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I got the caramel cappuccino ready go… It’s the Free Bird Bonus Show!
Mm, It’s a cappuccino caramel flavored coffee. No sugar, no milk, but it has a nice kind of caramel aroma - a nice Caramel smell. So I am enjoying a nice hot cup of morning caramel cappuccino coffee. Anyway, thank you as always to our good friend Hitsuji-san who has gathered all the questions from many many years of GoGoエイブ会話 podcasts.
Last time I did episode 21 questions the next listener questions came from episode 24. So, I’ll just read question. Let’s see… “このPodcastのカバーアートが気に入っています。誰が描いたんですか” Me! But Yoshi also helped a lot. We were texting each other talking about, “Oh what should we do for the cover art for the podcast” …and I just started to draw so I took a scrap piece of paper, and I just started to draw as best I could. A kind of, you know, western looking guy like me, and a kind of Japanese looking guy like Yoshi, and made us with that kind of friendly pose. I made Yoshi kind of focused, and me kind of looking up into the sky - maybe my mind is just off in space somewhere. Which is often the case.
And I just took a picture and sent it to Yoshi. It was drawn in pencil and so Yoshi kind of photo shopped it or edited it in his computer and he added all the colors, and boom! There you go! We had our cover art. It’s not professional, or a really good drawing. It’s a little bit rough. many people have kind of commented… usually not listeners, usually people I know have said, you know, “what’s with your cover art? can’t you make something more like, professional or, so a lot of people have said that kind of thing, but we decided not to change it because actually many listeners that we met have said that the reason they tried our program was because the cover art was kind of unique and eye-catching and different than other people’s cover art. So that’s why we thought it’s good to keep it I think it’s bright colors, and the kind of silly cartoon look. Maybe it kind of suits our our style because we are not, we’re not trying to … “I’m going to try to teach you English now! Listen to me …”. We’re just, we want it to be 楽々 right? - Easy listening ESL program so so we kept the cover art. Maybe I’ll try to clean it up a little bit, but I think we’ll keep it as it is now.
I used to draw certain characters. so I’d really start to like some kind of character, and I would only draw that character again and again and again, and eventually you know, you get quite good at drawing this certain character. I think this is common with kids. they draw certain things again and again. for me it was “teenage mutant ninja turtles”. now, those are kind of muscular turtles that fight like ninjas … and their Sensei is "Master Splinter" - he’s a big rat. anyway I used to draw the ninja turtles all the time.
And then I got a little older and there was this kind of comedy show called “Beavis and Butthead” it was really popular when I was maybe 11 12 13 years old - around there. And it was quite funny so I used to draw Beavis and Butthead a lot. So if you look at the cover art and you look at Beavis and Butthead you might realize that my kind of style of drying is quite similar in a way to Bevies and Butthead. So maybe I’ll post a picture of Beavis and Butthead so you can see. Anyway, that is the story of the cover art.
The next question… here we go, alright it’s ”
将来カナダに住みたいと考えています。日本とカナダ、それぞれの良い点を教えてください。” so, tell me about the good things about Japan and Canada. Well, where do I begin? there are so many good things about both countries I can start with Japan. Japan has a very long history, so it’s quite interesting for someone like me because Canada has a very short history. It’s always interesting to think that where I’m sitting right now, maybe 700 years ago there were samurais! Having an epic battle! … there were people down by the Hirose river washing their clothes 1000 years ago!
Also another great thing about Japan is actually that the cost of living is actually quite reasonable. I mean especially kind of entertainment. Like eating out. So I can afford to have dinner and maybe some drinks out at a restaurant or bar a few times a week. like twice a week, I can afford that! Whereas in Canada it’s much more expensive. maybe because of the taxes and tipping and other things like that. but being able to go out and enjoy myself on a regular basis - that makes my life better, so yeah, that’s great too.
Now the good things about Canada... Ooh the summertime! Canadian summer is amazing. the reason is because it’s very short, so everyone wants to go out and enjoy the weather in the summertime. so the atmosphere in almost any Canadian city during the summer months - July and August - is very lively. people are always outside and it also stays light very late because it’s quite far north. in early July or late June it can still be light outside at 10 PM, so you can really enjoy the whole day and the evening outside. which is great.
And another really cool thing about Canada especially big cities like Vancouver or Toronto, is the multiculturalism. this is cool for many reasons. it’s just interesting to have many cultures mixed together. and also you get a lot of cool stuff like really good food. so you can find any kind of food very easily and it’s very authentic. so you can get great food from any country and you know of other things as well. if you want to go salsa dancing … you can probably easily find a Latino club “hey come on! Come and do some salsa dancing!”, that’s another cool thing.
All right I guess that’s it for today’s … episode 2, wrap it up! Please send me questions, messages, or things that you want me to talk about in the future.
英会話 リスニング / シャドーイング 中級 レベル