既にこのトピックスでお知らせしましたように、二学期からJETプログラム(The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme)のALT（Assistant Language Teacher）の先生が2名、英国よりいらっしゃっています。
日本の冬を経験しての感想を先生が書いてくださいましたので、掲載いたします。

My First Winter in Japan

My first winter in Japan can be summarised in one word: cold. But that doesn’t exactly sum up the months of icy winds and frozen toes. Now, you may be reading this thinking, but I thought this woman was from England? It’s cold there too, isn’t it? Well, you’re not wrong, but in the UK we like to keep really warm, so every building has double glazing, a lot of insulation and the central heating is very good. So we keep our homes toasty warm. In fact, it’s so warm inside most buildings and homes in England, you don’t need many layers. In my home, we have a log fire and this will heat the whole floor very well, so sometimes I can wear a t-shirt inside, in the middle of January. This is not the case in Japan. I learnt that in Japan you must buy heat tech. So I went to Uniqlo and this is exactly what I did, I brought a small drawer worth of heat tech and then, I brought jumpers. Heaps of them. I have never had so many jumpers in my life. But even this wasn’t quite enough. Ms. Ngo and I searched online on how to survive the winters in Japan and traded our secrets on how to stay warm. The first one we found was Kairo. These little pockets of warmth are worthy of great recognition, as they spared my toes from freezing off. Then the next secret we found was N-warm. A blanket from Nitori that just seems to work miracles. After we brought N-warm, we no longer needed to have the heater on. It seemed this blanket could trap heat like no other, and I was so thankful. Once again, Japan amazes me with it’s advanced technology. One big difference between a Japanese winter and an English winter has to be the weather. England is notorious for having a lot of rainfall during winter and it leaves our skies grey and dark for almost the entire duration. This has quite an effect on a lot of people’s mood during the winter months otherwise nicknamed “the darker months”. But here in Japan, I was so surprised to have so many days with blue skies with the sun shining. This is my favourite kind of winter day. I found it uplifting and it was so lovely leaving for work in the morning, breathing in the crisp cold air and feeling the sunshine on my face. For these days, I think I may like Japanese winters despite the cold, I am now feeling prepared with my heaps upon heaps of jumpers. Anyhow, I still look forward to my favourite season, spring. I can’t wait to see the cherry blossoms bloom.