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 and other handouts for vocab, grammar etc. From Beginners 2 up to Pre-Intermediate 1 used Genki Book 1 was used.

Also, apart from Japanese magazines (e.g. Jenta, Nichigo Press), 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 a variety of grammar and application of vocab. groups in sentences. At the end of courses of 10 weeks, the students had an exam or open-exam which included features of vocab., grammar, dialogues construction, translation and script.

As for the recent news on Japan and its people, I informed the following apart from other things.

1. An internationally highly known, British fashion model, Naomi Campbell donated AU$343,000 (¥3200,0000) to the Japan Consulate, Sydney to help the restoration of Fukushima and Miyagi, i.e. the Great East Japan Earthquake (11.3.11). The large fund comes from her charity event, “Fashion for Relief”. Campbell said Japan is an important country for her and she wishes to keep supporting for the cause and watching the recovery of Japan. (“Jenta Sydney”, 13.12.13)  She had given other donation(s) too, including one right after the awful disaster in March, 2011.  Marvelous news!
2. There was the Tokyo Motor Show this month (Dec. ’13). It was very successful, according to some websites’ reports. And, one of the major features of the exhibition that the major Japanese car makers showed were tiny cars. Their sizes are which four of such small cars will fit into the parking space of one’s average sedan! According to The Australian, 12.12.13, p. 12 (originally from The Wall Street Journal), Toyota’s i-Road was one of the attractions. It is the first of hundreds of the all-electric tandem-seat three-wheelers which Toyota will produce. The model will be in other countries/cities next year, e.g. in France, and it will be called Ha:Mo (it stands for “Harmounious Mobility”) for an urban car-sharing experiment. The 3-wheeled car, i-Road is narrow and tall. Its width is of a large motorcycle. Its maximum speed is 45km/h. (But in Japan, a 60km/h model will be available.) it uses two torque-rich 2.7 hp (2kW) in-wheel electric motors.

In addition, the above article in The Australian informs details about Honda Uni-Cub which is a smart looking penguin-styled small car which has Honda’s model, Omni Traction Drive System with automatic balance control, Honda MC-Beta and Nissan’s model, EV, the Leaf.

For more information and fascinating “Video Gallery” of the above Show, please see: http://www.tokyo-motorshow.com/en/gallery/video.html, Smart Mobility City 2013, “Kuruma Networking – Vehicles connecting with people’s lives and society”, (http://www.tokyo-motorshow.com/en/press_release/20131201.html). At the website, it says the Show had more models and vehicles for the exhibition than the Show in 2011 and the visitors satisfaction reached 90.1%.