Cafetalk 讲师专栏

Hedgehogs, Highways, and Kindness to Animals

I saw an Instagram reel this morning about hedgehog highways in the UK, and it immediately took me ...

Why Does Business English Sound So.... Physical?

Why is modern business English so focused on the language of movement? We often say business Englis...

Life with a Rescue Cat: Leaving the Farm, Starting Again

This week’s topic is about rewarding ourselves after a year of teaching. While thinking about that,...

Moving House, Changing Tense: Where I’ve Lived in Japan

When you look at a map of Japan, there are places that feel like temporary stops, and others that f...

The Em Dash — Why AI Loves It, and Should You Fix Its Writing?

If you spend any time reading English online, you’ll start noticing something curious. The em...

“How can I speak naturally? What I’ve learned from my students this year.”

Teaching on Cafetalk this year has reminded me again and again of one very real, very human truth: ...

The British Conversational Art: The Power of Gentle Language

I feel like there’s a kind of quiet charm to British conversation that you might miss if you’re not...

Christmas: Same Holiday, Different Traditions.

Many people imagine that Christmas has one fixed set of traditions — like in movies or on TV — but ...

Intelligence vs. Consciousness in AI

Lately, I’ve been having ongoing discussions with my students about AI and consciousness. These con...

Yoga and Meditation: The Vocabulary of Focus

One of my students, in her request for my Vocabulary Snapshot class, asked to focus on Health and F...

Discuss a book with its author

What happens when the last traces of humanity are studied by artificial minds? What does it mean to...

Living With Ghosts: A Different Take on Halloween

October is here again. And with it comes the annual retail assault of plastic vampire teeth and fak...

Life as a Househusband – Changing Routines

I’ve had a lot of different routines over the years.Before moving to Shiga, I worked at an English ...

From Fixed Frameworks to Fluid Lessons: The Joy of Tailoring English Online

  After years of teaching in classrooms—and a brief detour running a mountain farm, where I discove...

A New Life on the Mountain Final Part Summer

Summer came hot and heavy to the mountain, and with it, the full weight of the season—and of the fa...

A New Life in the Mountains Part 3 Spring

Spring came slowly to the mountain. At first, we were still feeding from the silo, but the silage, ...

A New Life on the Mountain Part 2 Winter

Winter didn’t just arrive; it buried us. Each day began with the same backbreaking task: digging in...

A New Life on the Mountain Part 1: Autumn

Last September, my wife and I traded convenience for cows, moving to a small mountain in Ehime to l...