We have recently launched eigonohondana a new service from englishpool to allow people across all of Japan to borrow English language graded readers. Reader series carried at the moment include Oxford Reading Tree, Project X, Floppy's Phonics, Songbirds, Rigby Star Independent and a few Scholastic Science Readers.

Basically for a low monthly subscription you will receive up to 10 books per month. Sending and returning postage are included in the price! There are over 300 titles to choose from at the moment and we will be adding more over the coming months.

The website is (mostly) in Japanese but as a lot of it is image driven it shouldn't be too problematic if you're just having a look around. (Note: The catalog pages are mostly bilingual!)

If you're interested in finding out more and need assistance navigating the pages please feel free to contact us.

We are working on adding more English pages so please bear with us.

eigonohondana

We made these cute little Halloween finger puppets in the sprouts classes this week.
Really simple to make, black construction paper, scissors and a few scraps for decoration. I like to concertina the black paper and then use the scissors in front of the class, letting them take guesses as to what I might be creating.

Once made we sang 10 Little Witches from the Let's Sing CD.

Happy Halloween

Have been searching for some listening activities and came across this site http://storynory.jp/ which offers free audio stories in English. Haven't used it as yet but looks interesting. English version can be found at http://storynory.com/

We spent the morning cutting wood for the fire. Remember the shed? Well there is a kind of stove we set up outside in which we can burn wood. I think we got quite a lot cut, don't you?



It's mostly trees from the garden.

In the afternoon I visited my old friend and his family. He lives in a very pretty village and a short walk away from Cedar Farm. At Cedar Farm we fed the animals and then went for a coffee at the Cedar Farm Cafe which had some of best coffee I've ever drank. Apparently they roast the coffee at the cafe using this huge ancient machine and it certainly seems worth it. I left with two bags of their Italian Blend which as I write this I can still smell from two rooms away! Powerful stuff!

Also found a well stocked art shop where I picked up a special gift from my daughter...

Here'a picture of a pig;



...and one of a goat;

Yesterday was mostly sight-seeing in Liverpool but I had really wanted to do a bit of shopping (and before we go any further let me say that for shopping Liverpool has really improved.) So I left my son with my parents and headed into Liverpool alone. It wasn't all shopping though, yesterday on the duck we had driven past a few places(well one place really) I wanted to check out, so I took a rest from walking around shops to go and take a look.

Located up the hill from the city centre are two cathedrals, main office churches if you like, located at both ends of Hope Street. This is the Catholic Cathedral, a very modern looking structure;



I was trying to take a picture of the Anglican Cathedral but there were some trees in the way, so I took a picture of the Philharmonic Dining Rooms instead.



This has been described as England's most ornate pub and on entering I could see why. I didn't take any photographs inside but it seemed that almost every other customer was. Surely it must be England's most photographed pub!