BRITZ英会話教室

上記の広告は90日以上記事の更新がないブログに表示されます。新しい記事を書くことで、こちらの広告が消せます。

  

I was asked yesterday about the origins of 'Britz' and where the name come from. It's a long story! I opened my English school back in 1997, starting on a very small scale with one class a week in Jonan-machi. My in-laws had a pre-fab building outside their house and several families living nearby were keen to give their children English lessons with a native-speaking teacher. Through word of mouth and much effort posting leaflets and putting up posters I gradually expanded and started classes in Mifune and Matsubase, as well as a larger class in Jonan. At this time I settled on 'Piccadilly English School', named after the famous place in London. I kept this name for several years but always had trouble with the pronunciation. It's easy enough in English but in katakana the sound changes to 'Pi-ka-de-ri' and whenever I answered the telephone I had to decide whether to say the English or Japanese version of the name!
With two young children to take care of, I started teaching classes closer to home　in Kumamoto City, opening up first in Onoue and later at what is now my main classroom in Wakaba. I can't remember when exactly, but at some point it seemed like a good time to come up with a new name and design a logo. Designing logos is fun... choosing names, extremely difficult! I wanted to have something with a British slant but wanted to avoid the obvious names (like London) or anything difficult to pronounce or put into katakana. After playing around with other famous place/people names like Trafalgar, Wellington etc I then decided it would be better to have something short and snappy instead. The first choice was Bricks, and this led to Brits, and finally to Britz. Although it's not a proper word, I feel it's a good blend of 'British' and 'Ritz'. The Ritz is of course a luxurious London hotel and is used in the Irving Berlin song 'Putting on the Ritz'. The expression means to dress up very elegantly and the movie of the same name is synonymous with top hats and tails. That's why the Britz logo has an elegant top hat in its design! I'm still really pleased with the name I finally decided on (so much easier to say on the telephone!) and am especially proud of the school logo. I have no plans to change it anytime soon!
If you read all the way to the end, well done and thank you very much! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the name 'Britz' and especially the first impressions it gave you.   

Students who enjoyed Valentine parties last year have been asking since last August when we would be making chocolate again and how soon until Valentine's Day... I think they were more excited about this event than even Halloween or Christmas! It's a Britz tradition to make chocolate fudge in class using　cream cheese, margarine, cocoa powder, icing sugar and vanilla essence mixed together in a Ziploc bag.


  

I have put lots of photos from the Christmas parties on the wall of my classroom in Wakaba, and you can see some of them above. The highlight of this year's parties was a huge inflatable snowman who was happy to pose in our pictures and made for some fun party games!