Last Sunday, my wife and I turned on the TV in the early afternoon. We started watching a professional basketball game between the Chiba Jets and the Sendai 89ers. We don’t usually watch basketball, but we were interested because both of us had played the game when we were young. I think some of the rules have changed since then. Both of us thought the game looked a little different. In any case, we enjoyed it. That evening, our elder daughter came over with her husband for dinner. She is a big fan of a Japanese group called JO1, and her favorite singer gave a special opening performance for the game. We were too late to see the performance, and she didn’t watch the game, but it was probably the first time all of us had ever talked about basketball.   (140 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at

This is a story from Japan, but it made the international news. I heard about it from someone living in Hong Kong. A Chinese student who goes to university here was rescued twice in less than a week while climbing Mt. Fuji. The climbing season doesn’t begin until July, and people are asked not to climb the mountain off season because it can be dangerous. When this man tried to climb Mt. Fuji the first time, he couldn’t come down and called for help. He was rescued by a helicopter. He went back four days later. Another climber found him hurt and freezing, and he was rescued again. Why did he go back the second time? Because he left his mobile phone on the mountain!   (125 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

I saw medaka rice fish swimming in a tank with tiny chairs and desks. “It’s a school!” I thought. “A school of fish!” I started to laugh because we say “school of fish” in English. We don’t mean fish sitting at desks and studying, however. We mean a group of fish that swim together. Sardines, for example, swim in schools. English has many different words for groups of living things. A pack of wolves hunts in the wild. A swarm of bees flies around the beehive. A colony of ants lives underground. You can see a flock of pigeons flying around in the sky. In western movies, cowboys take care of a herd of cows.  (115 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

How do you choose a place to go on vacation? Is sightseeing your main reason for travelling, or do you travel to eat? I know many Japanese who take short trips just to eat. Last Sunday, I went on a trip with a small group of Japanese friends. One of them was from Tokyo, and we took him to Himakajima, an island that is famous for octopus. We drove to a small port and took a ferry to the island. The hotel served freshly boiled octopus and octopus rice for dinner, and in the morning, we had octopus “shabu shabu” for breakfast. The food was delicious, and we had a great time talking. Between meals, we took a bath and hung out in the sauna. We had a wonderful time even though we hardly left the hotel.   (137 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

If you go into the Japanese countryside, you will probably see water in the rice fields now. Golden Week is the time to plant rice. Farmers put the water into the fields first. Then, they plow the fields. They get on tractors and dig up the soil so that it isn’t hard. This helps air get into the soil. Plowing also helps to stop weeds from growing. When the fields are ready, farmers plant the rice using the tractors. These days, farming is easier because there are machines that do the hard work. One farmer can do everything alone. Before machines, however, farmers had to do everything by hand. It took a lot of time, and one farmer couldn’t do it alone. They worked together with their families and other farmers to finish the planting quickly.  (136 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com