Hi everyone!
How was your weekend?
Starter class / Beginner class Handout
Do you know her?
Her name is
Higa Rino.
She's from Okinawa.
I heard
she's from Okinawa city.
She's
my cup of tea.
She's
in the Willcom commercial.
Here are some very useful words for people.
- He has a beard (髭）
- He has a buzz cut (ボーズ）
- He's kind of annoying (ちょっとうるさい）
- She's my cup of tea （彼は私のタイプです）
- He's childish (子供っぽい）
- He's mature (大人）
- She's in the movie Okuribito (「おくりびと」の映画に出てる）
- He's in the Kirin Ichiban Shibori commercial (キリン一番搾りのCMに出てる）
Intermediate Class
In intermediate class we talked about different kinds of work.
When somebody asks you "
What do you do?", it means 仕事は何をしてるですか？
You can say: I work
for Tomishiro Central Hospital as a nurse.
Other examples
- I work for NHK as an engineer.
- I work for ACC as an air traffic controller.
- I run my own computer company.
- I'm unemployed / jobless.
- I'm between jobs.
We also talked about NEETs. The word "NEET" actually comes from England. It stands for "Not in Education, Employment, or Training". I have never heard this word in Canada, but it seems to a be very popular phrase in Japan. Usually in America/Canada we say "
you're a bum". A bum is somebody who doesn't want to work, and just wants to kill time everyday at home.
We also discussed the English word for 公務員.
From :
http://eow.alc.co.jp/公務員/UTF-8/?ref=sa
公務員
- civil servant
- civil service〔【略】CS〕
- civil-service worker [official]
- government employee
- government servant
- jobholder〈米〉
- office holder
- officeholder
- officer of the crown
- official
- officialdom（集合的に）
- officialism〔集合的〕
- public employee
- public functionary
- public life
- public officer
- public official
- public servant
- public service personnel
- public service worker
- public worker
- servant
- service personnel
There are so many words here, but I think the best thing to say is "I work for the government". It's general and there's no confusion. I would avoid using the word "servant" because the word servant has a very negative meaning to it (召し使い).
Finally we talked a little bit about the word
commute, which means 通勤. For example, if you drive to work every day, that is a
commute.
I always think it's incredible that people in mainland Japan often have two hour or three hour commutes. And they talk about it like
it's a matter of fact（当たり前な事） I don't think I could ever get used to a two hour commute.