Private Japanese Lessons × Asao Language School

Hi everyone,

How are you?

This is Masa :)

How's your studying going?

Today, I would like to share with you a couple of topics that we touched on during our monthly Top Teachers Meeting.

1.
Are you having trouble with typing Japanese characters on your computer? When we Japanese write in Japanese on our laptop and desktop computer, we commonly use what we call ローマ字入力 (Roman Letter Input). We learn this in school.

We first select ひらがな in the language bar and then start typing.

For example, if we type, watashihakinouienikaerimasenndeshita, 昨日私は家に帰りませんでした。appears on our screen.

https://support.apple.com/ja-jp/guide/japanese-input-method/jpim10277/mac

There are some ひらがな scattered around in a random order on our keyboard but we never use them. Since nobody seems to use かな入力 (Hiragana Input), we honestly do know why they are even there.

(When we write in Japanese on our smart phone and tablet, we use かな入力.)

2.
We would also like you to check out the following website.

https://happylilac.net/syogaku.html

This is a popular website among Japanese elementary school children and their parents. We Japanese start learning ひらがな and 漢字 from the first grade (6 years old) in elementary school. We learn 1000 kanjis by the end of the first grade (13 years old) in junior high school. The following links take you to free downloadable kanji drills that cover them.

https://happylilac.net/syogaku.html#down1

https://happylilac.net/highschool.html#down1

The site also teaches you how to type Japanese on computers :)

https://happylilac.net/sy-keyboard01.html

3.
The photo is from Youko Kikuchi sensei and here is her introduction.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CeypzxTJqeh/

She is actively teaching both on Discord and at our classrooms in Shin-Yurigaoka and Shinjuku. She is skilled and well-experienced Japanese teacher who can teach a variety of types of lessons. She is very popular among adult and minor students. If you have chance, please try her lessons :)

That's it for today!

引き続き宜しくお願い致します。

Masa

Hi everyone!

How are you?

This's Masa. How's studying going?

Thank you so much for joining us for our first event of the year, Mochi Pounding. How are your shoulders and back? Mine took me days to recover 😭

1. As I said, a real mochi pounding is becoming quite a rare activity these days in Japan as it requires a lot of preparation. This time, we rented the full set of tools from a company called Fujita https://fujitadougu.com/mochi/mochi_rental.html. They are very helpful and friendly people with a good offer, so if you by any chance plan to organise one yourself, please contact them or let me know. I will be happy to help :)

The next event will be a Pub Night in March. We'll share the details on social medias. I hope you can make it!

2. On another note, as I shared in the job channel, my friend Ryo Takasugi san is currently looking for new people who would like to join him in Matsuzaka city. https://www.instagram.com/takasugiatelier

There is also another friend of mine, Shouhei san who is looking for new talent in Tokyo. https://vellsheena.jp He is a mutual friend of Ryo san and I. Both of them are happy to look into your visa situation also. If you are interested 😌

3. The photo is from Keiko Okada sensei and here is her introduction.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CapKVvppnWg/ She is mainly active in Second Craic at the moment. With a plenty of teaching experience, she teaches at 2 schools, Asao and another. If you come across her name on Discord, please say hello. She will be delighted to welcome you 😊

That's it for today!

引き続き宜しくお願い致します。

Masa

Hi everyone,

How are you?
This's Masa.

How's Japanese studying going?

Today, I would like to share with you some introductory information about us teachers :)

Asao platform is supported by a few teachers, as you know.

Some of you are very new to our community so just to explain to you the milestones of how we got to where we are today :)

When we first started to teach in 2014, while the community was still relatively small, all our lessons in person and online were only taught by me, Aiko sensei, Taito sensei, Akiko sensei and Yuka sensei.

Today, we call ourselves Top Teachers as we believe that we contributed the most to establish the community.
We continue to work closely together in and out of lessons to maintain the day to day operation.
The lessons with those us are now called Main Operation among all the Asao teachers.

A few years ago, we decided to welcome new teachers so we started to focus on training them. We also wanted to increase interaction among learners at the same time. So, we came up with the idea of starting a new community on Discord https://discord.gg/t6NkjmqUE7

We welcome and train new teachers regularly on Discord today :)

Those who are still on training are called Trainee Teachers and who have completed their training and passed an interview are called Certified Teachers. This operation is now called Discord Operation among us.

As time passed, as Certified Teachers gain more and more teaching experience and confidence, we feel that the difference between the two operations are becoming smaller, which is, by the way, for me a fantastic progress!
I personally like to merge them in the future :)

Please remember that even if you started on Discord, you are always very welcome to try lessons with Top Teachers anytime and vice versa.

What is important for us is always to maximise your satisfaction in each lesson :)

So, that's it, some food for thought for today!

Masa

Hi everyone,

How are you?

This is Masa, the TikToker :)

Since the establishment of Asao in May 2014, we have been gradually increasing the number of our services.
Today what we offer is a little more diverse than it used to be so I would like to take this opportunity to clarify who your point of contact will be, depending the service of our interest.

Yuka sensei, yuka.asaolanguage@gmail.com mainly looks after Aspiring Japanese Teachers project.
It is a project that support Japanese Learners, Trainee/Certified Japanese Teachers and Conversation Partners on Discord through Patreon.

Aiko sensei, aiko.asao@gmail.com mainly looks after Trainee/Certified/Top Japanese Teacher Training and Recruitment online and in person.

Taito sensei, taito.asaolanguage@gmail.com mainly looks after monthly Cultural / Social Activity online and in person including Pub Night.

Akiko sensei, akiko.asaolanguage@gmail.com mainly looks after monthly Top and Certified Japanese Teacher Meeting and general inquiries from Certified Japanese Teachers online. 

anmi, akifumi.asao@gmail.com mainly looks after Design, Video Editing and Video Production online. 

Hiroko san, hiroko.asaolanguageschool@gmail.com mainly looks after Accounting online.

And me , asaolanguage@gmail.com mainly looks after Asao Language School project. It is a project that supports Japanese Learners and Top Japanese Teachers online, at our classrooms and the locations of your choice.

There are a few more services that we offer as one organisation but the mentioned above are the main ones that are related Japanese language learning :)

We are always happy to welcome your questions and requests. If you have one, please feel free to let us know anytime!

Masa
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/asao_language_school

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/AsaoLanguage

Hi everyone,

This's is Masa.

How are you?
How's studying going?

If you have seen my previous posts here and at https://www.tiktok.com/@asaolanguageschool, you know how dismally I failed to offer my first live streaming on TikTok...
Apparently you need at least 50 followers to go on live, so I'll keep coming up with ideas and posting til I reach it :)
Wish me luck please!

Our very first event of this year is coming up on Sunday the 11th of February. If you happen to be available in Tokyo, please join us :) It's going to be a lot of fun as we are trying a Mochi Pounding!
It's a traditional way of celebrating the beginning of a new year in Japan and it is quite a rare opportunity these days to actually pound. It requires a few preparations to make it happen so if you have some free time, do pop in please :)
We did this 3 and a half years ago before covid hit and it was very successful. It's going to be a lot of fun again so don't miss it!

Looking forward to seeing you!

Masa