fresh photos - kanban, oshirase, word-play

Streetsigns in Japan (mainly around 2009 Sapporo, March - June)
includes colorful posters for Hokkaido University club membership days

http://picasaweb.google.com/eastasia108/StreetsignsInJapan#


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Views around town 2009 - mainly Sapporo; also Fukui-ken
some video clips, as well; one more round of uploads by middle July

http://picasaweb.google.com/usaviews/Japan09springSummer#



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Panorama scenes - around Hokkaido; mainly Sapporo
one more round of uploads by middle July

http://picasaweb.google.com/big1file/Pano2009jp#
additional wide views at http://tinyurl.com/jp09pano
(Fukui & Ishikawa-ken)

YouTube selected videos collected on blog

Japanese Study Videos (Blog of YouTube Videos)
http://www.manythings.org/b/j/

native speaker writers' help online

http://lang-8.com (Infinite Langauges) is a community of language learners who write in the language they study to have it checked by native speakers. The site isn't MEANT for a native speaker to TRANSLATE for you (just correct your mistakes).

Daikagura from Ise (mini album)

http://laputa21.com/ise/daikagura.htm
is a short photo essay of the annual visit to Echizen-city (Fukui-ken) by a traveling group from Mie-ken. Recorded by staff at laputa21.com in Echizen-city (was Takefu) on June 7.

kanji strokes by on-screen animation

a new site for "Kanji Learning Using Animations"
http://www.sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/icampus/u/upod.jsp

from students at Iwate University

first years together; mixed years after that

In times of shrinking enrollments, mixing students of different study years is sometimes necessay. But here are reasons to specially handle the entry level students.

[1 Y. Moorman] I have been teaching mixed-level Japanese classes over 30 years and every year the combinations change, yet I adamantly fight to keep the first year as one class...
I keep all the level on the same theme/topic at the same time... [this] keeps
me sane; not using different topics at the same time in the one classroom.

[2 E. Sullivan] My experience is keep your 1's by themselves! They are the most needy
and since they can't write for a while it is hard to give them independent work.
I had a 2/4 split three years ago, and even though it was crazy, I could still give
the 2's writing work or pair work while I taught the 4's and vice versa.
Also, the older kids can do more reading and writing as well as projects...
Also, it could hurt your program if it falls apart at the 1 level and they feel lost.
What is the number cut off to make a section? Ours is 20 to make a class.