Konnichi-wa, everybody.

Hajimemashite. My name is Chiharu Takase.

I was born in the spring?that's why my parents decided to include the the Kanji for spring (haru) in my name.

My hometown is in Yamaguchi prefecture on the western coast of Honshu, but now I live in Kyoto, one of Japan's early capital cities. I'm married with one son, and my hobby is the Japanese tea ceremony.

Learning a new language, including Japanese, can be tough at first, but once you start comprehending the patterns and rhythm, you'll find that there is nothing more interesting. Do what you can, when you can, and enjoy the challenge. I'm really looking forward to meeting you in our online Japanese classroom. Let's spend an enjoyable 50 minutes together.

Dozo yoroshiku onegai-shimasu.

What kinds of activities do you include in your online Japanese classes?

Beginner 1

In my Beginner 1 lessons I pick up one Japanese grammar point and have the students practice it. There is no need to prepare for the lesson in advance; all the vocabulary used in my online lesson is shown with both Romaji and with English explanations. The initial goal is to sound out the Japanese words and begin to master the rhythm and phonetics of Japanese.

From there, the next step is to understand and memorize the basic structure of Japanese. Japanese phonetics have just one sound attached to each hiragana or katakana character, so by speaking slowly and clearly, you, too, can learn to speak beautiful Japanese.

Beginner 2

At this level students learn one Japanese expression per lesson and practice how to explain things more clearly and communicate their feelings with better nuanced expressions in Japanese. I ask students to remember the expressions by practicing them out loud within the context of conversations in Japanese. Once completing the Beginner 2 level, you will have learned the essential Japanese phrases and vocabulary that you'll need for daily life in Japan.

If we have time, we can also get you started on tackling Kanji. Many everyday Japanese words are formed by combining two Kanji characters?if you keep this in mind while memorizing them, you'll do fine

. Please share your thoughts on teaching and learning Japanese.

Please come and join my easygoing online Japanese lessons. I know that you have a busy life with work, household chores, school work and that everyday is not without its stresses, but I put my heart into creating online Japanese lessons at JOI that I hope might ease just a bit of that stress.