Jim Newman, a member of staff at the University of Bath, took Japanese classes offered at the Skills Centre with his wife Cassie Lowery (PhD student in Psychology). Jim shares with us how the language and cultural insights they acquired in their Japanese classes made their trip to Japan a richer and more enjoyable experience.
Why Japanese classes?
I am a member of professional services staff at the University of Bath, and my wife Cassie is also studying for a PhD at the university. We both love to travel, and we had been planning a trip to Japan for a long time, as it was a country that had always looked particularly beautiful and culturally interesting to us. We had also been looking for a fun activity to do together after work, to distract from the cold dark nights of autumn drawing in. We were therefore excited to discover the Complete Beginner Japanese course last year, especially being conveniently located on campus.
Taking classes as a couple
Taking the classes together was really rewarding. The lessons were fun and interactive, and we enjoyed meeting and working with the diverse class of other students, staff members, as well as people from the wider community outside of the university. Suzui Sensei (すずい先生) is a really genuine and entertaining teacher who is always keen to help.
We found attending the course as a couple very helpful, and we motivated each other to push ourselves during the lessons, and at home whilst working through the variety of homework activities. We both had such a wonderful experience doing the Complete Beginner class in Semester 1 that we decided to continue with the Post-Beginner class in Semester 2. By the end of the year, I think we had both impressed ourselves with the progress we had made in our language learning.
Using Japanese in Japan
Just a few weeks after the Post-Beginner lessons had finished in Semester 2, we set out on our long awaited trip to Japan. We had a truly lovely time in the country, everywhere we went was beautiful and the people we met were so welcoming.
We were so glad we took the language classes, as we found it really nice to be able to use what we had learned and speak with people there. Although I’m sure we made some mistakes, whenever we did speak with somebody in Japanese, we could see how much they appreciated us making the effort. It helped to make our trip a much richer experience!
Experiencing Japanese culture
Our lessons covered not just language, but also many different cultural aspects of life in Japan. We were motivated to go to Kamakura (鎌倉) – the setting of “Our Little Sister (海街 diary),” which we studied as part of a class film project.
We were also taught about Rakugo (落語), a form of traditional Japanese comedy stories. Through one of these stories about a “scary” Japanese bun (まんじゅう), we were taught about the large amounts of onomatopoeia used in Japanese, a fun quirk of the language. During our day trip to Kamakura (鎌倉), we were delighted to find a small stand selling まんじゅう at the nearby Hasedera Temple – luckily we didn’t find them too scary after all!
Will we keep learning Japanese?
We had such a great experience taking the classes and visiting the country that we are planning to travel to Japan again in a couple of years’ time. And we are hoping to take the Lower Intermediate classes to further our language learning journey before we go!
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