1.
1
June
It may be hard to believe, but June has arrived! As the holidays approach we want to
encourage our learners to start thinking about places to visit, at least online! Our C1 Advanced
and C2 Proficiency students can learn more about Japan while they improve their reading and
listening skills. Our B1 Preliminary and B2 First learners can start thinking about the next time
they will be able to meet their classmates while they practise their speaking. The younger ones
can talk about the beach and learn new vocabulary to express their ideas. Happy teaching!
1. Cherry blossom................................................................................................................................2
2. Beginning-of-year trip......................................................................................................................8
3. Let’s go to the beach.......................................................................................................................9
4. References......................................................................................................................................13

2.
2
1. Cherry blossom
Level: C1 Advanced / C2 Proficiency
Skills: reading / listening
Interaction: in groups and whole class activity
Equipment: online platform such as Skype or
Zoom
Time: 50 minutes
Warm up! (15’) – whole class
• Have you ever been to Japan?
• Would you like to? Why (not)?
• Today we are going to talk about cherry blossom in Japan, do you know what this
entails, or when it takes place?
We are going to watch a short video* about cherry blossom.
Play the video from the beginning up to 1’15’’.
• What do people do during the cherry blossom season?
• What does the timing of the blossom season depend on?

3.
3
Reading (15’) – groups of 3 / 4
You are going to read an extract from a newspaper article entitled Japan in Bloom. Here are
the first two paragraphs:
The scene is a park in the late afternoon. It
is springtime: the trees are a profound,
almost bluish emerald; the first reeds are
beginning to sprout in the river. The sky is
a soft, worn, denimy blue, although above
a smudge of cloud is a stripe of near black
- it will rain soon. Yet there is no sense of
doom, no portent; the rain, you sense, will
be welcome when it arrives.
Down by the river, people have gathered.
The adults wear kimonos in shades that
match the landscape - rich greens, warm
blues - and the children wear clothes the
color of carp. A little girl turns her face up to
her mother; a little boy bends over to peer
at something he spots in the grass - his
mother reaches out her arms to him in the
universal helpless gesture of a parent
trying to call back her child from the brink of
mischief-making, even as she understands
her attempts will be futile. In the hills above
them are two pavilions connected by a
wooden bridge and accessed by a steep
staircase that wends through the forest; in
the windows, some of whose shoji shades
have been pushed back to allow the air in,
you can see that the ceiling has been
strung with globes of red paper lanterns.
• What is the purpose of these two paragraphs?
• Can you picture the scene in your mind? Why (not)?
• What aspects in the text help the writer achieve her purpose?
The following paragraphs of the text are not in the correct order: in your groups try to put them
in the correct order.*
*If you are teaching face to face you may want to print out the text in A3 and a larger font. Cut up the paragraphs
for each group. Assign a colour to each group and put a little circle with that colour. Stick the paragraphs on the
walls and get students to stand up and mingle while they are doing the activity. If you are teaching online, you may
want to set up a Padlet for each group so that students can work collaboratively. Additionally, they can talk using
a breakout rooms or having group calls.
H: This is not a scene I have witnessed
for myself, but apart from a few details it
could be. It is a scene from a woodblock
print, “Flower Pavilion, Dangozaka,
Sendagi,” by the Japanese
ukiyo-e master Hiroshige, the 16th image
in his serialized portfolio, “One Hundred
Famous Views of Edo,” which was
published between 1856 and 1859.
F: We were in Shinjuku now. The car
turned down one unremarkable
thoroughfare, and then another. And then
it turned again, and suddenly we were on
a street ablaze with cherry trees in
luxuriant, excessive bloom. There they
were, a dozen on each side of the street,
all of them shaggy with flowers, the air
around them swarming with floating
petals, as if the petals were affixing
themselves to the branches. Beneath and
around them were everyday people doing
everyday things, the tasks that need to be
completed if a great city is to function: A
delivery truck was being unloaded, and
the sidewalk was being swept, and a
repairman was shimmying up a telephone
pole, and a woman was dragging a
wooden crate of what might have been
daikon to the door of a soba-ya. It was
comical and also unbelievable, as if above

4.
4
them the skies were busy with flying pigs,
and no one had noticed. This was a plain,
unremarkable street, but in that moment, it
was the most beautiful in Japan. It made
me wonder whether it wasn’t good fortune
after all that the sakura season was so
brief, for, these people aside, how could
anyone get anything done in the face of
such splendor? Wasn’t it miraculous that
life didn’t simply cease in those two weeks
in April that the trees were in bloom? How
could you concentrate on anything else?
How could a human compete?
D: I went first to Sendagi (Tokyo), the
area immortalized in Hiroshige’s print. It
was a damp, woolly day, and the skies, as
in the woodblock, were a sullen and
indecisive gray - Would it rain? Would it
not? - the kind of energy-leaching weather
that leaves one lazy and irritable. For the
next few days I walked the city, visiting all
the neighborhoods, the little parks and
alleys, that I always do on my annual visit,
which I have taken for the past 22 years.
J: Then I returned to Tokyo; the
following day, I would go home. Back in
the city, it was humid again. At the train
station, I hailed a taxi and stared out the
window as the car wound its way through
the light midday traffic, working its way to
the west of the city, where I would spend
my final night.
C: The next day, I went to the
mountains of Kyoto, which are always a
few degrees cooler than Tokyo - I didn’t
expect to see any sakura there, and
indeed, I didn’t. I went to the temples I visit
every year; I drank cup after cup of sakura
tea, which has a curious salinity, as if it’s
not tea at all, but a broth made from
seawater. I saw plum trees and camellia
bushes and, everywhere, glossy black-
barked cherry trees, their branches
blistered with unopened buds, people
circling hopefully beneath them as if they
might at any moment burst into bloom.
G: The light changed. My cab moved
on. But I turned in my seat, craning my
neck, watching the trees disappear from
view, watching the final petals drift through
the air. When I turned back around, they
were gone, and Shinjuku, its gray bridges
and walkways, loomed before us, as if
nothing had happened at all.
E: Last spring, I went to Japan to see
the cherry blossoms. It was the first of
April, but I had gambled - with each year,
the flowers were opening earlier and
earlier, and I was hoping I might see them
just as they were beginning to bud.
I: Just as I was thinking this, the delivery
man finished loading his truck. He
slammed shut the back door. And then,
before he climbed into the driver’s seat, he
stopped and looked up at the cherry trees.
He closed his eyes. And then he slapped
the back door again, to make sure it was
closed, and got into his truck.
A: But all of these details, all of this life,
is incidental to the element that dominates
this tableau: a grove of cherry trees, most
of them in full flower. Behind the cluster of
16 that stands closest to the river, there is
another layer, this one so profuse in its
bloom that it has become a cloud of pink,
the petals so thickly clumped that they
obscure even the surrounding greenery -
the pines and paulownias and persimmon
trees, now bare of fruit - in a fog. Beneath
the trees, on wide, low benches made of
young bamboo, sit people, singly or in
couples. Two women turn to each other in
conversation, but the remainder do not;

5.
5
they are not there to do anything - they are
only there to sit beneath the cherry trees. B: Yet of all the turmoil the country
would endure and inflict over the next 150-
odd years, what has remained consistent
is its love for cherry blossoms, or sakura,
as they are commonly called. Anyone who
has even a passing interest in Japan
knows this, has seen the photographs of
black-suited salarymen having picnic
lunches in an incongruously pink
landscape, like something out of a child’s
fantasy bedroom. When cherry blossom
season nears - typically the first and
second week of April, though that is
changing - news programs and papers
start airing and printing cherry blossom
reports, sakura zensen, alongside the
weather forecasts, noting where and when
in the country the trees are or will be in
peak bloom. The cherry blossom is not
just an icon of Japan: it is the icon of
Japan, one that enhances and ultimately
eclipses every other.
Adapted from: Yanagihara, H. (2019)
• What cohesive devices and discourse markers have helped you identify the correct
order of the paragraphs?

6.
6
KEY
Warm up!
Listening
• What do people do during the cherry blossom season?
They picnic under the pretty petals in a practice called ‘Harami’.
• What does blossoms timing depend on?
It depends mainly on temperature and geography.
Reading
The scene is a park in the late afternoon.
It is springtime: The trees are a profound,
almost bluish emerald; the first reeds are
beginning to sprout in the river. The sky is
a soft, worn, denimy blue, although above
a smudge of cloud is a stripe of near black
- it will rain soon. Yet there is no sense of
doom, no portent; the rain, you sense, will
be welcome when it arrives.
Down by the river, people have gathered.
The adults wear kimonos in shades that
match the landscape - rich greens, warm
blues - and the children wear clothes the
color of carp. A little girl turns her face up
to her mother; a little boy bends over to
peer at something he spots in the grass -
his mother reaches out her arms to him in
the universal helpless gesture of a parent
trying to call back her child from the brink
of mischief-making, even as she
understands her attempts will be futile. In
the hills above them are two pavilions
connected by a wooden bridge and
accessed by a steep staircase that wends
through the forest; in the windows, some
of whose shoji shades have been pushed
back to allow the air in, you can see that
the ceiling has been strung with globes of
red paper lanterns.
A: But all of these details, all of this life,
is incidental to the element that dominates
this tableau: a grove of cherry trees, most
of them in full flower. Behind the cluster of
16 that stands closest to the river, there is
another layer, this one so profuse in its
bloom that it has become a cloud of pink,
the petals so thickly clumped that they
obscure even the surrounding greenery -
the pines and paulownias and persimmon
trees, now bare of fruit - in a fog. Beneath
the trees, on wide, low benches made of
young bamboo, sit people, singly or in
couples. Two women turn to each other in
conversation, but the remainder do not;
they are not there to do anything - they are
only there to sit beneath the cherry trees.
H:This is not a scene I have witnessed
for myself, but apart from a few details it
could be. It is a scene from a woodblock
print, “Flower Pavilion, Dangozaka,
Sendagi,” by the Japanese
ukiyo-e master Hiroshige, the 16th image
in his serialized portfolio, “One Hundred
Famous Views of Edo,” which was
published between 1856 and 1859.
B: Yet of all the turmoil the country
would endure and inflict over the next 150-
odd years, what has remained consistent
is its love for cherry blossoms, or sakura,
as they are commonly called. Anyone who
has even a passing interest in Japan
knows this, has seen the photographs of
black-suited salarymen having picnic
lunches in an incongruously pink
landscape, like something out of a child’s
fantasy bedroom. When cherry blossom
season nears - typically the first and
second week of April, though that is
changing - news programs and papers
start airing and printing cherry blossom
reports, sakura zensen, alongside the
weather forecasts, noting where and when
in the country the trees are or will be in

7.
7
peak bloom. The cherry blossom is not
just an icon of Japan: It is the icon of
Japan, one that enhances and ultimately
eclipses every other.
E: Last spring, I went to Japan to see
the cherry blossoms. It was the first of
April, but I had gambled - with each year,
the flowers were opening earlier and
earlier, and I was hoping I might see them
just as they were beginning to bud.
D: I went first to Sendagi (Tokyo), the
area immortalized in Hiroshige’s print. It
was a damp, woolly day, and the skies, as
in the woodblock, were a sullen and
indecisive gray - Would it rain? Would it
not? - the kind of energy-leaching weather
that leaves one lazy and irritable. For the
next few days I walked the city, visiting all
the neighborhoods, the little parks and
alleys, that I always do on my annual visit,
which I have taken for the past 22 years.
C: The next day, I went to the
mountains of Kyoto, which are always a
few degrees cooler than Tokyo - I didn’t
expect to see any sakura there, and
indeed, I didn’t. I went to the temples I visit
every year; I drank cup after cup of sakura
tea, which has a curious salinity, as if it’s
not tea at all, but a broth made from
seawater. I saw plum trees and camellia
bushes and, everywhere, glossy black-
barked cherry trees, their branches
blistered with unopened buds, people
circling hopefully beneath them as if they
might at any moment burst into bloom.
J: Then I returned to Tokyo; the
following day, I would go home. Back in
the city, it was humid again. At the train
station, I hailed a taxi and stared out the
window as the car wound its way through
the light midday traffic, working its way to
the west of the city, where I would spend
my final night.
F:We were in Shinjuku now. The car
turned down one unremarkable
thoroughfare, and then another. And then
it turned again, and suddenly we were on
a street ablaze with cherry trees in
luxuriant, excessive bloom. There they
were, a dozen on each side of the street,
all of them shaggy with flowers, the air
around them swarming with floating
petals, as if the petals were affixing
themselves to the branches. Beneath and
around them were everyday people doing
everyday things, the tasks that need to be
completed if a great city is to function: A
delivery truck was being unloaded, and
the sidewalk was being swept, and a
repairman was shimmying up a telephone
pole, and a woman was dragging a
wooden crate of what might have been
daikon to the door of a soba-ya. It was
comical and also unbelievable, as if above
them the skies were busy with flying pigs,
and no one had noticed. This was a plain,
unremarkable street, but in that moment, it
was the most beautiful in Japan. It made
me wonder whether it wasn’t good fortune
after all that the sakura season was so
brief, for, these people aside, how could
anyone get anything done in the face of
such splendor? Wasn’t it miraculous that
life didn’t simply cease in those two weeks
in April that the trees were in bloom? How
could you concentrate on anything else?
How could a human compete?
I: Just as I was thinking this, the delivery
man finished loading his truck. He
slammed shut the back door. And then,
before he climbed into the driver’s seat, he
stopped and looked up at the cherry trees.
He closed his eyes. And then he slapped
the back door again, to make sure it was
closed, and got into his truck.
G: The light changed. My cab moved
on. But I turned in my seat, craning my
neck, watching the trees disappear from
view, watching the final petals drift through
the air. When I turned back around, they
were gone, and Shinjuku, its gray bridges
and walkways, loomed before us, as if
nothing had happened at all.

8.
8
2. Beginning-of-year trip
Level: B1 Preliminary / B2 First
Skills: speaking, listening and writing
Interaction: whole class, in pairs and individual
activity
Equipment: webcam, online platform
Time: 50 minutes
Warm up (10’) – whole class
• Do you like going on school trips? Why (not)?
• Have you ever gone on a school trip with your classmates? If so, where did you go?
What was it like?
• What are the advantages of travelling with your school?
Speaking (10’) – in groups of 3 / 4
After the coronavirus situation, your school would like each class to spend some time together.
The school is going to organise a school trip for September and has asked you to suggest
destinations.
In 10 minutes, students should take note of three destinations they would like to choose and
explain their advantages and disadvantages.*
If you are teaching online you can use Padlet so that students can share their ideas.
As a whole class activity, groups tell the rest of the class about their destinations and they
reflect on their advantages and disadvantages. Students can vote on the best 5 destinations
using Mentimeter.
Students regroup in pairs and they can create their own mind maps to work in pairs and try to
agree on the best school trip destination for their class.
Destination for beginning of
the course trip

9.
9
3. Let’s go to the beach
Level: Pre-A1 Starters, A1 Movers, A2 Flyers
Content: activities, description, present continuous
Interaction: whole class, in pairs
Equipment: webcam, computer, online platform like Zoom
or Skype
Time: 30 minutes
Warm up (15’) – whole class (*Pre-A1 Starters)
Look at the picture and answer the questions.
• What can you see in the picture?
• Where is the… sun, kite, ice-cream shop, bird?
• How many… balls, clouds, shells, fish can you see?
• What’s this? (purple circles)
• What are you wearing today?
• What’s your favourite animal?
• What’s the boy doing? (pink circle)
• What’s the girl doing? (pink circle)
• Tell me about the boy (orange circle)

10.
10
Speaking (15’) – in groups of 4 (*A1 Movers), in pairs (*A2 Flyers)
Students work in groups or in pairs to complete the crossword. They have to explain the
words to their partner(s). They can practise questions such as ‘Can you repeat?’, ‘How do
you spell that?’.
Team / Student A

11.
11
Team / Student B

12.
12
KEY

13.
13
4. References
Ba Phi (2018). Woman between Men Facing Mountains. [image/jpeg] Available at:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-between-men-facing-mountains-1255062/
[Accessed 1st
June 2020].
Belle Co (2020). Red and Black Temple Surrounded by Trees Photo. [image/jpeg] Available
at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/red-and-black-temple-surrounded-by-trees-photo-
402028/ [Accessed 1st
June 2020].
Half a Crossword (n.d.). Available at: https://halfacrossword.com/activities/activity1 [Accessed
1st
June 2020].
Japan-guide.com (2020). When do the cherry blossoms bloom? Available at:
https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2011_when.html [Accessed 29th
May 2020].
Kuzenkov, J. (2019). Girl Enjoying on Beach. [image/jpeg] Available at:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/girl-enjoying-on-beach-1974856/ [Accessed 1st
June 2020].
Life of Wu. (2019). Snow Mountain. [image/jpeg] Available at:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/snow-capped-mountain-3380875/ [Accessed 1st
June
2020].
Mentimeter (n.d.). Available at: https://www.mentimeter.com/ [Accessed 29th
May 2020].
One Shot (2020). People Riding Bicycles at the Beach. [image/jpeg] Available at:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-riding-bicycles-at-the-beach-3981878/
[Accessed 1st
June 2020].
Padlet (n.d.). Available at: https://es.padlet.com/ [Accessed 1st
June 2020].
Pangestu, B. (2020). Close up Photography of Cherry Blossom Tree. [image/jpeg] Available
at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photography-of-cherry-blossom-tree-
1440476/ [Accessed 1st
June 2020].
UCLES (2018). Pre-A1 Starters Word list picture book. Available at:
https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/images/starters-word-list-picture-book.pdf
[Accessed 29th
May 2020].
Yanagihara, H. (2019). Japan in Bloom. The New York Times Style Magazine, [online].
Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/t-magazine/japan-cherry-
blossoms.html [Accessed 29th
May 2020].