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5/27/2024 (#5 this year)
This is my last English news until after the tests. The June tests have come round reallyquickly this year. How are you doing? Are you nervous? Are you confident? Are you
studying hard? Not really studying? Good luck to all of you. I am going to drive roundthe schools in the north of Hokkaido next week, while you are doing your tests. I am
going to take our school pamphlets1 and try to tell the teachers there how good ourschool is. It is a long way to drive, but there are some very beautiful places that I drive
past. I would like to live somewhere nice and quiet like that, but my wife said no. She
wants to live in Sapporo, the big city.
10 differences

Last week’s answer

Something you didn’t know about the Giant Tortoise
1. Giant tortoises can grow up to 1.3 m long and they can weigh over 400 kg.
2. They walk about between 0.2 and 0.3 km/h.
3. Giant tortoises almost went extinct2 in 1900. Sailors would catch the slow tortoises
and put them in the hold3 of their ship, to be eaten on the journey. Tortoises cansurvive for a long time with no food, so the sailors had fresh meat.
4. They can go for about a year with no food because they are cold-blooded4 and havea very slow metabolism5. Crocodiles are the same.
5. They eat grass and fruit. Some giant tortoises eat cactuses.
6. They are very heavy, but they can float because of their shells.

Jonathan the Tortoise Turns 191
Last week, Jonathan the tortoise had a birthday. He was 191 years old!
That is old. The oldest human alive at the moment is Maria Branyas Moreraand she is 117 years old. The oldest person that has ever lived was JeanneCalment and she lived to 122 years old. They are youngsters 6 compared toJonathan the tortoise! Jonathan hatched7 from his egg in 1832. He was taken
to the Seychelles in 1882 and has lived there ever since. The Seychelles are
islands in the Indian Ocean. Actually, to be honest, people don’t know exactly
when Jonathan was born. He could be a little older than 191 years old. Whenhe arrived in the Seychelles in 1882, he was measured and he was fullygrown. It takes giant tortoises at least fifty years to grow to full size, so hecould be a little older than we think. He might even be 200! Giant tortoises
live a long time, but Jonathan has lived much longer than the average. They
tend to8 live for about 120 years. Unfortunately, Jonathan is blind, and he has
no sense of smell any more. However, he does have a very good sense ofhearing and knows when people are near him. Giant tortoises live for such along time because they have a very slow metabolism. The cells of all animals
reproduce and toxins build up. The longer an animal is alive, the more toxins 9
there are and the more chance that the reproducing cells will have genetic
mutations10 which will make the animal sick. With a very slow metabolism, it
takes a lot longer for this to happen in giant tortoises. I wonder if Jonathan
will be here in another hundred years.

1.pamphlet パンフ 2.extinct 絶滅した 3.hold 船倉 4.cold-blooded 冷血の5.metabolism 代謝 6.youngster 若者 7.hatch かえす 8.tend to～しがちである 9.toxin 毒 10.genetic mutation 遺伝変種An Unusual JobWorld record
There are a few students in the 6th grade that have really long nails. Like a cat. I always cut
my nails short because long nails really annoy me. They catch on things and it makes it
difficult to do things. These girls say that they like long nails. Maybe they should keep
growing them and try to break the world record for the world’s longest nails. Diana
Armstrong hasn’t cut her nails for 28 years and her longest fingernail is 1.6 meters long.
Combined, all of her nails are 13 meters long. That is so long! If you google her, you cansee videos of her trying to do different things with her very long nails. My first reaction
was that she is crazy, but it turns out there is a sad reason why she has grown her nails.
Her daughter died in 1996, and the last thing she did with her daughter was a nailmanicure1. She has grown her nails in memory of her daughter. She was ashamed 2 of her
nails for many years, but has become proud of them recently.

"No one is perfect – that’s whypencils have erasers.”—
Wolfgang Riebe (magician)Snake Milker
This is a job that I’m not sure I could do. Do you like snakes? If you do, thenthis could be the job for you. A snake milker is similar to a cow milker, except
a cow milker extracts3 milk and a snake milker extracts venom 4. A lot ofsnakes are venomous5 and a snake milker takes out some of this venom. Asnake milker holds the snake by the back of the head so that it opens its
mouth. They have a glass jar with a paper top covering it. The snake bites
through the paper and squirts6 its venom into the glass. It doesn’t hurt thesnake (probably), although it can be dangerous for the snake milker. Snakes
are milked for two reasons. The first is that the venom is used to makeantivenom7. If you are bitten by a snake, the antivenom can cure you andthis is made from the snake’s venom. The second reason is research. Some
medicines have been made by looking at snake venom. There are not manysnake milkers and it is a rare job. They have a salary of about 8 million yen.
It sounds easy, but most snake milkers are experts on snakes and have anMSc in herpetology8 (the study of amphibians 9 and reptiles10). What do youthink? Is this the job for you?

1.manicure マニキュア 2.ashamed 恥ずかしい 3.extract 引き抜く
4.venom 毒 5.venomous 毒あり 6.squirt 噴出させる 7.antivenom 抗毒素
8.herpetology 爬虫両生類学 9.amphibian 両生類 10.reptile 爬虫類