquiries than we can possibly full. So we’ve noticed less enquiries, but we’re, we’re still full, in winter anyway. This year might be different, we’ll see.
Sarah Has Niseko changed much during the time that you’ve been living here?
Liam Yeah, definitely. Um, ah, although, ah, I think there were a couple of years there when it went a bit crazy and, and a lot of people came in with, um, with an eye to making money, ah, you know, to … as an opportunity to make money. And before that I think that Niseko was very much a, a community and it was all about the skiing and about the slow lifestyle I think they call it in Japanese. Ah, I’ve got a feeling it’s heading back that way again.
Sarah Have you ever taught English in Japan?
Liam I have, I, I taught English in a small fishing village called Shiriuchi, ah, which is the home town of Kitajima Saburo. And is about an hour’s drive South of Hakkodate. Between … half way between Hakodate and Matsumae. It’s a very beautiful little town.
Sarah Do you enjoy teaching?
Liam I love teaching, yeah.
Sarah What do you enjoy about it?
Liam Oh, so much. Ah, I really like when – obviously, I think most teachers like this – but, I really like it when someone gets a concept. And it’s the way you’ve explained it, or the way that you’ve taught it that’s reached them. I think that’s really rewarding.
Sarah How did you get into the web designing stuff? Did you study it at university?
Liam No, not at all. Ah, I wanted to make a website for the pension here. And, um, and I looked around at a few different places that could help me build it. And, ah, I eventually ran into a guy called Nathan Creamer who was working cross the road there for NOASC. And, ah, he said he’d do it for cheap and, ah, and he did and we became good friends. And so, we, ah, I’ve been working with him ever since and just learning as I, as I go along.
Sarah Do you have any advice for people who are learning English?
Liam Yeah, don’t ever, ever worry about making mistakes. Yeah, always give it a go and use it as much as possible.
links
today's news
today's STICK NEWS pictures
Captain Hirafu
Snow Workers
music
show start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: Future Cha Cha
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States
artist site
cws start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: The Jazz Woman
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States
artist site
qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
qa bgm
artist: Cliffhanger
album: Soft n mellow
track: Ha, I hope u can follow
from: Sweden
artist at Jamendo
album at Jamendo
Did you notice a mistake in this script? Please leave us a comment and tell us! We really appreciate people pointing out our mistakes.Thank you.
* Thanks to Joon for pointing out a mistake in today's script!
Have you translated this script - or part of it - into your language for English practice and published it on your blog? Please leave a comment and a link so other people can read your translation. Thank you.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment