Getting into the swing of things

On the first day of Academy, we had a “Survival Japanese” class as a group to learn common greetings and phrases. We then broke off into three levels for our daily language classes. In the beginner class, we went over the sounds of Japanese and learned ten hiragana (one of the Japanese alphabets), including how to write them in the correct stroke order. In the intermediate class, we did jikoshoukai (self-introductions) and reviewed hiragana. In the advanced class, we reviewed basic jikoshoukai and learned ways to express ourselves and our aspirations with new adjectives and phrases.

In the afternoon, we had a mixer led by the RAs, where we got to know each other by playing Trainwreck and a story game with dice. We also played a tournament of janken (Japanese rock paper scissors). Students played against each other before battling each of the staff, winning stickers as prizes. We were also divided into six han, which are working groups that have different tasks during the Academy. For example, the blog han will be selecting the photos and writing the posts for this blog!