My Japanese lessons includes practices to develop skills of speaking, reading, listening, writing, interacting and constructing and performing students’ own dialogues by pairs/groups or by oneself. The learning included the language and cultural skills to be used in travelling or living/working in Japan and general understanding upon Japanese culture. Speaking practice sometimes used the pictures, information, concepts/ideas or topics from the brochures of Japanese newspapers, the ads, Nichigo Press and other Japanese monthly magazines. For Hiragana learning, I used flash cards of Hiragana words and the pictures that the words signify. Most of the weekly homework given (exercise sheets) is for Hiragana reading and writing that are with Japanese words, name or simple sentences plus pictures.

 

Regarding my class teaching, my Beginners 1 learned with the main textbook Training Material and they learned Hiragana reading and writing with use of flash cards, weekly Hiragana based exercise sheets, etc. Also, I taught other well used vocab, colloquial phrases, highly used other grammar, Travellers’ Japanese and culture, including historical things, Japanese songs, business (including about the founder of National Panasonic, Konosuke Matsushita), Japanese fairy tales, politics etc. All the students made their dialogues (and also self introductions) and performed such in front of class that was interesting and useful. For travellers’ Japanese, I used “15 Minutes Japanese by M. Maeda-Nye et al, 2013 (publisher: DK, London). The topics/situations of language taught with the above book were: language used at an airport, language used to book a room at a hotel or ryokan (Japanese styled inn) and language used to express comments, problems, requests for something to the reception from one’s room in a hotel or ryokan.

 

As for Japanese recent news reported from its media, the following can be reported.

 

On SBS, for NHK TV News, on 28.3:

Some local regions/areas in Japan, e.g. Hokkaido, got their land prices up after 26 years’ lower prices having remained. The rise is 0.04% as the average rise. Hokkaido is one of the region of that. The major cause of the rise is having had a large number of foreign tourists to Hokkaido.

The above news came well after news reported some months ago that Tokyo (esp. the Ginza district) and Osaka and other highly developed cities had land prices been up and for the case of Ginza, it went to the level of the time before Japanese economic bust that was about 26 years ago.

 

This year’s ohanami-shiizun (cherry blossom viewing season) began over a week earlier than usual in March. Pink blossoms are absolutely beautiful and bright in so many places in the land.

And as yearly sights and practice in Japan, at the start of April, all the Japanese corporations hold nyuushashiki  入社式 (ceremony for new employees) and everyone there look excited to start the life with purpose and focus. Same with all the children and students of schools and tertiary education, they have nyuugakushiki　入学式.

 

Currently Japanese high school baseball clubs throughout Japan are completing/having games for the yearly kokoyakyuu 高校野球。All prefectures and other major cities, such as Tokyo and Osaka in Japan choose their best baseball team by that season and each team chosen goes to highly known Kooshien baseball stadium in Hyogo prefecture. Huge numbers of supporters of every team go to the Kooshien to cheer for their chosen team and the sight of each game is always sensational. The players, who have played and won well, will be selected to become the professional baseball players of Japan. And a small number of such might even become great stars/heros in the US baseball leagues, such as famous and highly adored players both in Japan and in the US, a veteran, Ichiro Suzuki (his amazing age of being 44!) and Shohei Ohtani as examples

(For S. Ohtani, a recent newspaper article, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2018/04/04/baseball/mlb/shohei-ohtani-hits-first-mlb-homer-first-bat-angels-home-stadium/#.WsUMw4VOLIU)

 

The NHK TV (shown on SBS during Mar.) reported that after the Japanese shuntoo (the yearly big groups of entrepreneurs and such of labourers meet for the issues of pay rise for workers etc. This year, last month, slight pay rise for big corporations was determined out of the negotiations. The rise is about a bit over 2% of annual wage; bonus will be also increased slightly more than the above. (In Japan, workers get bonus twice a year, i.e. in the middle of the year and end of the year; the bonus is about a few months’ total salary)

(See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_bonuses_(Japan)

 

 

Toshiko Jackson (Japanese teacher)

 

5.4.18