D.S!!!

We now own a Nintendo DS lite, portable game console...given to us by Hiro's mother after she had grown tired of it. Hee hee, lucky us! I never considered myself a gamer of any type...that is, until I came across the DS. It has games for adults specifically targeted at non-gamers. Some of my students use the English dictation program, eigo-zuke...and surprisingly, it works! I encourage them to use it on a daily basis, in addition to other listening tools and real English in class.

A fun game is brain training, available in both Japanese and English versions. I started out using the Japanese version and was found to be quite old...around 40's and 50's...but switched off to the English version, resulting in substantially better results. What a relief - my brain is not ancient after all. Interesting how this is...meaning someone living in another country may be miscontrued as DUMB simply because of some language barrier? It is very possible. I always find it harder to analyse the intelligence of Japanese people...sometimes it is difficult because some things translate differently between cultures.