Homestay Program of Taiwanese High School Students
Thirty three Taiwanese students of National Hualien Commercial Vocational High School visited Abiko City as part of their education program in Japan, in accordance with Chiba Prefectural Office’s request to Abiko City. Answering to the request, AIRA accepted 1 night-2days homestay program.
AIRA has been making a donation to the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology to support their activities to breed Short-Tailed Albatross (Aho-dori). AIRA sold “Aho-dori Manju” (aho-dori branded Japanese sweet bun) at the 25th Abiko International Festival on November 28, 2016 and the proceeds were donated to the Institute together with private contributions made by AIRA members.
Date & Time: Saturday, December 10 2 p.m.~4:00 p.m.
Venue: Grand Hall, Abiko Civic Plaza
Guest Panelists: Ms. Ena Sano (El Salvador), Ms. Maria Theresa Ozawa (Columbia), Ms. Wasana Kida(Thailand), Ms. Zhan Hua,(張華 China), Mr. Joerg Roth(Germany)
Participants: Mr. Hesaki, chief of AIRA Volunteer Activity Dep., volunteer teachers and students of AIRA Japanese Language Course and others. 42 people in total (including 8 foreigners).
AIRA has Japanese language classes on Tuesday morning, Friday evening and Saturday morning. Volunteer teachers teach foreigners from the basic to intermediate level of Japanese in those classes.
On this day teachers held “Panel Discussion for Better Japanese Teaching” to seek for more effective teaching ways that meet foreigners’ needs.
A year-end party was held to deepen friendship among members and ordinary citizens.
A special class “Let’s experience traditional plays in Japan’s New Year Holidays” was held by the Tuesday class members as the year-end combined cession. The class was opened by an explanatory speech by Ms. Y. Watanabe, saying “We celebrate Oshogatsu, New Year, in January in Japan. Today we wish you would enjoy kids’ plays in the Oshogatsu season.” The program proceeded as follows: