Friday, August 21, 2009

Toyo Gakuen University Open Campus Lesson Summer 2009: English for travel purposes

Welcome to Toyo Gakuen University!
In today's lesson you will learn some useful English for travelling.
First, let's do a survey. Survey in Japanese is アンケート. Please click the link: http://surveys.polldaddy.com/s/81E3C44DFC8771D0/

I love travelling. Please look at my travel map.


Today we are going to learn how to speak to an immigration officer.
First, Let's learn some useful vocabulary. Click this link: Travel English.
Let's play some games with the new vocabulary. Click this link: TYG Travel English.
Now let's practice speaking to an immigration officer. Click this link: Passport On-line Activities.

Did you enjoy this lesson? Please write a comment.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Food in Bangladesh

Picnik collage

Bangladeshi cuisine is delicious. I love Bangladeshi food. Bangladeshi food is similar to Indian food. Many Bangladeshi dishes include curry. I love curry. You can read more about Bangladeshi cuisine. Click this link to read about Bangladeshi cuisine in English.Click here to read about Bangladeshi cuisine in Japanese.

Below is a picture of tiffin boxes. Tiffin means lunch. Tiffin boxes are delivered every day to Bangladeshi business men and school children. Bangladshis like hot meals.

Tiffin

You can see a picture of a typical restaurant in Dhaka below. My new friend Mithu brought us to this restaurant. We went to this restaurant for lunch during our tour of Dhaka. We ate curried chicken, curried mutton, stir-fried vegetables, and plain rice. Mitsu paid the bill on behalf of BELTA. We were very grateful to BELTA for this delicious lunch.

IMG_0364

Our first dinner in Dhaka was also provided to us by BELTA. We had take-out from a restaurant in Dhaka called Boomers' Cafe. Boomers' Cafe is very popular with university students in Dhaka. You can see pictures of our meal below.

Bangladeshi Take-out

Out of the box

We ate delicious food at the BELTA/AIUB/THT Seminars too. For snacks we had samozas. Samozas are one of my favourite snacks. You can see a picture of some samozas below.

A sandwich and samozas

Samozas close up

Here's a picture of the lunch we had during the seminars. It's like a Bangladeshi bento.

Bangladeshi Bento

BELTA also treated us to a lovely meal at the Casablanca Restaurant in Dhaka. The meal was buffet style. You can see a picture of the buffet and some of the food we ate in the pictures below.

The buffet and the Casablanca restaurant in Dhaka


Dinner at the Casablanca

We went out to the country side. We went to American International University Bangladesh's resort. The resort is beautiful. We had a delicious lunch there. All the food we ate came from the resort. Many fruits and vegetables are grown at the resort, and some animals are raised for food too, including chickens and sheep. You can see some pictures of our lunch at the resort below.

 
 

We ate a delicious fruit called Jackfruit. Jackfruit is the national fruit of Bangladesh. You can see a picture of a Jackfruit tree below.


Here are some pictures of a Jackfruit that was opened up. It has a mild taste. It is delicious. Jackfruit is used for many kinds of food in Bangladesh. The seeds are roasted. The skin is given to sheep. The sheep love the Jackfruit skin.

Fresh Jack fruit

The part you eat

We also had some delicious Bangladeshi sweets and some yoghurt.

Bangladeshi sweets

The last night I was in Bangladesh I went for dinner at the home of Dr. Faheem Hasan Shahed. We had a wonderful home cooked meal. It was delicious.

Dinner at the home of Dr. Faheem Shahed

What do you think? Have you ever tried Bangladshi cuisine? Please leave a comment.

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Dhaka City Scenes

 
Dhaka is one of the most interesting cities that I have ever visited. Dhaka has so many sights, sounds, and smells. Dhaka is always on the move. Sometimes it seems rather chaotic (てんやわんやの). Dhaka is very crowded. There are many traffic jams in Dhaka. It often takes a very long time to go just a short distance. 
One of Dhaka's nicknames is the City of Rickshaws. You can see a picture of some cycle rickshaws below. According to Wikipedia, about 400,000 rickshaws run in Dhaka every day.


The green taxi in the photo below is known as a "CNG" in Dhaka. "CNG" stands for compressed natural gas. CNGs are more environmentally friendly than vehicles using gasoline. I took a ride in a CNG. They are very small. I'm too big for CNGs. It wsn't comfortable, but it was a good experience.

There are many kinds of vehicles on the streets of Dhaka. As well as rickshaws and CNGs, there are cars, trucks, wooden carts, and so on. Sometimes these vehicles are people powered, like cycle rickshaws, and wooden carts.



Another important mode of transportation in Dhaka is the boat. There are many boats on the Buriganga River.

 
Next time, I'll write about the food in Bangladesh.