Hi everyone, 皆さん、こんにちは。

My Japanese classes/lessons included practices to develop skills of speaking/talking, reading, listening, writing, interacting, and constructing/performing dialogues. As for the main textbooks and materials, the Beginner 1 used Training Manual.

In the recent weeks, apart from Japanese magazines, its beautiful cooking magazine, story books etc, I used Australian travel magazines esp. one of Sunday Telegraph and some newspaper articles which have useful or inspiring pictures or news, especially for practicing speaking about the situations of the pictures and events for use of adjectives, numbers, quantity and verbs and commenting skills. It is often refreshing since the concepts concerned are real things in our world or environment.

Pre-Intermediate 1 (6 students) is going to a Japanese restaurant Sakae Restaurant near to SLS tonight which is the final night of the level, after the exam or open exam. I’m sure we will have a happy/great time.

There was a series of many great or exciting films shown in Sydney and other major cities in Australia for the 17^th annual Japan Film Festival took place, for the duration of about 10 days. In Sydney, Event Cinema was the venue as before. I spoke about that in classes. One of the students in Beginners 2, who is very keen and passionate about Japan/its culture saw several films during the Festival weeks. I saw 3 films. Two of them are “Don’t Lose Heart” (“Kujikenaide”) (There are many websites about the movie) and an Award winning film “The Great Passage”

Both films were excellent films and had great universal and cultural messages for viewers. For the movie, “Don’t Lose Heart, the Fune –o Amu”) (http://asianwiki.com/The_Great_Passage).

The main actress of the above film, Kaoru Yachigusa who must be around 83 years of age (wearing gorgeous formal kimono) and who looks, speaks and smiles like being 55 ~ 60 years old and the very successful producer, Yoshihiro Fukagawa, who is about 37 years of age, were the guest speakers at Event Cinema on 23.11 and the audience had great time to listen to them and had Qs&As. There were people who cried during the movie (I was one of them too!). The movie is based on the true story of an “amazing” woman and human, Toyo Shibata who began writing poems at her age of 92 and at age of 98, her poems were published in a book. Over 1.6 million copies of the book were sold. Early this year, she passed away without being able to see the movie about her life.

Earlier-mentioned, one of my students, who saw several films in the Festival, commented to me about other great film which he had seen at the Festival, “Fruits of Faith” (“Kiseki –no Ringo”). It is about the man and his family who suffered greatly due to the poverty and awful communal discrimination because of his passion for producing a new kind of apple which is grown without chemicals. Eventually, due to one finding/idea, he found the method and succeed in the remarkable discovery. The movie is now used for re-making in the US film industry, according to “Nichigo Press” (November, ’13). That is another amazing story.

I also informed my classes about one of the big news in Japan. That is, the only daughter of late John F. Kennedy became the U.S. Ambassador to Japan. NHK TV News (SBS) reported the street parade and her meeting with the Japanese Emperor. Jenta (22.11.13) reports that she is the highest profile among the U.S. Ambassador to Japan to date. An Australian newspaper later reported with the picture that she visited Fukushima prefecture, its awfully damaged area due to huge tsunami, wearing a helmet on the day that was a few days after the date that the J. F. Kennedy passed away 50 years ago.

Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson