The NCEA Japanese Workshop was held at Canterbury University on 9 June. Nearly 300 students from 16 high schools in the Canterbury region assembled at the University and students participated in three workshop sessions taught by Japanese teachers from different schools, and university lecturers. 

The idea is to strengthen students’ understanding of NCEA and the Japanese learners’ community in the greater Canterbury region. 

Students were divided into small groups and involved in a number of different activities. In the opening ceremony, there was an inspirational speech from Ashleigh Stewart, who studied Japanese in high school and now works for The Press as a health reporter. Her experience in volunteering in the disaster relief effort in Tohoku with the Canterbury student army and covering the disaster in Japanese and English in the media gave students ideas of different career options with languages. 

In the closing ceremony, the participants were entertained by Japanese drumming group, Takumi’s performance. There was also a video project of a mass dance to the famous Japanese song called ‘odoru ponpokorin’ which the boys practised for over a month.