News and Reports Archive

The 2008 Yokohama Triennale opened on Saturday 13 September and will run until 30 November. The theme of this year’s exhibition is Time Crevasse. The Triennale exhibition comprises works by 74 artists from 25 different countries, featuring large scale installations, film and videos, photography, sculpture and live performances. For more…

Japanese architect, Junya Ishigami’s exhibit Extreme Nature: Landscape of Ambiguous Spaces will be on show from 14th September to 23rd November as one of the exhibits in the 11th International Architecture Exhibition 2008, part of the 2008 Venice Biennale. For more information on the 11th International Architecture Exhibition please click…

From 21st to 25th July 2008, 14 teachers came to the Japan Foundation London Language Centre to attend this year’s Japanese Language Refresher Course. The course aims to submerse Japanese-language teachers in Japanese for a week, so they can brush up and improve their language skills. Each morning the group…

Priory School, a secondary school in East Sussex specialising in language, arts and science, has been introducing Japanese in 2007-8 and is planning on taking it further. Japanese is the sixth foreign language the school has been offering recently, in addition to French, German, Spanish, Mandarin and a short course…

The 2008 Nihongo Cup Japanese Speech Contest for Secondary Schools took place on 28th June at the Embassy of Japan in London. A record-breaking 248 students from 21 schools across the country applied for the contest. Seventeen finalists made their speeches in the grand setting of the embassy ballroom, and…

June’s ‘Talking Contemporary Japan’ course saw 20 advanced adult learners of Japanese spend four 2-hour sessions focussing on short stories written by popular Japanese authors. In the first session participants studied “真っ赤な芥子” (Makkana Keshi) by Haruki Murakami, before moving on to “肩の上の秘書” (Kata no ue no Hisho) by Shinichi Hoshi…

The Japan Foundation London Language Centre has been successfully running the StepOutNet programme since 2006, and now has 80 members who carry out Japanese language taster sessions at schools throughout the UK. On Tuesday 24th June, 14 StepOutNet members came to the Japan Foundation for a training day. The day…

The website publishing the results of the 2007 Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Survey is now online. The survey was carried out in 2007 to look at the state of Japanese Studies in the UK. Many thanks to all the universities who responded to the survey. To access the website, please…

When Silverdale Primary School in East Sussex were planning their international week, teacher Angela Crouch contacted the Japan Foundation London Language Centre to enquire about the possibility of having StepOutNet Japanese language tasters as part of the activities. On Wednesday 11th June 2008 Eriko Suzuki and Mari Sato travelled to…

The Movers and Shapers: Japan – UK Relations Seminar series gets underway on 11 June 2008 with a seminar entitled Nagasaki and “Madame Butterfly”: Historical Background and Implications of the Famous Opera. The seminar series will run from June 2008 – December 2009. For more information about the Movers and…

CPD Course From Wednesday 28th to Friday 30th May 2008 the Japan Foundation London Language Centre held a training course in continuing professional development for teachers of Japanese. The course aimed to extend participants’ knowledge and skills of Japanese teaching, develop their Japanese language ability and deepen their understanding of…

The Japan Foundation’s Local Project Support Programme for Japanese Studies has recently been expanded to make provisions for organisations involved with Japanese Studies in the Republic of Ireland. The Local Project Support Programme will now provide grant assistance to organisations that are planning Japan related projects in Japanese Studies and…