By Tricia Hamilton
Another successful session of JETAA Japanese lessons was held this fall! The Japanese class, which is free for JETAA, was sold out this year with 14 eager students. We met in a classroom in the Bloor-Yonge library every Monday evening, and under the expert tutelage of Matsumoto-sensei, we kotsukotsu studied onomatopoeia (example: geragera is to laugh loudly and unrestrainedly).
We also practiced our listening skills by watching a TV show, Himitsu no Gosozou, where each week we learned about an unknown, often crazy, food tradition in different prefectures (winter outdoor yakiniku festival in Hokkaido, for example). We also practiced our conversation skills, learned different verb conjugations and words, and had a tabehoudai candy buffet for Halloween.
In addition, part of each class was spent working on our art skills under Marcia-special-arts-sensei, where we learned in Japanese about colour composition, aesthetics of laying out designs, and eventually made our own etegami (New Year’s postcards) to send to our friends in Japan, and around the world! I think we all especially enjoyed carving a special personalized inkan into erasers, to use in our postcards.
Special thanks to our teachers, Matsumoto-sensei and Marcia-sensei, for their genki efforts every week! We all learned something and were happy to finish the class with our own Japanese-style etegami.