Congratulations to the new Executive Board for 2023-2024:

President: Joshua Shew
Vice President: Hannah Bui
Treasurer: Alma Wang
Secretary: Katrina Aldana
Director of Outreach: Connifer Lu

繋がりJapan (Tsunagari Japan or TJP) seeks to promote Japanese language and culture within our student body as well as the greater Cleveland community. Through weekly conversation tables, students of any language level are able to practice and learn Japanese in a friendly, immersive environment. In addition to our conversation tables, we hope to provide students with a well-rounded understanding of Japan through weekly cultural discussions and the occasional community event. Activities will include guest speakers, collaboration with other Cleveland Japanese organizations, and film screenings. Out of abundant caution, all club events are being held remotely for the foreseeable future. To receive club communications, please join “Tsunagari Japan” on Campus Groups. 

Exchange Meeting with Japanese International Students

On Monday, February 13, 2023, we had a great and successful exchange meeting between Japanese students and the Case students of JAPN202, JAPN302 and JAPN351. We had a total of 60 students joining this meeting, got into 17 groups of 3-4 people, and engaged in a cheerful and joyful conversation. In the middle of the meeting, we shuffled the groups so that they would have chances to get to know more people. We brought in note cards with 14 interesting talking points from which they would randomly choose and discuss. The half of the topic cards were written in Japanese, and the other half in English. They were directed to speak in Japanese when they chose a card in which the topic was given in Japanese, and vice versa. Some questions were tough and challenging for foreign language learners of Japanese and English to decipher and answer sufficiently, but others were enjoyable and entertaining. All in all, they cooperatively worked out to expand their conversations, to build on discussed topics, and to keep their conversations going for an extensive period of time. The event itself was scheduled until 5:00 pm, but most of them stayed longer and continued enjoying their conversation. They all had a wonderful time getting to know each other, and we hope this event continuously motivates their language learning.