My Japanese classes/lessons included practices to develop skills of speaking, reading, listening, writing, interacting, and constructing/performing students’ own dialogues by pairs/groups or by oneself and learning Japanese used in travelling in Japan. Speaking practice sometimes used the pictures, concepts or topics from the brochures of the Japan National Tourism Organizations, Jenta, Nichigo Press, Daily Telegraph etc. Also, understanding and analyzing Japanese culture are important part of the course.

My Intermediate 3 is studying with Japanese for Busy People Book 2 (currently the middle of Unit 2). Also, I give handouts to increase vocab and simple sentences with use of the vocab for practical language learning for travelling or staying in Japan with use of other relevant books. Their Japanese linguistic level is improving progressively, so it is exciting to see that. For example, in discourse writing of homework, such as dialogue with a particular situation for travellers (the situation was at a restaurant and the dialogue was to start with a courteous waitress’ customer service phrases that were from the handout we had gone through in class), the students wrote their own impressive and distinctive dialogues and read them out in class. That was delightful.

As for my students for weekly tutorials, they have been studying and exploring the learning with their deep interest and creativity. So, teaching them is very fun too! One of them, who is a company executive, wishes to take a 2 weeks’ Japanese course in Tokyo a few months later and he is very excited about that plan too. For his lessons in my teaching, we use Japanese for Everyone (currently, its Unit 2). He enjoys using that book as the main one for the tutorials. Similar to the above Intermediate 3, I give and use materials of other books, esp. ones for travel or life in Japan based reference books for practical, realistic and often natural language teaching.

Another tutorial student too, she is studying very actively and keenly. With her preference, we use Genki Book 1 (currently its Unit 4) for the main textbook. As the above teaching, I give her other reference materials for the increase of vocab (with simple sentences making by applying such vocab) and other sentence making exercises for creative and real-life like language learning and Japanese language usage. She has many ideas about the learning and Japanese culture/society and takes the lessons in creative ways with her self-motivation.

As for the culture/society and news reported from Japan in the recent month/weeks, I spoke about the following in class/lessons. Most of the information is from NHK TV News (shown on SBS TV):

Regarding the electoral voting rights, until the recent time, the age that people can vote for elections was 20 years old in the Modern Times. However, recently, through the Diet, it legally became 18 years old (just like the case of many other advanced countries).

Japanese share market price was continuously improving and about 2 weeks ago, it reached the level of the one that was 18.5 years ago. Similarly, the prices of land esp. the big cities such as, Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya went up too as the main examples. The highest area among rises was 14% higher than before.

(NHK TV News – ) For Japanese economy, foreigner/overseas visitors/tourists have been a great source for the economy. Recently the number of duty free shops have sharply increased and in some area, it made 50% increase to encourage above tourists to buy things during the trips and stay in Japan In addition, instant noodles (raamen) shops are very popular with such tourists and at a particular shop, there are times that the shops are packed  with foreign visitors instead of Japanese locals!

Japan has been absolutely excited with the brilliant performance of its Nadeshiko team at the FIFA Women’s World Cup. It continuously won and went to the semi-final against the US in Canada. However, it lost and went to the second at the end. In spite of that, the team’s determination, full of brave leadership in each player and great competence was out of question. The delegate of one of the other countries that played with Nadeshiko and lost against the latter said something like the following. – The players of Nadeshiko team are shorter than his team’s players physically, but Nadeshiko’s athletes have many more skills and their own strategies that they used during the match. –  That comment somehow reminded me of Japanese major car manufactures in essence!

A newspaper, Daily Telegraph (30.6.15, p. 18) reported an article about an amazing cat in Japan with the picture of the cute, gentle, patient cat. The cat died last month at the age of 16. In the picture, the cat, Tama was wearing his special Stationmaster hat of Kishi Station located in western part of Japan. The station that is in a quiet rural area and had a great difficulty with its business and nearly bankrupt. However, the cat saved the business and economy of the city by causing the a great number of passengers and tourists to the sity, station and railway. People loved the cat. The station and community adored the late cat as one of the Goddess (that comes from Shinto religion). Her estimated contribution to the local economy was 1.1 billion yen, i.e. $11.6million! Another story of great harmony and successful relationships between humans and animals in Japan that are commonly seen in that land.

Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson

6.7.15