http://omgenglish.tumblr.com/

Thanks!

I’m also @readable on Twitter.

I will try to work on the Facebook posts for this blog (about how to use Facebook safely and how to make it interesting). If you have specific questions you want me to answer, please ask. That will make it easier for me to write the posts.

Right now, I want to tell you about a free site called Lyrics Training. At Lyrics Training, you can watch a music video with English words. At the same time, the words are shown under the video — but some of the words are missing! You need to type in the words while the song plays. There are harder and easier levels, and you can find old and new songs. If you like music, it’s a good way to improve your listening.

Remember that song lyrics often have strange or poetic words and grammar. Still, they’re fun and a nice way to enjoy learning English.

• First, it will ask you to log in with each account if you’re not logged in.
• Then it will ask you to agree and continue.
• After a while, it will show people in your email address book who are already using Facebook. It will say “Select which contacts to add as a friend from the list below.”
• Click the box to the left of anyone you want to add as Facebook friends.
• Click “Add as Friends.” (If there wasn’t anyone you wanted to add–for example, it was just people from your job–click “Skip” (cancel/etc.)).
• DANGER! Be VERY careful to not accidentally email your entire address book in this step! Now it will say “## contacts aren’t on Facebook or haven’t listed their screen names.” You can invite people or skip (not do) this step. I think you should click on “Skip” — don’t invite anyone here. If you do want to invite a few people, click on “Invite some friends.” Do not click “Invite All Friends.” So click “Skip.” You can come back to this page later. It is very useful as long as you don’t accidentally invite everyone!

Click “save and continue.”

6. Fill out basic profile information like your high school and where you work. Later, you can use this to find people who went to the same school at the same time, worked at the same place, etc. It’s also really helpful when an old friend or distant family member is looking for you. Currently, there are 600,000,000 active accounts on Facebook. There is probably someone else with the same name as you. If you want to change it later so that people who aren’t your friends can’t see it, you can. However, this means that people who are looking for you won’t get any help. Click “save and continue.”
7. Add a profile picture. You can use your computer’s camera, upload a photo of you, or upload a picture of something else. It’s nice to use a photo of you–I contacted a classmate from several years ago, and she didn’t remember my name, but she said “As soon as I saw your photo, I remembered you! I’m so happy to see you again!” Some people use a childhood photo, a photo with sunglasses, a hat, or part of their face covered. Others use a regular photo. Some really don’t want a photo of themselves, even if it’s useful, so they use something else. Click “save and continue.”
8. Now you’ll see your main page. Of course, it’ll be pretty empty right now. There will probably be a notice at the top that says “Go to your email to complete sign-up.” Facebook should have sent a confirmation link to your email, something like “Just one more step to get started on Facebook.” Look for it in your email. Find the link in the email and click on it.
9. This should take you back to Facebook. It should tell you that you’ve registered succesfully. Click “Okay.”
10. The next thing you should do is fix your security settings, which I’ll write more about later. After that, you have two more fun things to do: Finish setting up your profile and go look for more friends. I’m going to stop here, though.

If there’s anything that you’re confused by, or worried about, PLEASE ask! If you have advice or suggestions for other users, please tell me.

Next I’ll talk about how to enjoy using Facebook and how to stay safe!

Readable Blog

For me and most of my friends, Facebook is a good way to connect with our real-life friends and family. Unlike Twitter, the people that we are “friends” with on Facebook are usually people that we know well. We also use Facebook to become “fans” (or “like”) the pages of businesses that we use a lot, brands that we like, media such as newspapers and TV stations, celebrities, local government and nonprofit groups, publishers and educational organizations, school and alumni groups, and so on.

The updates from our friends’ personal accounts and the photos and articles from the organizations’ pages are all shown in the same area, called the News Feed, when I log in. (Normal users have Facebook accounts; businesses and so on have Facebook pages. I, the woman writing this blog, have a Facebook account under my name, but there’s also a Facebook page called Readable Blog.)

I use updates from the Facebook pages two ways: First, I read and enjoy the updates myself. I get more information this way than on Twitter, since it’s not limited to 140 characters. I can watch videos or look at photos from inside Facebook. Some Facebook pages also have contests and coupons. (There are games and apps, too, but I don’t usually do those.) I comment on some of the interesting things. I also click “like” on stories, photos, and videos that are interesting and useful to me.

Second, when I see something that I think my Facebook friends would also like, I click “share.” This means that my Facebook friends will see it, too. They can comment on it, “like” it, and share it, too. Unlike Twitter, when my friends comment on it, they’ll all wind up talking together, which is nice.

It’s this mix of entertaining and useful news, video, and photos from all over the world, plus my friends from all over the world commenting together, that makes Facebook something I like. Also, it doesn’t take much time to use. If I want to share something I see on Facebook, it only takes a second to click “share” and type a comment. If I want to share something I found somewhere else, I just paste in the URL. Facebook makes it a link automatically. It’s faster than blogging, but there’s more detail than Twitter.

In the last two days, I shared some news about a charity for tornado victims in the southeast US, a comic strip about English vocabulary, a news article about a 9/11 memorial, and a music video. I clicked “like” on a lot of things, including my friend’s status update (kind of like a tweet) that she was accepted at a university, a message from a local park page announcing a free festival, an article from a travel magazine, etc. I also commented on lots of status updates and a few other things. Oh, and I entered a contest win an around-the-world airplane ticket! Heehee.

Finally, one thing that a lot of my friends do is play games and use other “apps” (mini-programs) inside of Facebook. Mixi started to also use this idea a while ago, and so did other SNSes, so you might be familiar with it already. Some of the games are really pretty good.

In some other posts, I’ll tell you how to get a Facebook account, how I use Facebook (literally–where I click and so on), how to stay safe, and how I think you can best enjoy using it.

Later, I’ll add some pages to this blog with more details (like my Twitter pages).

If you have ANY questions, please let me know!

Of course, it’s only been 5 weeks since the disaster in Japan. Maybe the organizers were not sure about whether to have this fun event this year. However, it’s really important to the Japanese and Japanese-American community here. For example, it helps Japanese and Japanese-American kids living here learn about and participate in Japanese culture. It’s also really important to the businesses in the area. So the festival was held as usual. However, you couldn’t forget about the disaster: there was fundraising everywhere. I thought that was good.

Anyway, here are some of my photos.

We walked through downtown on our way to Japantown. That’s where the parade starts, so some of the people who were going to be in the parade were eating lunch and getting ready.

Here are some of the empty floats. The one with the dolls is a special one to support Japan and encourage donations. It was really big and beautiful.

This is during the parade. I don’t know what group it is.

There are several Japanese drumming groups that perform during the festival or in the parade. They’re really popular.

This isn’t a real cable car, but it looks like one. They’re tossing candy to people in the crowd. That’s common in American parades.

These dancers are from a Californian Japanese dance school. Both small children and older people danced all the way from downtown–about 1 mile/1.5 kilometers away. Dancers, cheerleaders, etc. are common in American parades.

Ms. Keiko Fukuda was the Honorary Grand Marshall (leader) of the parade. She’s a famous judoka (also see this video about her). The mayor and the Japanese consul were there too…last year we saw Japanese-American actor George Takei (Sulu from “Star Trek) and the Japanese ambassador to the US.

These Boy Scouts have a small omikoshi (Japanese portable shrine). There’s a really big one at the end of the parade, but I didn’t stay this year.

During the rest of the festival, there are outdoor stages with music. This band from Japan, Soulit, performed on a float during the parade, too! They sounded pretty good.

This is some kind of Japanese/American inter-faith religious group…They look pretty interesting, don’t they?

In the last few years, the cosplay group has been popular. This float has the best costumes, and the other participants walk. (You can see another photo at Flickr.)

This participant carried a sign encouraging people to donate to the Red Cross by text.

During the festival, the Japantown mall is really busy. There’s a coffeeshop that always sells their own special taiyaki (like a filled waffle), but they must sell hundreds during the festival. Of course, I had one. I also had mitarashi dango (a kind of sweet rice dumpling on a stick) at a tea shop. My husband had shaved ice.

There are several displays of arts and crafts during the festival, including origami, cloth-covered wood dolls, and these dolls made of paper. There are also displays of bonsai, antique swords, ikebana (flower-arranging) and stones. They also have demonstrations of martial arts (kendo, kyudo, naginata, judo, karate, aikido, etc.), various kinds of dancing and singing, musical performances on the shakuhachi, koto, and shamisen, and they even play karuta (a kind of card game). Some of the people doing these things are not Japanese or Japanese-American at all.

There are other things to do, too. There is one outdoor area where people sell things like t-shirts with original designs, jewelry, and handmade soap. These things have to be related to Asian culture in some way. There’s another area where community groups like Buddhist churches and bilingual kindergartens sell food. You can buy “sakura popcorn” (rice crackers, seaweed, and popcorn), onigiri (riceballs), takoyaki (with no octopus for people who are scared), and lots of other things. I couldn’t take a good photo of these areas.

If you ever have a chance to visit the festival, I recommend it. It’s a wonderful combination of Japanese and American cultures.

You can see more photos from this year on Flickr, including some amazing origami, more cosplay, and a model of Osaka Castle.

If you have any questions about anything, just ask!

P. S. Where are the cherry blossoms? Well, the name is mostly symbolic–it’s just an image. There aren’t many cherry trees in Japantown. It’s in the middle of the city! Also, by late April most of our cherry blossoms are gone, except the double-blossom (yaezakura) type. But there’s good news! I noticed that more double-cherry-blossom trees have been planted in Japantown recently, so maybe next year…

I know that many of you use Twitter, so I’ve made some lists of Twitter accounts that you might like to follow.

I started working on this about 8 days ago. I stopped because of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I was watching the news and trying to contact friends. Then, after that, I thought it wasn’t a good time.

However, now a lot of people are saying that are really stressed out. They want something to take their minds off of the news. They can’t do anything right now besides donate, wait, and hope for the best. So I decided to go ahead and share the lists. There are funny things, interesting things, and useful things on various accounts. You might find something that you like.

Of course, I’d be happy to get more recommendations. I’d especially like to know about Twitter accounts that tweet links or articles that are easy to read. Please tell me if you know about any. Thanks!

You can read about the lists on two new pages that I’ve made: 1) Twitter Lists — How to Use Them 2) Twitter Lists by @readable.

These lists include the community college anime club students who wanted to meet Japanese Twitter users, so please go read about them and follow them if you’d like!

If you have any questions, please ask me on Twitter.

• “I’m going to treat myself to a piece of chocolate.”
• “Tonight, I’m treating myself to a hot bath and a novel. I haven’t had time to read in two weeks!”

To “treat yourself (herself/etc.) to something” is to do something that you don’t usually do. Maybe you don’t usually do it for time, money, or health reasons.

• “I’m taking a break from the news. I think I’ll go to the gym or take a walk in the park.”
• “My friend’s coming over so I can take a break from watching my daughter.”
• “Playing with my dog lets me take a break from worrying about what is happening.”

To “take a break from something” or “take a break from doing something” means to stop doing it for a while.

• “My son decided to play video games for a while to take his mind off the bad news.”
• “I’m going to bake some cookies to take my mind off things. Do you want to come over and help?”
• “I got my mind off everything by going to the gym yesterday. It was good.”

To “take [your/my/etc.] mind off something” means to make yourself think about something else by doing another activity.

“Get [your/my/etc.] mind off something” is basically the same. Sometimes “of” is used (“take your mind off of something”/”get your mind off of something”).

• “My boss decided to give everyone a break by letting us work from home We still have to work, but we don’t have to go to the office.”
• “Give yourself a break and don’t worry about what other people think right now.”
• “I’m giving myself a break by cooking easy things for dinner.”

There are two patterns here: 1) “give someone a break by doing something” 2) “give someone a break and do something”

Both basically mean the same thing: to make life a little easier by doing something (working from home, not worrying about what other people thing, cooking easy things for dinner).

“Give yourself a break and” may actually mean “both relax a little and do this thing” or “first relax a little, and then immediately do this thing to continue relaxing.” All three ways of understanding the meaning of this phrase are so close that it doesn’t really matter.

• “She’s relaxing with a cup of tea and a book now. Don’t bother her!”
• “I’m so stressed out–I’m going to go relax with some music.”
• “You’ve been working on that for hours. Why don’t you go relax with a video game for a while?”

To relax with something is to relax while you are using/drinking/reading/etc. that thing.

If you’d like to use a verb, use “relax and” instead: “I’m going to relax and watch a DVD.

If you’re stressed out right now, but not in an emergency situation, I hope you can give yourself a break from the stress.

Any questions about how to use these phrases? Just leave a comment!

Possibly Related Content:^?

1. Pitfalls: Air Conditioner
2. Good words: Hole in the wall
3. Good Words: Comfort food
4. Good Words: Authentic
5. OMG English!

]]> http://www.readableblog.com/2011/03/15/good-words-stress-relief-phrases/feed/ 6 http://www.readableblog.com/2011/03/15/good-words-stress-relief-phrases/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ReadableBlog/~3/mWOmlA_0LiQ/ http://www.readableblog.com/2011/03/13/more-messages/#comments Sun, 13 Mar 2011 23:39:07 +0000 Clarissa http://www.readableblog.com/?p=884 I’ve gotten more messages from my friends to share with everyone in Japan! If you’re not in Japan, please read the messages for some good vocabulary.

Flowers from my local farmers’ market

Name: Pat & Winston
Location: El Cerrito, California, USA
Message: There are no words in any language that can express our sorrow for what has happened, and is happening in Japan. Our thoughts and hearts are with you.

Name: Erin
Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Message: We are thinking about you and hoping for your safety and well-being, and the well-being of your families and friends.

Name: Alex
Location: Fremont, California, USA
Message: We stand with you, and we are so proud of you! We hope you recover soon. We have great faith in you!
頑張れ 日本！!

Name: Kirsten
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Message: I am cheering for you. You are in my thoughts every day. Please stay safe. I am so sorry and my sorrow is for you and Japan.

Name: Ellen
Location: England
Message: I want to send a message of hope to the people of Japan. The rest of the world supports you.

Name: Ian
Location: New Forest, England
Message: My thoughts are constantly with you all. I salute your strength and fortitude through these difficult times.

Name: Caroline and her mother
Location: Minnesota, USA
Message: The strength and spirit of the people of Japan inspire us. We pray for you in this time of tragedy.

Name: Dion R.
Location: Bay Point, California, USA
Message: Hearing what has happened in Japan caused much pain, but do not lose hope. I pray to God you’ll all make it through. I encourage you all to continue assisting others in need, as well as staying safe. May you be protected and live another day.

You can leave a comment if you want to say something.

“Salute” (v., n.): Idiom: To show praise, honor, or respect for someone. Literal meaning – the way soldiers (etc.) greet each other, usually by quickly raising the right hand to the head.
“Fortitude” (n., uncountable): Bravery or strength, even though someone is in pain, having trouble, etc.
“Tragedy” (n., countable for this meaning): A very shocking and sad event (especially one that involves death).

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3. Cherry Blossom Festival
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