“Tanabata-matsuri” by Tuesday Japanese language class

Date/Time: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 10:30-12:00

Venue: Civic Plaza Grand Hall

Participants: 47 (students 22, volunteer teachers 21, volunteer children carers 4)

Japanese language class has been regularly held on Tuesday and Saturday. The Tuesday class holds, in addition to the regular class, combined class twice a year with a purpose to exchange communication among other learners and teachers. On this day, July 7, one of them titled “Tanabata Class” was held. The cession started by the opening speech by Mr. Aibe.

The first program was kamishibai, picture-story show, titled “Tanabata monogatari”. Mr. T. Watanabe turned over illustrated pages and 4 students talked stories in fluent Japanese.

The next was origami, colored paper, folding for hanging to bamboo branches. All students tried hard to fold kengyu (Alair) using colored papers being explained by Ms. H. Yamaguchi. Some students were advised by volunteer teachers, while the most others went on folding well tracing the creases.

Then, tanzaku writing started. With the advice of Ms. M. Hasebe, everyone wrote each one’s wish on strips of paper in five colors, and announced respective word. The followings are some of them.

“I want to be more good at Japanese”, “May my kid be fine and bigger”, “May all my family be healthy”, “I want a car”, “I wish I would be rich”, “I want a baby”, “I wish to get a driver’s license”, “I wish I could go to Hawaii”, etc.

Finally, everyone hung his/her own origami and tanzaku onto branches of bamboos prepared by volunteer teachers. In addition to their owns, there we densely hung varieties of other ornamental origamis, such as, orihime (Vega), lantern, streamers, water melon, rings, and others. It’s said that the sasa-kazari, decorated bamboo, is a unique traditional custom only in Japan, but not in China and Korea.

Due to occasional rainy skies, the yearly rendezvous by kengyu and orihime was rarely seen in the Milky Way in these evenings, however, the rain seemed to be their joyful teardrops in the heaven. The writer felt happiness looking at foreign students’ satisfactory smiles. I’m quite sure that their wishes would be fulfilled being supported by volunteer teachers who were so careful that they had cut the bamboos early in the morning so to keep fresh and live.     (Vol. 15-8)