I was teaching in Japan until about a year ago, and I'm going to be going back next year. Something my students really enjoyed was seeing videos of things I had taken in America, mostly travel stuff not intended for showing people, but they got a kick out of it nonetheless. Since I'm working a few odd jobs with a lot of down time at the moment, I thought I would get some footage of things or situations unusual to Japan that can be condensed into 30 second to 1 minute videos, the playing and discussion of which could easily plug small holes in lessons. Ideally I'd like to have them guess the name of the thing with some hints, so words that a late elementary or junior high student could understand are a plus.
Some examples that I think are good:
water tower (thing not common in Japan, two words that students are likely to know)
little library
cattail (the plant)
ice cream truck (though I haven't actually seen one of these driving around)
corn dog (nope, not an American dog)
heads or tails (coin flip)
elephant ear
Some borderline examples (object is interesting but words are a bit too high level):
cattle guard (thinking of explaining it as "cow gate")
fortune cookie
garage sale
prairie dog ("prairie" is not the most useful word, but damn I got a lot of footage of these cute plague-ridden bastards)
I live in the Midwest so those sorts of things are going to be easier to shoot, but any sorts of ideas are welcome; I'm going to be doing some traveling before I leave.
by fish_in_foot