Japanese

ZOOMING: Queens Park to Tokyo

On Thursday 5 August, St Norbert’s Year 10 Japanese class had its initial speaking lesson of many planned with Seijo Gakuen in Tokyo.

How did this happen with Covid? Some 50 Seijo Japanese students and our 22 Year 10 students used ZOOM to connect for the 50 minutes. Each student chatted with two Seijo students. While initially a little nervous, both the Japanese and St Norbert students were very soon having a great deal of fun experimenting with either the Japanese or English they had learnt, and sometimes a mixture of both languages.

On ZOOM they talked about where they live, their families and pets, favourite foods and drinks, hobbies, shopping, seasonal activities and school differences. And then, what better time to chat about sport was there than on Thursday? The Tokyo Olympics in full daily progression provided some wonderful opportunities to talk about sport. Our St Norbert students mentioned the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and showed their excitement to have Japanese athletes come to Brisbane in 2032.

This ZOOM experience will continue weekly until the end of September. Normally Seijo Gakuen do a two week homestay with St Norbert in their Japanese school summer holidays. However, due to Covid their homestay visit was cancelled again in 2021. Next year Seijo Gakuen hopes to be here in person staying with our generous St Norbert College families to experience Perth in person. In the interim, it was wonderful that in 2021 our ZOOM sessions provided a different meeting experience. 

The beaming smiles and laughter on the laptop screens showed just how much fun everybody was having. It seems lots of friendships were made and the students plan to keep in touch from their homes in Japan and Australia in the future.

Mr A Godden

(Japanese Teacher)