Graduation ceremonies

Each Friday some students are leaving school and usually Japan as well. Students would give a little speech and receive a diploma that states how many hours they studied at GenkiJACS and on which language level. Something for your mum to frame and hang up in the livingroom :)

The diploma is really great for those who have spent a few weeks at GenkiJACS but have been really lazy, because the diploma simply states that student X has studied Y hours at Genki, it doesn't mention with what success. Maybe there should be some hint like "Student A has drunk so much booze during his time in Fukuoka that he forgot 50% of prior vocab and his Japanese level dropped from 2-A to 1-D". No, but the diploma is kinda nice looking and the small graduation ceremony is really nice.

I should now prepare my own speech for tomorrow evening. I know what I'd like to say, now the question is just how to phrase it in Japanese...

My time at GenkiJACS was great in any case, allthough classes have been a bit overwhelming at times and didn't make me feel very intelligent. But the other people in my class had more previous knowledge of Japanese, I came from almost 0 and that makes it a bit overwhelming. Most teachers have really made an effort to make lessons fun and interesting and very interactive. Energetic and cool Maki-sensei, cute smiley Takako-sensei (see the adorable picture), burstingly funny Chihomi-sensei, super prepared Natsuko-sensei and all the others, I will miss them. And being at the place and seeing all the people I got to know of course.

Intervention

The school has obviously reacted to the behaviour certain teachers showed lately when going out with students and has issued new guidelines for behaviour that is expected. It has been in the work contracts before however.
I think that this sort of behaviour can be really bad for the school's reputation. And that's a pity because GenkiJACS is a cool place and studying there is really enjoyable. Of course we the students were more amused by it than anything and there was a lot of talk about it. But in the end it's unprofessional behaviour and will hurt the school's reputation in the end. Especially parents could become a hesitant to send their kids here and if they learn things like their daughter has made out with a teacher they might try to seriously damage the school's reputation through the agents, media, etc.
And people will not shut up about this, so you can not keep it in the closet. A prospective students who had read my blog asked about the school in general and I replied that I hope this stuff does not put him off coming here because the school's got excellent quality and classes are both fun and productive. He replied that he had already heard these stories on an internet forum, so it was not new.
I think it's good and necessary that GenkiJACS is now reenforcing these rules. It has become too "normal" to be extremely flirty with students or even make out with them as I've seen in one case. I know that that kind of things happen in other schools too and no school can guarantee that it won't happen, it's just that people involved always know that it's not ok and are not making it public.
I will remove names of teachers from the blog. One of them has already seen this blog and apologized, although this is not necessary as it does not affect my own well-being. I don't want to put people on the spot however and I guess the meeting that our school director held should have been quite a warning.

Funny mistakes

Hm, I keep on making some funny mistakes and misunderstanding words completely (see the recent "therefore I go to England" example). Today I had the following two misunderstandings:

• Miyuki sensei said: "...tomodachi ga au..." = to meet my friends. I understood "tomodachi ga ao" and ao means "blue" (as opposed to au = meet). I was a bit confused and asked why the friends were "blue"...


• Later Miyuki made an example that said because she had no "jikan" (time) she took a taxi. "Jikan" sounds very much the same to me as "chikan" which means "molester". So I undertstood that she took a taxi because there was no molester. Didn't seem logic to me, so I asked about it. And for the second time I was the laughing stock of the class...

Yes, Japanese has its traps. But maybe I'm just a bit stupid and I really was tired and still a bit sickish today. Let's hope I can be less of a dummy in the future...

Nihon-go wa muzukashii desu

(The Japanese language is difficult)
I haven't given up the Japanese classes yet, despite the fact that it's a humbling experience. But I do actually start to understand stuff and do not feel so inferior to my classmates anymore. Since Alex has been promoted, the average level in the class is not so much higher than mine anymore I guess (no offense, dear classmates!). I do not seem to give significantly more stupid answers than the rest.
Well, most teachers we had so far were really nice and also seemed to possess some humour. There was one exception last Friday. "Miss Nasty" really made us feel that we're a bunch of retards, she'd constantly make remarks that we were not good enough. The two lessons got pretty messy because everybody was rather fighting against her instead of learning from her. She told Jon that he should have studied Hiragana at home and he was like "yeah, I can study everything at home, so why do I come here?" and Robert looked up the Japanese word for nasty and kept repeating it more or less aloud (which she ignored). That really wasn't a productive class at all.
Otherwise our lessons are really fun and we are all participating. We do a lot of small group work and communication thingies which is the most useful for us. The Japanese sentences have quite a different structure and contain all these strange particles which makes it a bit tricky. I guess you get a feeling for it over time and forming the sentence will become more natural.
I made a funny mistake today. I was supposed to say: "I don't know how to say this in Japanese, may I say this in English". Instead I said: "I don't know...., may I go to England?". Hm, my vocab is not superb yet...
Camille usually says a lot of fun stuff too. She replies in a way that indicates that she has no clue what the task is. Like you should translate questions to Japanese such as "Can I make a phone call?" and she replies with "no, it's too expensive". But she is also occupied with drawing manga during lessons, so at least doing cultural studies.

We also tend to abuse new grammar that we've learned. We have studied the polite "-te" form for the past few days. So now when somebody wants to say "I'm going to kill you", we would say the more polite "shinde, kudasai" = "please die"... You see, we are learning some Japanese manners :-)

So, I need to do some homework now and we'll have a vocab test as well tomorrow.