Last Friday was the last day of work for Kim, our former culture classes and events coordinator. Kim worked with us for a little over a year, and was much loved by students. She arranged all of the culture course classes (tea ceremony, pottery, etc.), and also the Friday night parties and other after-school events. We're very sad to see her go.
On a happier note, Kim's replacement, Makiko, is settling in nicely to her new job, and has big plans for future school activities. Stay tuned for more information!

We've started a separate blog in Japanese! It's written partly for host families, to keep them informed about what's happening at school, but should be a great resource for anyone who wants to know what daily life at the school is like, and to practice your Japanese reading at the same time! It'll be updated a couple times a week, so keep an eye on it here!

GenkiJACS Japanese blog

We've added an album of photos of the new (since June 2008) school location to our photo gallery. You can see the pictures here. These should give you an idea of what the classrooms and lounge area, etc. look like. It's a lot nicer than the old school was! Instead of cold metal walls, we now have 14 unique classrooms, each with its own "theme" of sorts. The construction this summer was the first stage of our project to build a school that is as interesting and fun as the classes and teachers are. The next stage is scheduled for May 2009, so GenkiJACS is going to get better and better!

New student lounge, overlooking the main street of the city


More photos after the jump!

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We finally got around to updating our teacher introductions page to reflect some of the new teachers who have been hired recently. Not all new teachers have been added yet, though, so we'll keep updating the page whenever we have time!
We also sadly said goodbye to a few teachers whose contracts expired at the end of summer, including Takako-sensei, who is off to work with JICA (the Japan International Cooperation Agency, similar to the US Peace Corps), teaching Japanese language and culture in Bulgaria!
If you have a message for any of the teachers who left, feel free to mail it to us, and we'll pass it along!

GenkiJACS was recently approved as a recognized school for the German bildungsurlaub, or educational leave program. Qualifying German nationals can now receive 10 days of state-sponsored study leave with us.
We have been approved for the following states: Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Hessen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Niedersachen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein
The Bildungsurlaub program allows employees to apply for up to 10 extra days of educational leave to study a foreign language abroad.
There is a little more info on our site here. For more information, contact us!

We received a letter recently informing us that the only official Western Union agent in Japan, Suruga Bank, is ceasing to handle Western Union money transfers. This means that students cannot use Western Union to pay school fees anymore.
Their official release (in Japanese) is here. The only thing approaching a reason given is that their partnership with Western Union has expired, and will not be renewed.
The other options previously available for GenkiJACS students to pay are of course still available: International or domestic bank transfer, international postal money order, credit card, Paypal and Moneybookers.

The Japan Times reports that London magazine Monocle named Fukuoka as the best city in the world for shopping! Reasons include the compactness of the central shopping district, the big selection of brand names, and the closeness to Asia.
Fukuoka was also chosen as the city with the 17th highest quality of life in the world – and only the second city in Japan, after Tokyo! Cities were ranked on a variety of factors, including friendliness, safeness, cleanliness, transport and more. Fukuoka is on this list for the first time, perhaps showing how much its profile has grown in recent years. As if you needed another reason to come here!
The original article is for Monocle subscribers only, unfortunately, but if you happen to be one of those, click here to read Fukuoka’s entry!

Alternatively, the article seems to be available as a PDF here, although perhaps not for long...

A couple of choice quotes:
“Friendly, cosmopolitan Fukuoka is tiny in comparison to Tokyo, but it beats the Japanese capital hands down with its cuisine and shopping.”
“these days it’s all about Fukuoka”

It's nice to hear that everyone else is finally catching up with what we knew years ago!

The busy summer season means that this blog doesn't get updated nearly as often as we would like, but much has changed in the last month or so that we would like tell you about. For today, though, we wanted to mention one recent thing that we are very proud of.
We receive students from several agencies, including Languagecourse.net, which is based in Barcelona. They ask returning students to provide feedback on the school they studied at. Throughout the last year, GenkiJACS received an average customer satisfaction rating of 4.7 out of 5!

In Languagecourse.net’s own words:
"Only the very best schools receive the Excellence Award ... to certify that superior customer satisfaction has been acknowledged by LanguageCourse.Net. The feedback of your clients showed that your school did excellent work in providing satisfied customers throughout the last year. Overall rating: 4.7 (out of 5.0)"

Here's the actual document:

If you visit our main site, you may notice a little black bar in the bottom-left-hand corner. This is a chat box, and if it says "Click to talk to GenkiJACS rep!", you're just one click away from us! We can't promise to be online 24 hours a day, but when we are, we're happy to answer your questions straight away. And you're almost completely anonymous - no login is required, and the only identifying information sent to us is your IP address.

The service is provided by Hab.la, and is theoretically platform-independent. However, if you have any problems using it, please do drop us a line!

Unfortunately, at first only sales and marketing reps will be available to talk to you - no Japanese teachers on hand to answer your grammar questions instantaneously just yet, I'm afraid...

In our never-ending quest to improve our students' Japanese, we've linked up with Japan Online School (J-OS), a Japanese school offering webcam lessons over the Internet, to offer a special discount to GenkiJACS students who sign up with them.

First, the problem:
Many students tell us that they don’t have a chance to practice their Japanese after returning to their home countries. Without practice, you WILL forget what you studied, but if there is no Japanese community in your home area, keeping up your conversation practice can be very difficult.
This is where an online school like J-OS can come in very useful. Trained teachers and private lessons ensure that you don’t forget the Japanese you learned at GenkiJACS!
After considering all of the major online schools, we chose J-OS because of the good structure of their lessons, the quality of their teachers, and the simplicity of their system.

Now, the package:
Standard private lessons are roughly 1,900 yen for 50 minutes. However, GenkiJACS and J-OS have teamed up to offer a special deal for graduating GenkiJACS students:

1) Free trial lesson (normally 980-1280 yen)
2) 1 extra lesson free when you first buy lessons (so, for example, 5 lessons for the price of 4)

There is no extra cost to students for this - GenkiJACS pays for your trial lesson by cutting costs elsewhere. We took this step because we don't want students forgetting the Japanese they spent time and money learning, and the only way to keep it up is regular practice!

This deal is only open to graduating GenkiJACS students. If you are a GenkiJACS student who graduated between January 1st, 2008 and now, you are also eligible. Contact us for details!