Bowing, Greetings & Japanese vowels

I thank you for taking the time to meet me at Parents' Night on Wednesday. I am excited to be teaching your child this year! I wanted to catch you all up on this week's topics in the Japanese class.

Frist of all, students learned how to introduce themselves with proper bows, using:
HAJIME MASHITE. "How do you do?"
WATASHI WA -name- DESU. "I am -name-."
DOOZO YOROSHIKU. "Nice to meet you."

Bowing is a very important custom in Japan. Japanese people bow all the time. Bowing is a gesture of respect. Different bows are used for apologies and gratitude, to express different emotions, humility, sincerity, remorse, or deference, and in various traditional arts and religious ceremonies.

Most commonly, they greet each other by bowing instead of handshaking or hugging. It is impolite not to return a bow to whoever bowed to you. Japanese people tend to become uncomfortable with any physical forms of contact. But, they became used to shaking hands with westerners.

Bowing has many functions in one. It expresses the feeling of respect, thanking, apologizing, greeting, and so on. It's a convenient and important custom for you to learn. You can bow, when you say, "ARIGATOO (Thank you)", "SUMIMASEN (Sorry)", "KONNICHIWA (Hello)", "SAYOONARA (Good bye)", "OYASUMI NASAI (Good night)", "OHAYOO GOZAIMASU (Good Morning)", and more!!

When you bowing, pay attention that your:

• eyes move downward with the bow. Do not attempt to make eye contact during bow.
• feet are positioned together, facing forward.
• hands are placed relaxed but straight alongside your body if you are a male. Females lightly cross their hands at their fingertips in front of their body while bowing.
• body is not slouched or not turned away from the other person.

Bowing seems simple, but there are different ways of bowing. It depends on the social status or age of the person you bow to. If the person is higher status or older than you are, you should bow deeper and longer. It is polite to bow, bending from your waist. If it is a casual situation, you can bow like nodding. The most frequent bow is a bow of about 15 degrees. You might feel strange to do it, but try to bow in Japan. You will be considered very polite!

Surely, Japanese think that it is impolite not to return a bow to whoever bowed to you!

Also, students learned Japanese greetings such as OHAYOO GOZAIMASU "Good morning", KON NICHI WA "Hello, Hi, or Good afternoon", KONBANWA "Good evening" and SAYOONARA "Good-bye".

In addition to practical conversations, students have started to learn how to read and write hiragana, one of Japanese phonetic characters. In this week, they learned 5 Japanese vowels: あ, い, う, え, and お.

/a/あ is pronounced like a in father. "ah"

/i/い is pronounced like i in machine. "ee"

/u/う is pronounced like ue in Sue. "oo"

/e/え is pronounced like e in ledge. "eh"

/o/お is pronounced like o in obey. "oh"

Finally, students will have a test on Tuesday, September 4th.
They should have the study guide for the test.

Have a wonderful weekend! and SAYOONARA .

lunar eclipse: taken on Tue, August 28 in Waimea.

NIKON D-100, Nikkor 300mm, Kenko 1.5X teleconverter

* Luner eclipse is "GETT SHOKU" in Japanese, which means "Eating moon."