Great Teaching Idea for Months of the Year: Let's Play Cards!

Fall: Sweet November in Japan

A big challenge in teaching the months of the year is how students can memorize them. Months of the year in Japanese is so simple. January is 1月. (Read as ichi-gatsu) February is 2月. (Read as ni-gatsu). They just use 1,2, 3 to 12 plus the word "Gatsu" to name the months.

On the contrary, names of the months in English doesn't really make sense unless you know its history. January and February have the same ending. The same with the ber months. Then there are April, May, June, July and August that don't seem to follow a particular sound pattern. It can be confusing, I tell you.

Stress Alert!: I'll Be Home for Christmas...

Blurred; Winter Illumination at Flower Park, Hamamatsu

This is how most Japanese celebrate Christmas: Go to work (if it's a workday), eat fried chicken from KFC, have some pretty Christmas cake and maybe give gifts to immediate family. Then go to work again the following day. Short and simple.

This is how Filipinos celebrate Christmas: Start a 100-day Christmas countdown, play carols from September, put up the Christmas tree in October, have Kris Kringles in November, attend parties from the 1st day of December and feel the Christmas hang-over in January. Around the days before and after Christmas, there's a lot of pigging out and shopping. Philippines has the longest Christmas indeed!

Japan's Crazy Over KitKat

Japan has a sweet romance with KitKat. Yes, I mean the KitKat bars that tells you to have a break. It's those two-fingered bars that you eat by breaking it smoothly in half.

Before coming to Japan, I only knew of the ordinary Chocolate-flavored KitKat wrapped in red. Then boom! I went to Tokyo and discovered strawberry KitKat. I started living in Hamamatsu and saw green tea (macha) KitKat. When I went to Kyoto, yatsuhashi KitKat was there. Then there's apple-flavored KitKat in Nagano and sweet bean KitKat in Takayama. There's pumpkin KitKat during Halloween and sakura (cherry blossom) KitKat in spring. Suddenly, my knowledge of KitKat grew just like that.