BF 3-4 pm 1 Student.
We talked about the student’s current work project and how it is so much work that she often misses the last train home. She talked about quitting and joining her family business.
I asked about it, and we talked about her family’s hostel, which is quite unusual in that no one works there through the night. I asked if her family has always owned it, but she said that her parents used to run a cafe, so we talked about coffee for a while, she said that she really enjoyed Italian coffee, so much that she was not impressed when she came home to Japan and had Japanese coffee.
I told her that drinking “Bottomless” or free refill coffee in America, my tastes changed.
We then spoke about the price of tea, and I think it is expensive to buy a cup of tea in a cafe, compared to buying a box of tea in a super market.
I asked where she wanted to travel to in the future, and she told me that she’d never been to Czech, so we talked about the cheap beer there, and she said it was cheap in Germany, but Czech sounds cheaper.
We talked about Germany for a while, and I recommended the Black Forest gateaux. We talked a little bit about Falconry.
BF 4-5 pm 2 Students.
I was shown a picture of a city in Germany that is almost perfectly round, and I was told that the city was built where a meteor had once fallen.
I started to say that I am interested in “local legends” when our 2nd student joined us, and we all caught-up briefly. She had a bad arm the last time I spoke with her, and I was very glad to hear that it had improved a lot now!
I described what Legend means and how the use of the word has changed a little over time. I asked if there were any good local legends -imagining that there are lots because Kyoto is historical- but the students couldn’t think of any, so I asked if there are any haunted places, and again they couldn’t think of anywhere, but we spoke about ghosts and haunted places, saying Japan has many, as does England.
We talked about being open-minded in regards to spirits, and we started talking about scary movies, and we contrasted “scary” movies to “creepy” movies, and how they may change our dreams. We talked about dreams for a while, and I said about Lucid dreaming. We talked about other strange things in life; I said that 4 days before David Bowie died I started to think about him for no reason, and then found his album for sale by coincidence on the day it was released.
We talked a little about these strange coincidences and then we talked about David Bowie and other musicians, and what we like about music. One student said lyrics didn’t matter, as long as it is a nice melody, so I played “Mack the Knife” as it has a nice melody, but the lyrics are about a serial killer.
Key Phrases
Bobby Darin
Haunted
Local legend
Falcon
Falconry
Psychological
Creepy
Black Forest Gateaux
Refill
Bottomless
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