Good morning everyone!
The school festival is now officially open!
We hope some of you might have a chance to come out and join us at USG World. That is Universal Seiritsu Gakuen World.
It is the last festival in the Heisei period! Come out and enjoy a variety of interesting theme rooms. But you should come on an empty stomach because this year there are a lot of rooms serving food from around the world.
Hope to see you here!
Wow! That two weeks went very quickly!
We really enjoyed having Amir stay with us for these past two weeks.
On his second day, we sent him off to the rice fields to cut rice.
During the next week he had a social studies lesson where he talked about his country. The Japanese students found it very interesting. Amir did an amazing job of speaking in Japanese and communicating his ideas!
It is such a good chance for our students to see how the international students can come and are able to communicate in two or three languages!
And the last few days of his stay was during the period to prepare for the school festival.
It was really too bad he couldn't stay and see how it turned out.
We hope to see you again, Amir!!
It is coming soon!
It is the annual school festival. In Japanese, this is called, "Bunkasai (文化祭)."
To be more accurate that means it is a cultural festival. Many schools will have presentations and displays about the studies and research they have done. They also try to show to visitors the culture of the school.
The culture of our school is changing as more more international students attend and more students with international backgrounds attend. As well, the increasing need for an international global work force is becoming more evident and so more students are considering how they might need to use English in their careers.
So, this year, the theme for our school festival is USG. It stands for Universal Seiritsu Gakuen. The name sounds a little like USJ which is a theme park in western Japan. We hope it is a fun time for everyone.
One of our important international events every year is the school visit in September by Fairhills.
Working in conjunction with the International Youth Association of Japan, we have one day with the Australian students. It is a wonderful chance for them to participate in regular classes and to try a cultural activity. They typically visit several schools during their stay in Japan and we are one of those school visits.
Not only is it a good chance for our students to communicate with students from abroad but is also a good chance for teachers to get challenged in new ways. This year all of the teachers came up with interesting plans for the classes that they had despite having a really tight schedule.
In some cases, when schedules are not so tight, they can just create a completely fun lesson not related to any test material. These kinds of lessons increase the amount of communication students can get.
But we truly appreciate the effort that goes into making a class that still needs to cover test material into a lesson that is interesting and somewhat understandable for the visiting students.
For the students who could come and visit us, we really hope you enjoyed your stay. We would love to have you come back and visit us anytime!
Every year our school sends a bunch of students out to Australia on the Homestay program.
Lately the groups number approximately 50 students or more. We have been doing this homestay to an area called Bathurst for about 20 years.
On top of that, we have students who study abroad for three months or six months or even one year. The number of students studying abroad increases every year. This year we will have about seven students go overseas.
While that isn't an amazingly large number, we have more and more students who are asking us how to prepare for going overseas after they have finished high school. Some are doing it with their universities and some are doing it instead of going to a Japanese university.
This year one of our students is hoping to go on to acting in North America. She wants to study acting there and in English! We really hope she can chase and achieve her dreams and we look forward to seeing her on the screen in the future!
Good luck to all of the students who are stepping out beyond the Japanese border!
Hi everyone, I'm Amy and I've come to Japan and Seiritsu Gakuen to improve my Japanese and experience Japanese high school and culture.
I'm from Sydney Australia and although it's only my third week here, I've had heaps of fun and already experienced things like inekari (rice cutting) and am in the middle of preparing for the bunkasai (cultural festival). I'm really excited for what's to come and can't wait to go more places and make more friends. Hopefully I will be able to eat a Harajuku crepe and cheese stick soon :)
Here is a picture of me with some of my new friends. I'm second from the right.
こんにちは！僕の日本語の名前は草薙太郎です！
イスラエルから日本の文化を経験するために来ました。
短い間にほんにいますが、成立高校で決して忘れない想いを作れると思います。
As many of you are aware, at our school we have after school lessons for elementary age students. This is part of our Zebra program. We had a short break during the summer but we have started back up now this week.
We had a special class last week to enjoy the last days of summer.
Now we are back at our regular weekly classes.
If you would like to know more about our after school lessons, you can check out the website:
http://www.seiritz-zebra.jp/english/
There is a daily blog there with posts every week from English group.
Enjoy!
This summer, I went back to my home town of Shanghai, in China, I met my family and old friends, and also had study at an academy to prepare for my SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) for entering university.
The study was a real struggle for me. Firstly, I had to stay in my academy for 7 hours per day, from morning to night. It usually made me forget that I was actually on my vacation time. After studying with no break for 18 days, I felt very exhausted.
However, the course helped me a lot to prepare for the SAT. It not only taught me the basics, such as vocabulary and grammar, but also how to read English paragraphs even when I am facing unknown words.
I also met a lot of friends, so I am really happy.
I am happy to be back here in Japan, doing what I love to do (soccer).
Over the summer I spent my time in Melbourne, Australia recovering from injury, seeing old friends and spending time with my family.
I am looking forward to being able to play soccer again with all the guys at Seiritsu.
I am not the biggest fan of the hot weather but it will no doubt help me condition myself and improve my soccer game.
While I was in Australia, I met up with a lot of my old school friends around Melbourne. Some of my family also came over from Adelaide and saw be before I returned to Japan.
After my injury I completely changed my running style which took which felt like forever but it has helped me so much with my recovery and starting to get fit again. Now that I am back I am looking forward to meeting new people and making some friends around the school.
I will try my best to talk to everyone in Japanese but I can't make any promises that it will be good Japanese.
What's up guys?!
Did you enjoy your summer vacation? Anyway, you can be sure that I did.
We've worked hard, tried out new stuff and played against some of the best basketball teams in Japan. And also this summer there was a little bit of change to make things more fun, such as swimming and visiting different places. I got injured during the last game but I've since recovered.
I really enjoyed the summer! Hope you did to!
Hello. I am Sophia from Virginia Beach.
I came to Tokyo last month and recently started attending school. The weather is really hot and humid compared to Virginia which surprised me a lot. During my stay in Japan, I have have tried many dishes that are not common back in America.
Recently, I went to a river near my friends house. The cool water was nice because the weather was hot. I would like to go to other rivers and try new foods while my stay in Japan.
Seiritsu Gakuen is a private co-educational high school created in 1925 and it is located in Tokyo, Japan.