Saturday, September 24, 2011

Dumbledore VS Dumbledore





I have honestly been searching for this one image on dA for a good half hour. I was amused because I also was not pleased with how the actor decided to portray Dumbledore in Goblet of Fire. Eventually I gave up the search on dA (Although I knew for a fact that I had seen it on dA!) and went to Google. A quick image search of "Dumbledore, movie vs book" brought up this image several times! Thanks Google I don't know why I ever doubted---


Ah yes. Thank you for reminding me.

Some light Google searching tells me that KellyWormtongue from DeviantArt is the artist of the book/movie Dumbledore (although dA seems to think that she/he does not exist)

To be fair, I do not think I liked the second actor who portrayed Dumbledore from the beginning since he had said that he never read the HP books and did not plan to. Giving us the resulting Dumbledore.

He kinda reminded me of a hippie. With the hat and beard tie.

Butterbeer

Keeping with the Harry Potter theme today, I had been thinking about concocting my own Butterbeer. I had seen several recipes online that looked ... less than amazing in my opinion (Con on guys, the best you can do is cream soda, butterscotch topping and whipped cream?) One recipe even called for two tablespoons of actual butter. Unmelted. It just asked you to stir it into the drink. (Note to the creator: No one wants to drink butter) Like, I know it has butter in the name, but that's probably not what Rowling was aiming for.

I gave up the search for a premade recipe and began thinking of making my own

So far I had thoughts about Pumpkin, Apple juice, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ginger ale and vanilla.

What did you imagine the drink to taste like when you read the books?

Harry Potter as an Anime


I like how Snape is on a bed of lilies. Sneaky, there.




101 Dalmations

Friday, September 23, 2011

Thanksgiving!

Which sucked last year in Japan because there was none. I suppose that is to be expected because of the whole Thanksgiving is Christian and most of Japan is Buddhist...

so this year I found this awesome thing right here which promises a full on Thanksgiving dinner. (Okay, I don't see the part where they say "and all the fixin's" but there will be turkey and good times) But the thing is.... my husband does not like being social. At all. He will do anything to avoid going to events. Even faking being sick (Sometimes I wonder about his maturity). So even though I poked and pleaded, he wasn't going to budge.

Fine. I thought. He can sleep the day away while I go have fun. (Expensive $45 dinner fun) I went and asked around the few contacts that I know and it looks like my Japanese teacher is interested, as well as her International Associate friend plus the other Canadian in this town. (Did I mention that he and I are the total Canadian population in the town? I'ma 50% number here! That's the biggest number I have been and yet the lowest I have seen the Canada population. Granted I had lived in Canada before now...)

So hopefully I will have lots of fun and meet new people while my husband sleeps his Sunday away (He does that ever Sunday. I don't know how someone can sleep as long as he does)

Cute Bento



Bento - a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables, usually in a box-shaped container. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware.


If someone were to take this much time and effort to create food pictures, I might actually feel bad for eating it...


Thursday, September 22, 2011

English Advice?

I teach English every Friday and Saturday to adults, with an English-Japanese exchange every Tuesday and a monthly visit every first monday to a day care to sings some English songs. The day care is a bit of confusion especially when the teachers do not understand a single word of my native tongue and I only a few of theirs. But we manage together, which is very helpful. If they had left me alone with 30-something children under the age of 6 I... would probably not do so well, haha. (Actually, I'm not so bad with kids and when we can both communicate effectively I am fine supervising kids. It's that darn language barrier -shakes fist- )

There are some times, though, in the adult class when they ask me a question and it stumps me. I can easily look up a word in my handy English-Japanese dictionary that I pirate away from my husband on the weekends because it has an English dictionary for English people in it as well. But when they ask me the why questions, that's where I have trouble. One of my students even told me that he could understand every individual words meaning but he couldn't understand the sentence meaning. Sometimes in English news or books I will have to read it over again because I do not understand the point they are trying to make in the sentence, but 80% of the times it is due to the fact that I will have skipped an important word. The sentences I use in my classes aren't terribly hard to understand - At least from my point of view- But sometimes I forget that they are learning the language, and just as I have a billion questions every time I study Japanese so do they.

Although is it too much to ask for a vocal response from them when I ask Does everyone understand? Does anyone have any questions? Because when they sit there re-reading what I have explained I cannot tell if they do or they don't and my instinct says Well if they aren't asking questions, they must understand.