Hi everyone, 皆さん、こんにちは。

My Japanese classes/lessons included practices to develop skills of speaking, reading, listening, writing, interacting, and constructing/performing diaglouges. Also, we used textbooks (Beginner 1 uses Training Manual and other handouts vocab, grammar etc, other levels use Genki Bk 1 for the main textbook), pictures, ads, children’s books, magazines, CDs, videos, DVDs, songs etc. At the end of each class of 10 weeks, an exam was given (if the student wishes to have it as an open exam, it can be done in that way.)

As for the textbook, the current Pre-Intermediate 2, who will finish the course this week and will likely continue and take Intermediate 1, will use Unit 1 of “Japanese for Busy People, Book 2” this week as a trial. If the class feels happy to use it for in Intermediate 1, we will use that book in that course as the major textbook. The reasons of that change of the main textbook are: “Genki Book 1” is (very) slow in teaching the linguistic contents esp. for those who finished Beginners’ stages and conjugations of verbs and adjectives and who can read/write Hiragana and Katakana; it has too many paragraphs in English for explanations on grammar/language use; topics and situations of each Main Dialogue of that book are for university students rather than adults and working people (one student of that class said the same comment about that book, who taught English in Japan for some years and who is very keen student in the above class). (However, we have 3 students in that class who are lovely and diligent high school students who do not take Japanese at their daytime school!)

In my classes during the recent weeks, I talked about a film “Wolverine: Samurai” since it is highly talked about and the sales of tickets around the world are reportedly an amazing extent. The film shootings of that film were heavily in Japan. Apart from Australian media, Japanese magazines in Australia reported the details about the film. Apart from having Japanese actors and actresses in the film, the places appeared in the film included the famous Buddhist temple in Tokyo, bullet train, pachinko parlor (for a short time!). And Hugh Jackman (who must be fond of Japan and many things of its culture) played amazingly in the film. In a movie magazine, Empire (Aug. ‘13), he said Japan has the history of (maintaining and practicing) family, code and honour. (I totally agree.) Also, he said at recent “Late Show with David Letterman”, he went and bathed in onsen (hot spring) in Japan. (He also climbed Mt Fuji with his son around earlier this year.)

In the above film, a very popular and highly recognized Japanese actor, Sanada Hiroyuki plays the big role. He appeared in “The Last Samurai” played by Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe some years ago. Also, it is reported that Sanada began learning Shorinji Kempo (self-defense and training) since around the age of 11. And Sanada is a long time friend of Jackie Chan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Sanada). Sanada will play in the coming new film, “47 Ronin” (Hollywood film). This trend is the new phenomenon going in the recent years, which we never saw to this extent from Japan/its people in the past, Japanese actors and actresses are taking important/active roles bravely and creatively in Hollywood movies. That seems very interesting and hopefully good for Japan and its relationships with the international community.

Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson

5.8.13