Questions for Kazuko's English Village

We're looking forward to the answers!

1. What's your favorite food?
2. What's your favorite fashion?
3. How do you cuss in Japanese? (You can censor this one!)
4. Are there hot springs near your town?
5. What are some traditional events in Japan?
6. What kind of dancing to the Japanese do?
7. What kind of food do Japanese people eat?
8. Are you allowed to bring music from home to school and listen to it?
9. When is your New Year and how do you celebrate it?
10. What kind of music is hot in Japan?
11. What are the top video games in Japan?
12. How is life in Japan?
13. Do they listen to rap music?
14. How do they do the wedding celebration?
15. How is your grading system?

No Female Fans of 'Giri Chocolate'!

On Friday, one day before Valentine's Day, we learned about "giri choco" and the girls of the class were not too impressed.

In Japan, only the girls buy chocolate on Valentine's Day. And some of the chocolate they buy isn't even for their boyfriend or crush. It's "obligation chocolate" that they have to buy for co-workers or bosses.

One of my students wants to hear from Kazuko's English Village about Valentine's Day. Specifically, she wants to know what is the most famous or expensive type of chocolate in Japan.

We talked about how the Japanese don't really say "I love you" very much, but we learned how to say it anyway. We also tried our hand at writing "kokoro" with the shodoh set I received in Ena City. Let's just say we are no masters yet.

Hello Kazuko English Village!

We are pleased to welcome Kazuko's English Village to our blog. Students in the juku, or "cram school," apparently will check out our blog and help us answer some questions. Hajimemashite, say Media Academy students!

We've had technical difficulties using this web site at our school ... but stay tuned for some questions about Japan and Japanese teens!

For starters, how old were you when you made your first origami tsuru? We tried today and most of us thought it was hard!

Hisashiburi! Long Time, No Blog!

Japanese Elective is Back at Media Academy. I am posting a video of our first week of Japanese and will ask Lina-San to update this blog with questions that my students have for Kazuko's English Village Juku students. Pardon my very messy room that can be seen in this video. We need to initiate osoji (cleaning) for sure!

Japanese Juku Students Learn About Oakland Teens

Students who showed up for their cram school (juku) class tonight with Kazuko Sensei had no idea they'd be getting a special lesson in Oakland teen culture. Saki, Akane, Yukina, Kota and Ryohei at first seemed quite reluctant/shy to meet the surprise foreign guest (me), but soon started talking a lot when I opened up the Media Academy yearbook for them to see. They were very surprised about many things they saw, but most particularly they were shocked to learn about grills through a yearbook page featuring Media mouth bling. They pointed to students at Media who look like people they know in Japan; they thought Coach Knight looked like a gangster in his spirit week 80s costume; they said that the seniors looked like they were going to the Academy Awards in their senior photos. And one student thought Aiden looked like Orlando Bloom.

Oakland teens would be equally surprised to know that even though these students are in the first week of their one-month summer break, they still go to cram school three times a week and don't finish their classes until 9:30 p.m.

I showed the students video of Media students who had recorded special questions for me to ask Japanese teenagers during my trip. The questions were on topics ranging from hairstyles and school uniforms to samurai swords and Japanese culture. The juku students gave answers to almost all the Media questions while their teacher videotaped them. I'm excited to show Media students the answers to their questions and also look forward to setting up some penpals between Media Academy students and these Ena teens.

For now, here's a little aisatsu from three of the students to Media Academy students: