In an earlier post, “Enjoying Japanese Lessons in Amagasaki“, I mentioned that once a week, I take Japanese lessons in Amagasaki organized by Amagasaki City International Association (尼崎市国際交流協会), part of Hyogo Nihongo Volunteers’ Network. Since that post, our class location has been moved from Amagasaki City Medium and Small Companies Center to Sanshibikku Amagasaki (サンシック尼崎) which is not far from Hanshin Amagasaki Station. I still enjoy lessons kindly given by volunteers helping foreigners living in Amagasaki learn Japanese. Although these lessons are given one-to-one, all volunteers and students use the same classroom at the same time on Wednesday mornings from 10:00am to 11:30am. The students come from many countries including the U.S.A., New Zealand, Canada, Thailand, Korea and China.
On November 6 and 7, 2010 a festival was held at the building where we study. Members of our Japanese group (including myself) performed in a concert on Sunday, November 7. We sang two famous Japanese songs. One was “My Old Country Home”, or “Furusato (ふるさと)” in Japanese. As our group was made up of different nationalities, part of the song was sung in Japanese and part of it in Chinese. The other song was “The Song of the Seasons”, or Shiki no Uta (しき の うた) in Japanese. It was sung partly in Japanese, Chinese, English and Korean. I sang the Japanese and English parts with others. Two of the volunteer teachers accompanied us with the ocarina, an ancient flute-like instrument that sounds very nice. Between the 2 songs, two Thai members wearing traditional Thai wear sang something in Thai and two Korean members wearing traditional Korean wear sang something in Korean, one the singers using a hand-held flat Korean drum for accompaniment. It was nice having so many different languages being sung and some members wearing traditional wear of their home countries. It gave a nice international flavor to our performance. My wife and almost 3-month-old daughter Tina came to watch me perform. It was great having them there. Some of the volunteers met my wife and Tina before the concert. (^.^)
After singing, our group went outside and photos were taken. You can see one on the left. After that most of our group left but my family and I stuck around to watch and enjoy a guitar and mandolin group perform a bit later. Then we headed back to our home Tsukaguchi, also the home of my English conversation (英会話) school, Smith’s School of English Tsukaguchi (スミス英会話塚口校), where I am teaching English in Japan to such wonderful students. What a great day it was! (^.^)
Derek
Smith’s School of English Tsukaguchi
スミス英会話塚口校 (月謝制英会話)
Check out my English school’s videos, photos and school event pages at http://www.smithweb.co.jp/school/tsukaguchi.shtml !!
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