A Matter of Time

I

was discussing a matter of time with another teacher yesterday. Students in her class were learning how to express time in Japanese. They were comparing different time zones and practicing new adjectives like "early" and "late". One student apparently gave a wrong answer and she asked me what I thought. I gave her an answer that sort of reflected the student's answer. The query:

If it's 6PM in New York and 3PM is LA, is LA three hours earlier or later?