We celebrated Yui’s birthday on Monday with not one, but two delicious cakes! It was a big task for six of us to eat them all, but we did it. I was stuffed with cake that afternoon. Happy birthday Yui! We will celebrate another birthday this week. Hario turns three years old on Sunday! How time flies. It doesn’t seem like long ago when we became Hario English School. We’ll celebrate all of the great memories of working here on Sunday.

This week our students have been designing flags for their class. They are having fun making something that represents themselves. They have also given their class a name, as if it were a country. That got me thinking about the meaning behind different countries flags. Do you know what Japan’s flag means? The red circle represents the sun, of course. But did you know that the law was passed to make this the national flag in 1999? I was surprised to hear that. It had already been accepted as the flag, but it wasn’t passed into law until then. What’s the meaning behind Ireland’s flag? The green represents the old Irish or “Gaelic” traditions, while the orange represents the supporters of William of Orange (former king of the U.K.). The white in the middle stands for peace between the two sides. It’s interesting to learn about the history of where each country’s flag comes from. There’s just over two hundred of them. That’s a lot of stories!

Alan