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| Decorated Bulletin board with all the students at the GJA Academy displaying where they're from |
Students learned honorifics such as Sensei (Teacher), San (Mr./Ms.), Senpai (upperclassmen) in order to start engraining the colloquialisms found in Japanese speaking. At the Academy the students are told to address not only their teachers as "sensei" and RAs as "senpai," but also when addressing one other, they will use "(Name)-san" with one another. Other cultural words they learned were "Itadakimasu" and "Gochisousama deshita." These terms translate as "I am thankful for this meal"(before eating) and "I enjoyed my meal" (after eating), respectively. Students will begin to incorporate Japanese terms little by little in their routine here at meal time, nightly meeting and more.
Speaking of meal time, at the Japanese Academy, students will be diving head first into Japanese immersion during lunch time, where they will be speaking ONLY Japanese, no matter the level. Thus, students with varied degree of experience can help one another and push themselves to use and learn Japanese outside of classes. Ganbatte minna! (Good luck everyone!)
One thing that everyone made sure to do by the end of the day was make a "tsuru" or crane for good luck during their time at the Academy. The "tsuru" origami has a legend that if one makes a 1000 cranes, they will be granted one wish. Whether it be to get into a good school or ace a test, making tsuru is a tradition from Japanese ancestry in hopes of peace, happiness, health and so forth.
This is only the tip of the iceberg of activities that the Japanese Academy has in store. With future field trips, cooking classes, cultural endeavors, three weeks may soon pass like a breeze~
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| Close-up of students' cranes attached to their names tags |
Sounds like a great first day! Can't wait to hear more!! :-)
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