Hi everyone, 皆さん、こんにちは。

My Japanese classes/lessons included the practices to develop speaking, reading, listening, writing, interacting, constructing and creating dialogues as well as cultural skills upon Japan and those of self-expressive skills. Also, we used textbooks (our major one is Genki Book 1), pictures, ads, children’s books, magazines, CDs, videos, DVDs, songs, gestures with songs etc. At the end of each class of 10 weeks, an exam was given (if the student wishes to have it as an open exam, that can be done in that way.)

As one of new teaching methods, I found that making copies of lovely or funny pictures and Hiragana version cards that have the names or the words for the above picture cards. I thought of that idea while preparing for the student of my regular tutorial, who is a 5-year-old girls (who enjoys singing Japanese songs!). The use of such cards is similar to playing cards of “karuta”. You will see the pictures and words/names of the pictures and eventually start accommodating Hiragana letters into your Japanese linguistics box in your brains.            You leave many picture cards and the word cards (i.e. the translations of the words) on the table in disorder. The learner will pick up the cards to make the matches of picture cards and the names/words of the cards that are written in Hiragana. He/she can connect the Hiragana letters with the words and pictures; it will be much more fun than reading Hiragana letters without any meanings of things or animated things of a civilization/our environment. It’ll be an effective way to learn Hiragana. The above 5 year-old learner seemed excited with those cards. I plan to use such a method for my Beginners 1 and Katakana version in Beginners 2.

Regarding Japanese economy, there were many delightful or positive news reported (esp. thanks to the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe’s brave, effective policies), including in a newspaper The Australian. I recently talked about that economic phenomenon in classes. The articles that report and comment upon such include the following.                                These are all from the above newspaper: (1) “Japan’s growth picks up steam”, (The Wall Street Journal), by W. Warnock, T. Mochizuki, 17.5.13, p. 20, (2) “No false dawn under Abe: Japan’s sun rising again”, R. Callick, 23.5.13, p. 24 (3) “Boost lending, BoJ tells banks”, T. Ito, 28.5.13, p. 22 (4) “Japan offers new opportunities” (in the Editorial of the newspaper), 29.5.13, p. 11.

In one of the above articles, it says PM Abe’s popularity reached 70% and also the Japanese share market has gone up 70% as well in the recent record! Amazing!

One of my current free-time reading is “Amerika –wa Nihon –no Fukkatsu –o Shitteiru”, written by an Emeritus Professor (at the University of Yale and University of Tokyo), Kooichi Hamada. He is around 76 years (and still writing books and thesis!). He was one of the advisors for PM Abe esp. in relation to increase the supply of Japanese money in order to stop deflation that has been causing the bad economy and ailing industries and society, and the Bank of Japan did not do much about that for the  real solution for many years. Hamada is very outspoken and passionate about increase of money supply. He also comments: due to the impact of “Riiman-shokku” (the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers), all major countries increased the supply of money of their countries and only Japan did not; Japan suffered most among all the countries because of that.

Above Hamada reminds me of late Konosuke Matsushita (founder of Panasonic, previously National Panasonic) in many ways. Those amazing people’s talents, convictions, passion, vision, consistency in pursuing what they believe in, their almost universal values, etc are “immeasurable” for the past and future of Japan and Japanese international relations with the rest of the world. They are certainly the members of my heroes in my professionalism and personal life.

I also talked about and gave the info from website of INA Global, about the Japanese most successful newspaper Yomiuri-shimbun. Yomiuri newspaper (that began business in 1874) is not only the largest daily newspaper in Japan but also the largest in the world. Its circulation is greater than that of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal combined! (INA Global Press: “Yomiuri Shimbun: The giant of the Japanese press”. Yomiuri reminds me of Toyota Motors in the world’s car manufacturing industries.

 

Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson

5.6.13