JCC/GTS Dinner was flourished!

March dinner has just passed with about 20 participants including several new faces. On Sunday night I had a dinner with some JET alums to think back just one year ago, which is the day Tsunami attacked Japan.

The first class for the Spring Kyoto Trip was held and everyone introduced among others and all wished stronger dollars and full-bloom of Cherry Blossoms.

There will be American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ) annual conference this week in Toronto, Canada and I will be presiding one session. I am looking forward to meeting several professional friends in rather warm Canada!

March began! Japan Symposium Returns!

The JCC/GTS monthly dinner will be on Friday 3/9/2012. I hope to see many spring-like faces there.

One of past students, Matt Bedford left for Gifu, Japan to teach English there. I am very happy to see his dream coming true after his graduation with many ups and downs from the college!!

Tha Japan Symposium will be held at COD SRC 2800 on Thursday (the whole day) 3/24/2012. Jason Jones (Univ. of Wisconsin at Milwaukee), Norma Field (Univ. of Chicago) and Andy Murashige (Art Institute of Chicago) will give the enthusiastic lectures. There will be Film viewing, Fashion Show, Taiko Drum and Japanese Dance are also coming to wrap up the event at night!

Hope to have you in the audience/spectators!

Middle of the Spring semster!

Time really flies! While Japanese 2202 shrank, newly added 1101 got quite a few students, the number of students taking Japanese this semester has grown and we have even decided to run a couple of Japanese 1102 in Fall semester!

Spring Field trip to Kyoto, Japan has 10 students in it and the timing for visiting there for SAKURA viewing seems to be Perfect according to the SAKURA front forecast which announced the SAKURA full bloom in Kyoto be 4/6/2012 which is in the middle of our trip!!!

Summer Study Abroad has already over 15 students and that is very exciting news!!

JET (Japanese government English teaching assistant program) Interview has begun and GTS will be a interviewer on 2/23-25!

The JCC dinner next month will be 3/9/2012!

February dinner went well!,

Wow! A month has passed since last update! Monthly dinner was filled with unusual members.

Spring semester classes are moving on without major problems except for too few students in 2202! Two from 2202 and four from 1102 are going to Japan with me this summer as well as three from Waubonsee community college and one from Harper community college.

Despite the fact that Japan is still sufffering from radiation fear, many can come with me and I feel very confident in what I am offering!

We have decided to offer summer 1101 class during my absence at the college and offer more classes in fall to the point that we are recruiting a new part-time teacher!

GTS is going to Miami, FL this weekend to participate in Japan seminar!

Late Happy New Year!

Late happy new year! This is the first day of the Spring semester 2012 and the first day of having siginificant amount of snow in Chicago area in this season!
I am glad to say that all the planned Spring semester classes are running including the Japan field trip class!
Japanese 1101 has over 40 students in 2 sections, and Japanese 1102 has over 30 students in two classes! Japanese 2202 (fourth semester class) has been shrunk a bit but about dozen students continues to learn. Spring Japan Trip class has over 10 students and we will certainly go to Kyoto for flower viewing in early April!

Regular JCC/GTS dinner will resume tomorrow though the second Friday of the month!

Fall semester is now over!

Time really flies. The fall semester is now over. While everyone beyond 1102 somehow survived, 11 students in 1101 out of my 46 failed! There have been plenty of opportunities to withdraw from the class until the ened of the semester, they did not bother withdrawing from the class. Maybe they believe in miracle to pass the course! I hope those who passed the course would continue to study Japanese in Spring.

Spring Break field trip has begun filling up! It seems that the trip would go!

GTS wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Already December!

The December GTS/JCC dinner went well last week and we are just about to finish the fall semester! Hopefully everyone remaining in Japanese classes survive and continue to study Japanese next semster in 2012!

Spring trip has so far 3 registrants and 4 are coming in soon. Summer Japan program application process has been started and we hope to form the wonderful summer group as usual!

Getting ready for the Christmas break? I hope so!