In October some friends invited me to run an Ekiden next February.  It’s going to be right here in Ogaki.  Our team will have six people, but I don’t know how far I’m going to run yet.  It will be between 4 and 10 kilometers.  My teammates think I am very fast since I ran in college.  However I have gotten a lot slower since then and have only run one race in the last 5 years.  I don’t want to let my team down so I’ve been trying to run every day.  So far I’ve built up to about 50 kilometers a week.  Mostly I run at an easy pace, about 5-6 minutes per kilometer, but I’ve also been doing some faster running.  So far my fastest is 1 mile (1.6km) in 5:40.  In 2007, I ran 10 km at that pace, so I have to do a lot of training if I want to get fast again!  I will keep you updated.  Merry Christmas!

The winter season brings with it all of my favorite things: family, friends, warm cookies, beautiful decorations, and time to ponder unexplained phenomenon.  I see Christmas as a magical, wonderful holiday filled with love and all things positive; however, I love paranormal and supernatural stories and all of the free time I have during the holidays allows me to go on Wikipedia research rampages. 

Right now, I am very interested in American cryptids—strange, mythological creatures that can’t be easily explained.  I’m up to my eyes in tales of Mothman and Wendigos.  They’re both pretty creepy, but I really like the feeling you get when you are a little bit scared.  Maybe the stories are true, maybe they’re not.  The mystery makes it all fun!  You can bet that I will be learning about more creatures this winter! How about you?

(Mothman, is that you?!)

みなさんこんにちは。

数日で一気に寒くなりましたね。

ハローズでは今週末にクリスマスパーティを開催します。

お友達とプレゼント交換もしますよ！

ぜひ遊びに来てください。

On Saturday I was lucky enough to be invited to an UNESCO event that was being held at the Suitopia Center in Ogaki. It was a wonderful event where many high school students and foreigners living in the area had a chance to meet, get to know each other a bit, and have discussions in English about building better global connections, creating sustainable development goals, and other global issues.

Everyone had a great time and it was fantastic to see so many students using their English ability to discuss difficult topics openly. Here is a photo of thought project four students and I worked on for a bit. The idea was to think of words or phrases we should keep in mind as we try to make a better world. In the middle you can see the word “Kindness”. You can see that it is written over and over again in different colors. That is because each of us was using a different color marker to write what we thought was important. Everyone agreed that kindness was very important, so we all wrote over the word over and over again in our own colors.

I would like to encourage many of you to try to join more events like this in the future! It was a great event and all of the students were absolutely wonderful!

John

もう秋も終わり、冬が近づいてきていますね。

みなさんは秋の味覚を楽しむことができましたか？

今年は何本食べたか数えきれないほど焼き芋を食べました。

焼き芋を英語にすると、roast sweet potatoですね。

秋の味覚と言えば、さつまいもと並んで柿もあげられます。

実はこの秋に干し柿を作ってみました。（柿は英語でpersimmon）

3週間、毎日外に干した柿が甘くなるように揉むのは面倒でしたが、

とてもおいしくできました。来年は量を増やしてやってみたいと思います。