My Japanese classes/lessons included practices to develop skills of speaking/talking, reading, listening, writing, interacting, and constructing/performing students’ own dialogues by pairs/groups. My Pre-Intermediate 1 has recently began Unit 4, Genki Book 1 apart from Kanji learning with use of the Kanji learning pages located at the back of the above textbook. We had a Japanese visitor to the class a few weeks ago. The Japanese young gentleman was staying at the home of one of the students of that class. We had great time with him while speaking in English and some Japanese.  Also, in the above class, we practiced reading the names of many different Australian wine, “gooshuu-wain”, of which the names are written in Katakana. In addition, that exercise included how to express the prices of each bottle, name of colours and the Australian regional names that are famous for winery and sources of production of those kinds of wine.  I used a Japanese advertisement for the above activity, which is from “Jenta”.

As for singing a Japanese song, the above class sang, “My Fingers” in Japanese over a few weeks. It is a cute and funny song. The words of the song include onomatopea written in Katakana, such as “wahahahaha” for a father’s laughing voice; “ohohohoho” of the mother’s laughing voice; “abubububu” for a baby’s voice.

Other student who I weekly tutor the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, N1 read and comprehend an article of Jenta, Sydney, “Aruki-sumaho: kiken desu.” (Use of smartphone while walking on a street is dangerous”). It is based on a scholar’s research. The article included many useful words and grammar for the above JLPT N1. Also, I used a Japanese article of a Japanese magazine “AERA” (31.3.2014, p.36-38). The title of the article is “Shigotoba –ga Toyota –ni Natta.” (My workplace became like one of Toyota.) Toyota is famous with its through way of use of office and equipment, i.e. resources. Any space, time to reach a certain equipment or place in the office/room, place to keep daily used equipment in a right and convenient place, training its new staff to know all of such so that staff’s energy, time, efficiency of the workplace etc will be the maximum. – A few years ago I read a book which talked about similar things, in Japanese. The book was written by a former Toyota executive. The book talked about many more things apart from the above technique of use of a workplace of Toyota. What was said in the book was just amazing.

This above magazine article of AERA was written by an executive trainer of QJT Solutions, who worked in Toyota for 40 years and he is “preaching” Toyota methods in many cities around Japan as an executive trainer. The article is fascinating, inspiring, able to apply the contexts to people’s any rooms, and so smart!

Also, I talked about the Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Australia this month. The article, “Japan’s most powerful due to visit”, The Australian (2.7.2014, p. 22) reports that he will bring with him a business delegation whose companies market capitalization is almost equal to the gross domestic product of Denmark. The P.M. Abe will address in the Australian Parliament, Canberra for the first time in the history of the two nations, as the Japanese Prime Minister.

Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson

5.7.14