Hi everyone, It’s Haruka!! I’m a volunteer at Benkukai and I’m so excited to be working with you!! Let me tell you all about myself. I’m a Japanese speaker from Tokyo and I’ve been here for one year. Now I’m having a lot of fun studying English and working. I’m not sure, but sometimes I […]

This week, we have decided to take a break from studying and do something fun before the most festive time of the year. GAME NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!! I brought in various kinds of board games, and asked everyone to have fun. Didn’t ask for anything else. For the blog review, I shall introduce the games I brought. […]

Hello, everyone. This is Naoki. It was good to see you again. Happy Lunar New Year!! February 5th is the Chinese new year (春節/しゅんせつ). Japanese people don’t celebrate it. In fact, I didn’t know what the lunar year was until I came to Canada. But it is good to know about other cultures that you […]

For this week’s activity, I asked attendees to be creative and make their own “Sugoroku” board. Sugoroku is an old Japanese board game which is similar to checkers or LIFE if that rings a bell. In Sugoroku, each player has a token on the board with one line (or multiple lines) of squares which leads […]

This week, we have decided to take a break from studying and do something fun before the most festive time of the year. GAME NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!! I brought in various kinds of board games, and asked everyone to have fun. Didn’t ask for anything else. For the blog review, I shall introduce the games I brought. […]

Before I get to this week’s review, let me explain what’s going on for those visiting this blog for first time. Study Night (Benkyokai) is a language exchange event to connect those who are interested in learning Japanese/English through conversation and activities using both languages. Sign in is from 5:45pm until 6pm. You are free […]

This week, we played Pictionary!  I actually did not know this game is called “Pictionary” in English until 5 minutes before the activity started. I kept calling this game おえかきの森 in Japanese, which is directly translated to “a forest of drawing”. If you wonder why, just google “おえかきの森”, you will see why.  Do you know […]

  This week, We did a very difficult activity that requires high level of English and Japanese. This activity includes answering riddles and translating the questions. It seemed the questions themselves were already very hard. Here is a list of questions that we did for this activity. Please give a shot, if you have time […]

The activity we did this time was murder mystery. Does it sound scary? Don’t worry,. we had a lot of detectives at Benkyokai to solve these cases..There were 4 murder cases on the activity sheet and each case was written in a mix of Japanese and English. This meant that they could only be solved […]

The topic for this week’s activity was tongue twisters. These are made by words which sounds similar to one another, and confuse you as you say them. Yet, because they consist of similar sounding words, they are good for pronunciation practice! I found some tongue twisters from both Japanese and English. Can you say them […]

Hello everyone! It’s me, Akiko reporting on this week’s benkyoukai. It’s getting warmer and warmer and summer is just around the corner! I believe everyone’s looking forward to their summer plans. Of course, Benkyoukai is on your list, isn’t it?     Before reporting this week’s event, let me tell you about “benkyoukai(勉強会)/ study night.”  Benkyoukai […]

This time, Sugoroku(双六／すごろく) was the activity. We had a great time playing it! Do you know what Sugoroku is? It is a traditional Japanese board game. Everyone has tokens and rolls the dice. Then, they make their token move forward for the number of square the dice roll says. Each space has directions(e.g. go back […]

This week we played a game called Spyfall. It’s a game where people have to find out who the spy hiding among them is, while the spy needs to figure out the location that the rest of the people are trying to keep hidden from him/her. You probably have no idea what I am talking […]

  Hello everyone. This is Bob. In  southern Japan the rainy season has started. We call the rainy season “tsuyu(梅雨つゆ)”. It normally starts in May and ends July. However it depends on region. In southern Japan it starts earlier and in northern Japan it starts later. Hydrangeas bloom in “梅雨つゆ“. Hydrangeas in the rain are […]

Hello everyone! It’s me, Akiko reporting on this week’s benkyoukai. Let’s get started!    Before reporting this week’s event, let me tell you about “benkyoukai(勉強会)/ study night.”  Benkyoukai is a language exchange gathering for Japanese learners and English learners. It is held at the JP Canada’s office (#320-890 West Pender) from 5:45pm to 7:00pm every Wednesday. […]

Now let’s take a look at what we learned this week! How do you like your house?  Have you ever looked for a new apartment?  This week we learned how to explain house/appartment features by translating example sentences.  You will find the I would like to share some good translations  🙂  We have a Japanese style […]