Japanese Culture Exchange
Japanese Culture Exchange
Ten secondary school students from Tokyo were warmly welcomed to the Languages Connect office in the Digital Hub, Dublin 8 on Thursday, 28 March, where they had a cultural exchange with Irish students learning Japanese. The exchange meeting was just one item on the busy schedule of the Tokyo students, who were in Ireland for six days for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government-organised “World Campus in Ireland” trip. The trip allowed the delegation of students to come to Ireland to learn about child-friendly cities and the active social participation of children. It was linked to Tokyo’s efforts to build a more “children first” society, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Basic Ordinance on Children, which was adopted in 2021 to protect and promote children’s rights.
The cultural exchange meeting gave the students a chance to relax a little, meet their peers, and explore each other’s cultures, countries, and languages, through quizzes, presentations, and ice-breaker activities. For the Irish students, it also presented a rare opportunity to meet Japanese students their own age, and stoked the fires of their enthusiasm for studying Japanese.
Japanese was examined at Leaving Certificate level for the first time in 2004, and PPLI has been supporting students of Japanese since the early 2000s, through the provision of Japanese language classes in post-primary schools, as well as Japanese Leaving Certificate Saturday classes. Including those in Transition Year, over 2500 students are currently learning Japanese with PPLI support.
For more information on the Japanese language click here.
To find out more about Saturday classes click here.
