Japanese

日本語　NIHONGO NEWS

What’s Happening in Japanese?

花火      HANABI    はなび

This week students have started learning about the significance of “hanabi” in Japan. Hanabi means “fireworks” and were originally used to ward off evil spirits. They have a long history in Japan and are an important part of Japanese summers.

If you travel through Japan in Summer, you may experience one of the hundreds of firework shows that are held, mainly during July and August. Japan’s fireworks are considered to be the best in the world, with some shows drawing hundreds of thousands of spectators.

Another attraction of Japanese fireworks is the relaxed festival atmosphere that comes with them, people dressed in yukata and streets lined by food and game stalls. 

The firework shows typically last one to two hours. Many of the longer shows are broken up into multiple shorter segments, interrupted by the announcement of titles and sponsors.

Keep your eye out around the school for some HANABI themed work coming soon!

Click HERE or HERE if you’d like to see some footage of the amazing fireworks in Japan.

P-2 Animal Books

Last term students in grades Prep, One & Two were learning about “doubutsu” (animals) in Japanese. As a culmination to our unit, students all completed their own page to contribute to a class book, using simple & repetitive Japanese language to help build their vocabulary skills. The books are now assembled and the students are very excited to be taking these back to their classrooms this week. This will become a “take home” book for students to read and share with their families. Please look out for it when it is your child’s turn and we hope you enjoy reading it together!

WEBSITE OF THE WEEK:

Tanoshii Japanese word games

https://www.tanoshiijapanese.com/home/

You can easily improve your reading, listening, writing and speaking skills all in one place. On top of offering a Japanese online dictionary, lessons, forums and additional Japanese language-learning resources, this site also has some seriously fun practice games available to play for free. There are matching games, stroke order games, flashcards and more. For most of the alphabet games, you can choose to play based on characters you already know or characters you are currently learning. You also have the option to focus on hiragana, katakana, kanji or vocabulary words in either multi-game or single-game levels.

JAPANESE FACT: