This summer I finished my first 2 week-long session at Concordia language camp for Japanese. The camp’s name was “Mori No Ike.” The students who stayed for 2 weeks long were known as Satos, and sometimes the Sato and the Gaakse(?) those who stayed for 4 weeks were separated for different activities; each group had a different schedule as well. The schedule is similar to the following (some times may not be correct); 8:00am was wake up time followed by Rajio Taiso which is a series of exercise and some line dancing then we had breakfast. After breakfast we had our morning classes that were taught by one or two senseis or teachers, break time then our first morning club. The morning club that I had for the first week was Okinawa style karate. I didn’t learn that much but we went over a few stances some basic punching and kicking, and Bo staff moves. Shortly following 1st club was song time then lunch. After lunch all of the students Sato and Gaakse returned to their cabin for quiet time and to receive their mail; nap time lasted until 3:00. After nap time we had freedom time where we could purchase Japanese candy, swim, socialize or practice Hiragana. A normal pattern for me during Jiyu Jikon for me was to sit down at a table with friends from my cabin or Ochii with either Isihigo Pocky or Yan Yan, play a game of cards and then study my Hiragana. After Jiyu Jikon we had our second club.
My second club for the first week was dance. I was under the impression from my sensei that the dances would be pre choreographed just like the sore sore dance during Rajio Taiso. Well… I was wrong, I had mistaken it for the dance classes during Jiyu Jikon which I never attended. It was somewhat horrendous but I ended up during the last two days tacking over command and getting 1:00 of the song choreographed, which is an accomplishment for me.
The Second set of clubs I picked for my last week was origami and film club. Probably the coolest thing I learned how to make in the origami class was the envelope. In film we based our movie off of soilin’ greens is people and did “tofu is made of people.” And the video can be seen here [...] (I will find the link later).
After second club we have a song time where we either learn a song or dance and then we have dinner. After dinner we went to the camp fire and sang songs once more and then all the cabins were called off in order, and then after doing all the night time hygiene practices we went to bed.
Over the 2 week course I learned how to almost fluently read and write Hiragana and was able to look at a word in English to Japanese dictionary and write it down in Hiragana, and I am very proud of myself for that. The camp did an amazing job of introducing me to Japanese and helping me understands how to speak and write it, although I don’t quite know grammar mechanics yet.
The sensei’s there are also amazing as well the senseis that were in my cabin were Kojirou-sensei, Shirou-sensie and Hiroake-sensei; they all had amazing personalities, and talked in English in the cabins which helped make the stay better.
The kids in my cabin were also really cool as well and I got to be really good friends with all of them and I even plan on meeting a few of them again after I graduate next year. One of them I met was anticipating the release of the new PC phantasy star online game that was coming out soon as I was and we are definitely going to play it together.
All in all the camp experience was an amazing one and I will post photos in my next article.
