End of school term in Japan
 

Konnichiwa,

We've been having Japanese language evening classes for a couple of years here in the UK and our final one is next week... quite sad really.

Our sensei has been fantastic and we wondered if there was any sort of end of term tradition that Japanese High School students followed that we could also do i.e.- buy their teacher a small gift or present. The whole idea is to put a smile on her face and say 'domo arigatto gozaimasu'.

Would appreciate any ideas.

Cheers.


PS. Just in case, my Japanese is nowhere near good enough for a reply in anything other than English... even after two years!

Re: End of school term in Japan
 

Hi, its great to hear there are people enjoying learning
Japanese language.
I cannot think out any particular tradition we have,
but hear is one of the idea which we did when I finished my schooling.

We got a card (could be a bigger colored paper or anything),
put photo of all class together in the middle(could be the one you took from the class or school events with the teacher, or you can draw 'thank you'
or :) with colord pencils or pens if you dont have any photo),
put a few sentence of thank you messages around it from each member of the class.

you can decorate spaces left with colord pencil or small
pieces of stickers to make it colorful.

This is quite common way to say 'thank you' or 'good luck' in the
goodbye situation here(I think).

How about in you culture? Is there a way to do?

Noriko :)

Re: End of school term in Japan
 

Hi Noriko,

Thanks for your reply.

My wife is a teacher here in the UK and she regularly gets given small gifts at the end of each school year, we hope there is as much chocolate as possible included, but I don't think this is a particularly common or expected practice.

From taking two years of lessons and spending time in Japan I was aware that there are protocols and traditions for, apparently, almost everything! I just wondered if there was a specific tradition we could follow to say thanks to our sensei, who is Japanese.

Nice idea about the card.

Cheers.

Re: End of school term in Japan
 

Is the teacher returning to Japan or is has your class/course simply ended?

If it's the former, a gift that represents the town he/she teaches in would be a good gift. Preferably something non-perishable, non-bulky would be much appreciated.



NC Penguin

Re: End of school term in Japan
 

We've been having evening classes at our local college and the 'school' year is coming to and end. Unfortunately we can't sign up for our third year as we are moving to Australia in November.

Cheers.