Hi everyone, 皆さん、こんにちは。

                                                                                                                                  

 

 

My Japanese lessons generally include practices to develop skills of speaking, reading, listening, writing, interacting and constructing/performing students’ own dialogues by pairs/groups or by oneself. The learning includes the language and cultural skills (including mannerism) and knowledge to be used in travelling or living/working in Japan. For speaking skills, I sometimes use pictures, information, ads, travel magazines, concepts/ideas or topics from Japanese magazine/newspapers, including Nichigo Press.

 

Beginners 1 Japanese completes studying with “Training Material” (Japanese) of SLS, within its 10 weeks’ course. Also, normally they study Travel Japanese (Japanese used during travelling in Japan) with some topics and situations commonly relevant, with use of handouts and cd.

 

For Hiragana teaching, I use flash cards of Hiragana words and the pictures that the words signify. A big set of flash cards, “Hiragana 48 Minutes” is always used too during the course to help students make connections with each Hiragana letter and the pronunciation of the letter with an example of well used word in English which has the very similar pronunciation to the one used for Hiragana.

 

Also, I inform good websites for learning the language and various cultural areas. The websites for the language learning, e.g. grammar learning, esp. various counters, well used verbs and adjectives (with conjugations of those groups) that will help students to upgrade and increase the skills and understanding upon those (and we open such pages of the websites in class).

 

During last month, February, my Beginners 1 was finished and I taught other teacher’s Beginners 2 for relief teaching.

 

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As for news from Japan (NHK TV News shown on SBS Ch. 2), there were a few distinctive and big events and news reported about the current Japanese Emperor, Akihito and Empress Michiko since the 85-year-old Emperor (Japanese 125^th one and he is abdicating in the middle of this year; their eldest son and his wife, Prince Masako will become the acting Emperor and Empress after that. (https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/after-30-years-japanese-emperor-still-open-to-new-ideas-20190222-p50zob.html)

 

It is because of the current Emperor’s request, since he does not wish Japanese citizens to be upset and feel very sad if he will continue the current role and suddenly lose his health declines and pass away. He wishes to avoid a chaotic situation. This kind of arrangement is the first time in Japanese history. (The Japanese Imperial line has begun over 1500 years ago.)  (https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2135.html)

The current Emperor is highly respected and loved by Japanese people. (I am a big fan of the Emperor.) He is a very active, compassionate, amazingly hard working, highly popular and loved, gentle, patient, long term thinking, thoughtful and peace loving and seeking Emperor of beautiful soul, noble spirit and deeply breathing leadership.

 

This year’s abdication of the acting Emperor’s title to the eldest Prince, Crown Prince Naruhito will be certainly one of the most significant events in modern Japanese society. The new Emperor will name his Age when he will become the Emperor. The current Emperor’s Age is called “Heisei” 平成 Period, named by him. That name means “Peace will be achieved”. And certainly, as the Emperor said in one of the big ceremonies with many participants last month, there was no war or awful fighting occurred in Japan in the post-war period. But he said there were many terrible things happened and many people greatly suffered that were especially caused by the natural disasters. Such natural disasters caused sorrow and great sufferings to many people. He praised people’s good attitude and practice and said something like that people’s honour, pride and beautiful virtues kept the nation going strongly and peacefully.

 

I like to introduce one of amazingly beautiful, uplifting, intelligent, heart warming, cute, entertaining, educational video from YouTube. (The video has the Japanese subtitle.) It is made by an extremely loving and committed family who raised a stray kitten with amazing help and support of their dog.

One day, the family found an abandoned, new born kitten in their garage. The family decided to raise the new born kitten, took him to a vet for check-up. On a later day, the kitten couldn’t make big ones at toilet time, developed constipation and even began vomiting a bit of blood. They had the vet’s checkup again. They could not find the solution. Then suddenly their dog began licking the kitten’s body and the kitten’s constipation stopped! It was sort of Mother nature of the dog. Amazing and intelligent dog of full of love!

At the end, the video’s editor, owner of the kitten says both the dog and kitten are integral members of the family in everyday life and they especially thank the dog dearly. The family kept the kitten’s brief record of physical conditions daily for a year!

I hope you’ll enjoy that YouTube that is Awesome!

Its website is:  https://youtu.be/INRfWLOliSI

 

 

 

 

Toshiko Jackson (Japanese teacher), 1.3.19