JapanesePod101.com Blog

Today, we bring you a blog post from Motoko, JapanesePod101.com lesson creator, host and Office Party Planner! Motoko will be sharing more bilingual posts on our blog, so check back often and leave a comment!

On the 17th of April here at Innovative Language Learning, we had an afternoon tea party.

Although Kim (a member of our Business Development Team) moved to Hong Kong, last week she came back to Japan for a brief visit, so it was her ‘welcome back’ party. Meanwhile, Pim (host of ThaiPod101.com) is going back to her home country to have her baby, so it was her ‘farewell’ party.

We all ate pastries, chatted, and enjoyed ourselves.

There was a choice of pastries: strawberry, green tea, custard… It was really hard to choose!

By the way, everyone, do you know what a shikishi is?

It’s a plain piece of card that measures roughly 20cm by 20cm. Actually, because it’s quite thick – about 3mm – it might be better to call it a board. It usually has a piece of Japanese paper pasted to one side of it. In Japan, when there’s a celebratory occasion, or someone is leaving, everyone writes a message on this piece of card. At ILL, too, when someone has something to celebrate or a staff member is leaving the company, we present them with a shikishi.

First of all, we write the name of the person in the middle. This time, it’s Pim. Then, so that the person we’re giving it to doesn’t see it while we’re writing on it, we put it inside the Secret File.

Everyone in the office then takes it in turns to write a message along the lines of ‘Congratulations!’ or ‘See you!’ before passing the card to the next person. Of course the company president also writes a personal message.

When everyone’s finished writing their messages, we decorate the card and make it cute and colourful.

Finally, we give it to Pim! She seemed really pleased with it.

Bonus : The True Face of ILL

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ピムさんまたね＆キムさんお帰りなさい　ティーパ－ティ

4月17日イノベーティブランゲージラーニングで午後のお茶会をしました。

香港に引っ越したキムさんが一時来日したので、「お帰りなさい」パーティ
新しい家族を迎えるためにピムさんが帰国するので、「またね」パーティです。

みんなでお菓子を食べて、おしゃべりをして楽しみました。
お菓子には選択肢もあります。いちご・抹茶・カスタード・・・どれにしようか迷います。

ところで、みなさんは「色紙」を知っていますか。

20cm×20cmくらいの無地の紙です。でも3mmくらいの厚さがあるのでボードと言ったほうがいいかもしれません。たいてい和紙が表に貼ってあります。日本ではお祝い事やお別れのときに色々な人みんなで色紙にコメントを書きます。ILLでもスタッフが会社を辞めるときやお祝いの時に色紙を贈ります。
まず真ん中に送る人の名前を書きます。今回はピムさんですね。そして本人にばれないように秘密のファイルにはさみます。

一人ずつ「おめでとう」や「またね」などのコメントを書いて次の人に渡します。もちろん社長も直筆で書きます。

みんなが書き終わったらデコレーションをして可愛く華やかにしましょう。
最後にピムさんに渡しました。よろこんでくれたみたいです。

【おまけ】　ILLの本性

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, (Formal I know, but “G’Day mates,” might be a bit too casual.)

Sam (AKA Jkid) here. I have been listening to JapanesePod101 since its debut on the web. Its purpose was simple. To make learning Japanese interesting and fun. As a long time learner of Japanese I was, of course, interested in what it might have had to offer.

Since that time I have listened to almost all of the lessons here. At first, that is all I did. However, it didn’t take me long to find my way over to the forums and into the comment section of each lesson where I then began to interact regularly with the great community of people that’s been established here. (Although, it should be noted that in the lesson comments I posted as “A Person” just to change things up a bit.)

The community is in fact the main reason behind my decision to approach JapanesePod101 about the possibility of assisting in some capacity with the running of program when I came to Japan to undertake a year of university studies as an exchange student. Yep, I am here in Japan now!

To my surprise they accepted my offer, and I am writing to you all now. To introduce myself as the latest staff member of JapanesePod101. I will be, as always, interacting with the community through the lesson comments and forums and now as an Administrator I will endeavor to take my involvement one step further and do my best to make sure this wonderful website remains spam free and the community continues to prosper!

To the other staff of JapanesePod101, I would like to thank you once more for this great opportunity and for making such a fantastic website through which people can discover how fun learning Japanese can be!

See you all in the forums and lesson comments,

- JKid

Hey guys, Marky here!

The year is coming to an end. I want it to hurry up and finish as soon as possible because I’ve been focusing all my energy on 2008.

But, the month isn’t over yet, so I’d like to get some important information out there about December.

◎　Mixi
We finally got off our lazy butts and set up a mixi community. I’ll be posting little tidbits here and there about upcoming stories and behind the scenes things. Next year we’ll be trying some new approaches, so if you’re obsessed with JPod like some people are, you’ll definitely want to check it out from time to time.
http://mixi.jp/view_community.pl?id=2858106

◎　My Tokyo Travelblogue　
For fans of the Agnes Murakami saga, December is a good month for you! There are 4 Agnes lessons this month. Day 22, Day 23, Day 24 and Day 25. I can’t remember a time when the Agnes story went this long uninterrupted. I go into a little more detail about Agnes on the Mixi page, so Mixi members may want to check it out.

◎　Japanese Culture Class
We keep getting a lot of requests for explanations about the Intros gags. We recorded this one at the same time as the last JCC on the same topic. We are finally releasing it during the Holiday Break. Actually, we’ve gotten soooo many requests for this, that we decided to act upon it. in 2008, the intro scripts will be included in the PDF’s. I’ll talk more about that next month.

◎　Nihongo Dōjō - Welcome to Style You
This is probably the most popular thing we’ve done to date. The character Fabrizio has taken on a life of his own. I tip my hat to Naomiさん and Yoshikaiさん for that one. This 25 lesson newbie series will end on 12/17. But have no worries, Part 2 will begin next year!

◎　Holiday Schedule
Our usual schedule will be disrupted during the Christmas and New Years Holiday.

The Tokyo office will be closed from 12/28 - 1/6.
In past years we just shut down completely, but I’m happy to say this year will be different. We will still be releasing lessons for most of the holiday break.

On 12/24, we’ll put out a podcast detailing the lesson schedule. Intermediate learners will be loving it, I think!
The new seasons will begin 1/7. Again, I can’t tell you how excited I am to get these out to you!

Recently, listener Todd Mizomi visited us in the Tokyo Office! Todd was visiting Tokyo with his wife, celebrating his 8th wedding anniversary. He brought in some delicious Hawaiian chocolate as well as some heavy camera equipment! We know our listeners are very interested in seeing the faces behind the JapanesePod101.com team, and we took advantage of Todd’s professionalism! We had a lot of fun with our mini-photoshoot! There will be lots more pictures in the coming days! Thanks Todd-san!

Starting from the left: Brian, Oe, Jon, Marky, Kishimoto-sensei, Jeff, Yuki, and Peter in the center. (Missing: Sachiko, Naomi, Jun, Miki, Sakura, Natsuko, Yoshikai, Take, and Ushijima) We hope you enjoy this.
Yoroshiku o-negai shimasu!よろしくおねがいします。

Last Friday, we received a visit from Favianna Rodriguez a talented and sucessful artist from the Bay Area (California)! Everyone at JapanesePod101.com was wowed by her energy level, personality and the fact that she brought us Ghirardelli Chocolates (Gone in 60 seconds)! We can’t thank her enough, as it was great meeting and getting to know her. You can find out more about the talented Favianna-san and her art work by clicking here.

Favianna-san managed to track down some more members of the JapanesePod101.com team. So, we would like to introduce you to Sasahara-sensei, Takase and Jonas.

Starting from the left: Kazunori (JPod101.com’s Alpha-male), Natsuko (holding the Japanese Journal Favianna’s art work appeared in), Favianna, Sasahara-sensei, Takase, Jonas, (kneeling) Sakura(holding half of the o-miyage (souvenir) from Favianna) and Peter(holding half of the o-miyage (souvenir) from Favianna). We hope you enjoy this.
Yoroshiku o-negai shimasu!よろしくおねがいします。

Last Friday, Dr. Lalo, a doctor from Mexico and an avid listener, stopped by JapanesePod101.com! He was vacationing in Tokyo and wanted to pay us a visit, and he found us! We were so happy to see him! We went to the local sushi bar together; he tried the UNI (sea urchin), and he loved it!! He did all the ordering himself!

Dr. Lalo made sure we took some pictures to share with all of you, so “Hello listeners, here we are!”

Starting from the left: Kazunori (JPod101.com’s Alpha-male), Peter (holding an o-miyage (souvenir) from Dr. Lalo), Kazu (That face is on purpose!), Dr. Lalo, Natsuko, Sakura(holding another o-miyage (souvenir) from Dr. Lalo), and Hatsumi. This is just the first of many pictures and videos to come. We hope you enjoy this.
Yoroshiku o-negai shimasu!よろしくおねがいします。

Learn Japanese with Sasahara-sensei, the latest edition to the JapanesePod101.com team. We would like to officially welcome our new Grammar Guru, Sasahara Yuko- sensei. In our continuing quest to improve our lessons and provide our listeners with the best possible Japanese Language Learning Lessons possible, Sasahara-sensei is plays a crucial role in our structure. In addition to being a fully qualified Japanese Language teacher, she has over 5-years of experience teaching Japanese to foreigners. Her addition to our team is vital as all material we present has Sasahara-sensei’s official “seal of approval.”� We feel a responsibility to our listener’s to provide fun and, at the same time, professional language education. We want you to feel 100% secure in using the Japanese you learn at JapanesePod101.com. As every lesson must be approved by Sasahara-sensei before being presented to the world, you don’t have to worry about double-checking and cross-referencing.

For more information of Sasahara-sensei please visit our members page.