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. Speaking practice sometimes used the use of the pictures, concepts or topics from the brochures of the Japan National Tourism Organizations, Jenta, Nichigo Press, Daily Telegraph etc. Also, I inform about Japanese latest news, traditional features, tourism related things etc.

Intermediate 1 began on 27 November (Thursdays’ class). It has learnt most of Unit 6, Genki Book 1, which has many verb –te forms and use of those in different grammatical usage and function/situations. Much of application practice with those took place too.

In the above class, I talked about traditional Japanese paper sliding doors, shouji (or shooji) which is made out of wooden frame and beautiful, sophisticated white paper. One of the students in the above class, who had stayed at Japanese rhokan on many occasions and just returned from the latest trip to Japan, mentioned softness/gentleness of sound which is heard when one opens or closes Japanese sliding doors. I strongly shared that point.  It is one of Japanese features for over a thousand of years. Just like its people’s behavior, language, verbal and written (and facial) expressions (and even economic reforms!), in general. One of internationally well-known, female fashion designers, who normally lived in Paris, said such too in a magazine many years ago, i.e. “In Japan, everything is soft!”            I think the sound of shooji can help you feel calm, peaceful and being close to nature, just like seeing beautiful Japanese gardens or other traditional things in that land.

Regarding the news on Japan, I said the following things. They are mostly from the NHK TV news (shown at SBS TV), Jenta magazine etc in the recent time.

The Japanese Emperor Akihito (also called the Emperor Heisei, Heisei Tennoo, 平成天皇) acceded to the throne in 1989. He is the 125 Emperor of Japan. His birthday is 23 December.  On that day last year (2014), about 29,000 people signed from the public at the Imperial Palace in the middle of Tokyo), for his birthday celebration. He is 81 and he is still so active (physically too), compassionate (and his wife, Empress too) and he speaks his inner thoughts and feelings for the benefits and needs of people (esp. those who were terribly hurt or disadvantaged due to natural disasters etc) esp. in Japan and the international peace and needs.

For the first two days in January 2015, 81,000 people visited the above Palace. On 2 Jan., 16,000 people of the public waved hands to or saw the Royal family that included all the Princes, Princesses and their children, for the yearly celebration for the public at the Palace, “ippan-sanga”. The Royals wave hands to the people at that (such) time to celebrate the New Year.

On 31 December, 14, the annual NHK TV “koohaku utagassen” took place. It is annual TV show and stage event at NHK Hall. It must have been on for nearly half a century. Every year, after the NHK News, the program and show starts and goes on until about 11:45pm, i.e. right before all the Buddhist temples throughout Japan starts making big “gong” noise to cleanse human sins of the passing/-ed year. This year, at the above “big” show, in total, “52” groups or individual singers sang and about 1100 people performed on the stage. When the singer can sing at the show, (just like Hollywood, Academic Award). the singer can have higher regard/status in the industry in the following or future years. There are some singers, who have been singing yearly for over 40 years or 40 times! Amazing. All the performers’ costumes (whether they wear western styled clothes or very attractive kimono) were outstanding ones. Same with their performance. At the end of the show, the highly recognized panel members decide whether male team or female team wins for the (that) year.

NHK TV reported the following. That is, the Japanese Emperial Palace began using LED which the Japanese Nobel Prize winners developed, due to the Emperor’s request partly for cost saving. Also, the world’s highest building in Dubai started using LED for its light of the building.

Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson,

4.1.15

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 (that finished that level last week) worked with Unit 4, Genki Book 1 apart from Kanji learning with use of the Kanji learning pages located at the back of the above textbook. Also, for that class, I taught Japanese used for travel in Japan. Early in the course, I taught with some text for ordering foods at restaurants, currency exchange, buying train tickets, booking a hotel room (the text is originated from one I had edited for other organization of its online video course). Late month, I used with part of the material of other source and the situations of the language used were such as asking places or services at a hotel or ryokan, “Where is the bathroom?”, “Do you have room service?”, “I want to leave this in the safe?”, “Do you have more quiet room?” “I can’t turn on the heater.” etc. In that class, there was a student who had purchased the book which is for the preparation for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) 4-5. And I showed his book to the class. It appeared there are other students who are interested in the JLPT, so I said to the class that in future, including the next stage for them (if they will be enrolled), we might include learning time for Travel Japanese and the preparatory sessions of the JLPT with the agreement of all the participants of the class. That will be probably about 20~30% of the time to be spent of the 10 weeks’ course. All the students in that class seemed happy with that new element in the future course.

Apart from the above course, I weekly taught two students for their tutorials. One was for the JLPT N1 and the other was the JLPT N3. Both were lovely and very interesting students. One of them has to have a break due to his other commitments and the other will continue. To the former, I talked about my favorite and the Japanese, profoundly great business leader in the Modern Times, late Konosuke Matsushita, apart from other things on Japan. The student enjoyed and appreciated such information. Also, to my class/tutorials, I informed about the article of Escape, Sunday Telegraph, 20 July, ’14, pp. 28-29, “Bullet trains take the cake”. A big and fascinating article/report! It includes information that Japan celebrates the 50^th anniversary of its Shinkansen that began running in 1964 prior to the Tokyo Olympics.

The above report says the first Shinkansen, the Tokaido Shinkan took 4 hours to run between Tokyo and Osaka when it started running. Currently its Nozomi (the super-high-speed) makes the journey in 2.5 hours. It is the world’s busiest high-speed rail line, carrying more than 150 million passengers a year! There are 3 types of trains on the line, i.e. Nozomi (fastest), Hikari and Kodama.

The above article says Japan developed SCMAGLEV. It states “It (SCMAGLEV) stands for Super Conductive Magnetic Levitation. The MLXI Maglev prototype on display holds the world speed record for rail vehicles at an astounding 581km/h.” “By 2025, Japan aims to put commercial maglev trains into operation, which could shorten the Tokyo-Osaka trip to one hour.”   (- Sounds amazing!)

Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson

5.8.14