Private Japanese Lessons × Asao Language School

Hi everyone,

How's your studying going?

Today, we would like to share with you an update regarding our classroom in Shinjuku.

We have been informed that the management company is soon refurbishing the 43 year old building where our classroom is located.

We have therefore decided to relocate ourselves to avoid the hustle and bustle :)

If you have your regular lessons at our current location, you have probably noticed that there are already constructions going on on both sides of the building and they are going to work on ours as well.

We have been using the classroom since the start of Asao project.
With lots of memories, we feel a little nostalgic letting it go but we believe this will bring us all a positive change in the end.

We'll let you know the details of our temporary and new locations individually by email.

This will not affect your regular and new lesson schedule :)

Looking forward to seeing you at the Pub Night!

Masa

Hi everyone,

How are you?
How's your studying going?

I just wanted to give you a quick heads up on our monthly event :)

The next one, Asao Pub Night, is going to take place from 19:30 on Friday the 29th of March. It is a casual get together that welcomes Japanese learners and teachers.

We will have a chat to get to know each other a little over a drink or tea at a selected pub in the city :)

The venue we are considering at the moment is the following place in Mitsukoshimae

https://mie-terrace.jp/#restaurant-box

It's a shop as well as a restaurant that sells regional foods and products from Mie prefecture.

Ryo Takasugi san, the owner of Okumatsusaka https://www.instagram.com/okumatsusaka/ visited the place after the Mochi Pounding event and he recommends it. The pricing is wonderful too!

Soon, Yuka sensei will be making an announcement confirming the details :)

Looking forward to seeing you!

Masa

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