Onoue Festival

Every year, my school district Onoue holds a festival in autumn, called Onoue Matsuri. As an officer of the district sports association, I have to help with the organization of the festival. This year's festival was held yesterday. As you know, the weather was very nice early yesterday morning, so the festival went ahead as planned, so I and the other officers and helpers started preparing around 8 o'clock. Unfortunately, it started raining before 10, when the festival was scheduled to start. We were all a bit worried, but the rain was very light at first so the decision was made to go ahead. However, the weather became worse and worse, but by that time it was too late to change the schedule. The area around the tents became flooded, and most of the attendees went home.
Because another event is scheduled for today, we had to move all the tents and other equipment away. However, they were too wet to fold up, so we just carried them off to the side. They were very wet and heavy. Maybe in 2 or 3 days we'll have to go there again to clean and dry them, and fold them up and put them away.

Scripts for 1st podcast episode

Hi, I'm Rick, and welcome to the first episode of my podcast. In this site I introduce Usborne books. As you may know, Usborne Publishing is a British company, and in recent years they have become one of the most respected publishers of children's books in the world. A few years ago, they were basically unknown in Japan, but now Usborne books are considered an essential part of extensive reading programmes even in universities.
Usborne has a very wide range of books. So in this site, I'm going to introduce the various series and sub-series they offer, and recommend some of my favorites. Take a look through the site, and please also listen to the other podcast episodes as they appear on the site.

Zack Japan revisited

Last week, I made a prediction about Japan's match with Argentina, suggesting that the chances of a Japan victory were very slim. Japan surprised nearly everyone by winning 1-0 and by looking just as good as Argentina for most of the match. Of course, flying over to Japan to play a match is very tough is Argentina's players; perhaps Japan would not have won if the match had been in Argentina. But Japan has played Argentina several times before, both at home and away, and Japan had never won until this match. I think Japan has progressed immensely.

The following game was a special one, as it was against Korea, and Japan has a poor record against Korea. Japan was unable to win, but I felt that a draw away was again symbolic of the team's progress.

Zack Japan

On Friday, Japan's new senior team coach will take charge for his first match. It's against Argentina, and apparently superstars such as Messi will be in the squad (though of course we don't know who will be playing in the actual starting eleven).
It's a difficult situation for Zaccheroni (spelling?) because Japan won its first two matches after the World Cup with its caretaker manager, Harumi Harada, against Paraguay and Guatemala. At that time, Shinji Kagawa were on fire after being excluded from the World Cup, and scored one of the goals; now, he's probably a little bit tired after his first few matches of the season and the flight back to Japan from Germany. Similarly, Matsui and Honda will have to fly back from Russia, and neither has been scoring goals recently. And above all, the opponents are very strong this time!
Unfortunately for Zack, the mood is good now, and despite all the extenuating circumstances if Japan loses the mood is likely to get worse. But at least it looks like he wants to attack: he has called up eight forwards!