イングランドの秋の遊び「コンカーズ」 | 福岡市・天神駅すぐのKENSINGTON英会話（ケンジントン英会話）

Talk about myself/my hometown/my country
Autumn

Hey guys, when I grew up, Autumn was a fun time to be a kid. Where I grew up, you were never very far away from a chestnut tree. Which to a kid meant one thing, and one thing only: Conkers.

A ‘conker’ is actually the seed of these large chestnuts called ‘horse chestnuts’. But ‘Conkers’ refers to a game played with said seeds. The game is simply one child hitting another child’s conker with their own, until one of them breaks, thus determining a winner.
But Conkers was so much more than that. The hunt for the perfect conker was something very important; big or small, no cracks, dark colour? There were many factors to consider. More than that, how do you prepare your conker for battle? Some people opted to freeze them, whereas some would heat them up! Some even waxed them to make them slippy.

I can’t say if Conkers still dominates the school playgrounds of England, like it did when I was young. But trudging (walking slowly) through a field on a crisp (cold), Autumn morning, scouring (looking widely) for the perfect conker, is one of the most vivid (strong and clear) memories of my early childhood.
Liam

私の出身地、私自身～講師の自己紹介
イングランドの秋の遊び「コンカーズ」

やあ皆さん。
私が成長している時、秋は子供にとって楽しい季節でした。

私が育った場所では、栗の木はいつもそう遠くない場所にありました。

子供にとってそれが意味することはたったひとつ、「コンカーズ」です。

「コンカー」は「トチノキ」と呼ばれる大きな栗の木の種のことです。
しかし「コンカーズ」は、種のことと同時にゲームをすることにも使います。ゲームはシンプルで、自分の種で他の子の種を割れるまで叩き、勝者が決まります。