These Days

These days I have been very busy with work.  I work six days a week, but finish at lunch time on Saturdays, so it's not too bad.  I enjoy most of my twelve classes because of the nice students.  On Friday afternoons I'm a part-timer at Kyoto Sangyo University.  I used to live in Kyoto, so I still have many friends there and enjoy seeing them on Friday night sometimes.  Sometimes I go to a friend's house for a barbecue on the weekends.  One guy lives beside Lake Biwa, so we swim there after eating and drinking a beer or two. 

On weekends I try to do something with my family, even if it's just going out for lunch one day, or taking my daughter to the park.  She will be six years old in August, and is very cute.  A few weeks ago I went to the Emperor's Cup horse race in Kyoto with my family.  My wife loves horse racing and horses, especially Goldship, a beautiful grey stallion.

I also work in the garden in the yard at my house.  At this time of year there is a lot of work to do (trimming trees and hedges, spraying for insects that attack the plants, watering etc.).  I'm growing tomatoes and zucchini too.  There is a large pond just across the narrow lane in front of our house. Many different kinds of birds live the, and in summer it becomes covered with lotus (pink flowers).  This is a photo of it.

Welcome!

Welcome to our Reading Class blog.  I would like you all to use this page as a place to express your opinions, share your ideas, stories, experiences etc. in English.  I will expect you to write something at home on a topic that I/we decide on (as homework), but we can spend some time in the following class reading each other's posts (and writing brief comments/replies, to the extent that you wish).

To get started you will have to get a Gmail account, if you don't have one already, and then go to blogger.com to get your own page.  Here is the link to a useful page that will answer any questions you have.  If you scroll to the bottom you can change the language to Japanese to save some time.

https://support.google.com/blogger/?hl=en#topic=3339243

However, I want everything on your blog to be in English, please!

I will need to know your URL so that I can create a list of links on the side of this page so that you can conveniently access everyone's blog.  After you have created your blog, please copy the URL, click on "comments" at the bottom of this post, and paste/send it to me.

Let's make your first post title "These Days".  Write a little bit about what you've been doing/ how you've been feeling recently.