Thank you for the Halloween Gift !!

In this week, we received your Halloween gift ! Thank you sooooooo much!!!
See the picture? We are so excited to have such an unexpected present and really enjoy the unusual taste of American sweets.
They are extremely deliciou and nicely different from the candies we usually have in Japan.
On the other hand, this is very rare and precious experience for students here because most of them never have had a gift from abroad like this!!

"Gagaku" concert

This is called "Jyugatsu Zakura"(October cherry blossoms)

that oddly come in full bloom in the middle of fall.

Last weekend, I attended a Gagaku concert held at the music hall in the Royal Palace. Gagaku is the Japanese traditional, probably oldest form of music play, which is usually played with dancing as a part of official riturals conducted by Imperial family. On this special occasion, however, the atenndees chosen by postcards are allowed to enter the palace to appreciate the music inherited from the ancient time, commemorating the 2oth anniversaty of the current emperer's and empress's enthronement.

The above is the stage for dancers.

Behind that are music players seated on the floor

playing instruments such as "sho" and "teki."

Also, the area around Imperial Palace is recently the most popular place among Japanese joggers. If you walk alongside the moat of the Palace, you wwould find many joggers as well as foreign tourists eagerly taking pictures.

hello!

This is the main blog for the courses "Multimedia English D" and "Multimedia English B" offered by Kokushikan University, Tokyo, Japan.
My name is Asako Nobuoka, the instructor of these courses.
The aim of the courses is, through creating blogs about the life of Japanese college students, to provide some helpful tips for the students who are studying Japanese at Gettysburg College with instructor Takamiya. We also expect, through the "peer review" by the people out of our classes, to get some feedbacks via the comment for improving the quality of our weblogs.

We would be glad if any information provided by our blogs be a help for expanding the US students’ perspective of Japanese daily life and culture. Although it is not easy for Japanese students to express themselves in English, they are eager to make friendship with students in the US and other areas in Japan and to tell their own stories.

The pictures below are taken in the class. See? We're having a lot of fun!