Ways to improve Japanese on your own!

I hope everyone has been doing well and healthy during this difficult time and we hope that things go back to normal and be able to see our lovely folks who comes to participate in our events and Japanese courses! We also miss having face-to-face interactions on a daily basis but with technologies being implemented through Zoom and other digital learning tools for students and educators alike, we are still somewhat connected face-to-face! That is the greatest thing about technology, we are connected and reminded that we are all in this together and that is the same as language learning!

Being at home has been a challenge but a great time to reflect on strengths, ability, catch up on reading material, and focus on skills/languages more than ever before!

Some of the ways we could improve Japanese is:

-Read news articles through 優しい日本語ニュース：https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/
Once you feel like you're up for the challenge, you could switch to trying to learn from regular NHK articles.

What's important is to read articles daily and familiarize yourself with subjects. It's a great way to see cultural differences and what Japanese people value in terms of information!

-Practice writing through worksheets and apps! Worksheets from websites such as プリントキッズ: https://print-kids.net/ and apps that Japan Foundation created called Hiragana/Katakana Memory Hint: https://kansai.jpf.go.jp/en/resource/e-learning/memoryhint.html are also a great way to brush up your writing skills in Japanese!

We have more resources on our website: http://www.jflalc.org/jle-learners-resources

There are many ways to learn Japanese but we all have the same goal to understand the language and become more culturally aware. So we hope these resources will continue to help and keep practicing! Feel free to let us know of your progress by tagging us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!

Japan Foundation E-Learning Website: Minato

These past few weeks have been very challenging for educators and students alike with the rapid changing situation all around the world. As our daily lives have been altered to staying at home and learning/working through remote methods, we want to help by sharing JF resources that everyone can use for free!

We have an Japanese e-learning website called Minato (https://minato-jf.jp/) . You can register for free, take different courses and brush up on your Japanese skills! We hope that we are able to help students improve on their Japanese and expand their knowledge as much as possible!

There so many other resources and helpful resources on our website: https://www.jflalc.org/ so please feel free to take a look!

Sakura (Cherry Blossoms) Season!

It's quickly already the beginning of March! I hope everyone has been having a wonderful school year and in Japan, the school year ends in March and begins in April. Generally, this is the timing where cherry blossoms bloom and many Japanese people have festivities and activities to enjoy the cherry blossom season! According to Japan Guide (https://www.japan-guide.com/sakura/), cherry blossoms are going to bloom around end of March (3/22-3/30) for Tokyo. Hokkaido generally blooms later in April as it's much colder and up north. As sakura trees blossom and fall out so quickly, it's beautified in various forms of entertainment and in food. There are so many songs, even children songs about sakura trees blossoming and shedding their pedals. It's shows how beauty is ever so temporary and we continue to long for it every year. Here is the video for a traditional Japanese children's song. It's called Sakura Sakura.

A lot of Japanese songs are closely related to seasons and a great way to introduce Japanese learners to understand how all four seasons are a big part of Japanese culture.