As the last Happy Hour in 2014 spring semester and the farewell party for graduating seniors, students organized a Karaoka party and enjoyed singing Japanese songs.

ランディさん、今年1年ハッピーアワーのリーダーありがとうございました。ユさん、来年のハッピーアワーのリーダーよろしくお願いします。

Throughout this semester, our Japanese program has been successful to bridge our students with the Japanese community at Emory. MBA students and their families, researchers at the Medical School and Yerkes, and students at Public Health participated in our programing by coaching job interviews and serving as speech contest judges and class guests. In addition, they offered their generous time for 10 students of JPN402 to conduct individual interviews to share their experience on the Tohoku Earthquake and discussed their views on the Fukushima disaster and Japan’s energy policy. To show our appreciation, about 25 people got together on April 18 and shared a more personal side with dinner. Japanese guests commented highly about our students language skills as well as their ways to see the current issues around Fukushima. We hope to have this support and engagement for our students from the Japanese community next year!

Japanese Culture Club organized Karuta (Japanese card game) Night on Wednesday, April 9th. Students made their original cards and played Karuta.Karuta is a traditional Japanese card game which uses “yomifuda” (reading cards) and “torifuda” (grabbing cards). Leaders of the Japanese Culture Club (JCC) helped students of Japanese make their own Karuta cards and played together. Ten members from JCC and 40 students participated in this event. It was a great study break with Japanese snacks. We appreciate JCC to create great opportunities for hands-on experiences to learn Japanese culture throughout this year.

4月9日（水）にかるたナイトがありました。オリジナルのかるたを作って、みんなでかるたをしました。

2014 Japanese speech Contest was held at Emory University on Saturday, March 1st.  Six students participated from Emory.

Category 1

• Samantha Gokhale 　日本語の経験
• Yi Lin  「いただきます」と「ごちそうさま」
• Akanksha Samal 　私の違う世界

Category 2

• Yuan (Sherry) Jin　日本のドラマから習ったこと
• Julie Shen　もったいない
• Junzhe (David) Yu　私の願い

Everyone did a great job and the following students won the prizes. Congratulations!

Category 1 (3 min speech)
1st prize: 「いただきます」と「ごちそうさま」by Yi Lin (Emory University)
2nd prize: Elderly Care in Japan by Eirene Lakshita (Georgia State University)
3rd prize: 私のちがう世界 by Akanksha Samal (Emory University)
努力賞（どりょくしょう）: 私の大切な人 by Gyeong Ho Lee (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Category 2 (5 min speech)
1st prize: もったいない by  Julie Shen (Emory University)
2nd prize: 日本のドラマから習ったこと by Sherry (Yuan) Jin (Emory University)
3rd prize: 私の願い by Junzhe (David) Yu (Emory University)
努力賞（どりょくしょう）:Learning Japanese as a Korean American by Kyungeuhn Park (Georgia State University)

みなさん、新年あけましておめでとうございます。Happy New Year!

Thank you everyone for sending the wonderful New Year’s cards (nengajo).  2014 is the year of horse. We sent 20 nengajo to the GATJ 2014 Nengajo Contest. Emory students won first and third places! Congratulations!

Here is the results of the GATJ 2014 Nengajo Contest:

• First Place – Katrina Worsham

• Third Place – Janice Lee

Here are some of the nengajo made and sent by Emory students:

テform youtube

Miyake Harumi sensei, our new teacher for 2013-14, created a supplementary video for the TE-form. Since flash cards are built-in, students can practice how to make the TE-form orally while watching it. The TE-form is very important in building up structures and we hope that Miyake sensei’s video will help students to master the TE-form. She will create more videos later, so please stay tuned!

We had an origami event on Thursday, Nov. 14. This event was supported by the Masse-Martin funds, REALC, and Japanese Culture Club. About 50 participants including six people from the local community learned three types of Origami from an origami teacher, who is actually our student, Jonguk Lim (junior, political science major). With help from JCC origami experts at each table, participants followed a step-by-step folding by Jonguk shown on the screen through the document camera. Everybody did excellent! Many participants were first-time origami folders and enjoyed this meticulous multi-dimensional origami art. Thank you for all who helped this event.

On Monday October 28, the Japanese program and the Japanese Culture Club (JCC) held a joint event “Sushi Night” in Few Hall. About 70 students participated in the event to learn Japanese table manners as well as a little history of Japanese Sushi. We welcomed Mr. Noguchi, a local sushi chef and each participant made their own California rolls with step-by-step instructions from Chef Noguchi and the leaders of JCC. For the first hands-on experience, many students were able to make amazingly beautiful rolls! Most students took pictures of their own rolls, enjoyed eating them, and took a picture with Chef Noguchi. This event was co-sponsored by the Dept. of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Emory College Language Center.