For a couple of months, I've been giving private weekly English conversation lessons to my landlord's daughter. These lessons have been somewhat unexciting, seeing as I hadn't really had experience doing this sort of thing and she didn't really know what she was interested to learn. Each week I'd wonder what we ought to do, or talk about, without any real sense of what was appropriate, and recently I gave up trying to do anything with too much structure.
So Saturday, on a whim, I brought a big daikon radish to her house, thinking that since she enjoys cooking she could show me how to cook it, and we could speak English during that time.
To my surprise, our lesson came alive as we spoke English and cooked together. She discovered that I wanted to learn how to cook Japanese food, and we both could see that holding our English conversations while cooking together was fun.
At the end of the hour, I suggested I drop the fee for the lessons if she would teach me Japanese cooking each week. She agreed, and harmony was restored.
This week's lesson was 'kinpira'(n.b., this recipe is different from the one we used--traditionally, gobo, or burdock, is used, but we used daikon instead).
You can see a picture of a big daikon here if you're not sure what they look like, along with a very interesting site on Japanese health and nutrition.
I tell of my day-to-day experiences in a funky Japanese town from my American viewpoint. This blog could also be called 'Bizarro World', 'Notes From Kyushu, a Smaller Island', or 'Teaching English in Japan: Smash Your Ego in 10 Easy Lessons."
Sunday, May 14, 2006
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6 comments:
Isn't it wonderful how things work out sometimes when you least expect it...I think it's great that you were both able to come to an agreement that ended in a harmonic balance of truly tasty proportions...
Maybe you should incorporate some things that interest you in your teachings in order to maybe get some input from her on whether they may interest her as well, that didn't make a lot of sense but I'm sure you'll come up with something...
Ay any rate the food sounds and looks wonderful, I ate many dishes like this as a kid, yummy, later...
Blu~
You should now teach your student the word "barter". Great idea! And I read the food page - really interesting, and it explained really clearly a lot of food goobledygook that I've seen here and there. Keep up the good eating. Dad
I bought a daikon in honor.
-Uncle Larry
Well blu, I have a student now who's 12, likes Japanese history and watching TV, so I'm going to make her watch the 1980 mini-series version of that Japanese histiorical favorite, Shogun. Or maybe I'll make her read the 1200 page book first. I haven't decided which.
Really though, I am considering about what you said, how to make lessons interesting to everyone involved.
Dad, did you read about that guy who decided to trade a paper clip for a house? You can read about that here.
UL, did you really??
Yes. In fact, I finished off tonight.
Once, when I was coming back from Philly on SEPTA (I don't remember now if it was a bus or train), I had just come from the Reading Terminal Market. Sat there on the train (or bus) chompin' away on a daikon.
-Uncle Larry
Did you eat it raw? They don't eat them raw here. People say they are bitter raw; but that's Japan.
Maybe there you're bitter raw just the way you like 'em.
(I know, I know: slow down, Groucho, we can't keep up! ; ) )
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