せっけんさん Sekkensan (Mr Soap) Japanese Kids Song (with subtitles)

Sekkensan (Mr Soap) is a Japanese kids' song that my three-year-old daughter is learning in Japanese preschool. She and my older daughter are singing it on this video. I subtitled it three ways ... in hiragana, romaji, and in English. The song is about the wonderful smells of soap and the association with one's mom! Grammatically, it's more like phrases than sentences, so it's easy for even the youngest children or Japanese beginner student to learn.

Field Trip to the Post Office (郵便局の遠足)

Please have a look at the video below, which shows a journal entry for my three-year-old, who is learning Japanese. The purpose is for me to read it to her so she can remember the different things she did at her Japanese school and can express those things by herself eventually. Journals are a great way to learn a foreign language because they are personal to you and therefore are more accessible as a memory than just a dialog from a textbook. Thus, it helps your long-term retention of new vocabulary. Plus, it's fun.

Week 1 Japanese Kids' Songs

At 11 pm this evening, my three-year-old daughter started singing the "te o tatakimasho" song. In fact, there are four songs she's been singing constantly this week, and here they are.

Teku Teku (clip clop)


Hajimaru Yo (Here we go)


Gu Choki Pa (rock paper scissors)


Te o Takakimashoo (let's clap our hands)

What ... these six-year-olds don't clean up their American classrooms? Why Japanese school children clean their schools.

When asked, my Japanese friend told me what surprised her about American elementary schools in America was that the children don't clean. And by clean she means washing desks and shelves with a rag, sweeping the classrooms and hallways with brooms, older kids doing periodic cleaning of bathrooms, etc. In Japan, students clean the school like this starting in elementary school and continuing through their high school years. For about 15 minutes a day, it's おそうじ (o-souji) time, or cleaning time. Students, teachers, even administrators drop everything, pull out the buckets and mops, and give everything a good scrub with soap and water.

The practice comes from Buddhist traditions that associate cleaning with morality. The Japanese school curriculum goes beyond the core subjects and also strives to teach cooperation, a sense of responsibility, and public morality. Doing daily cleaning is seen as contributing to this. If you've ever seen how clean Japan is - the graffiti-free subways, the litter-free streets, the tidy neighborhoods whether rich or poor, you will understand this a little bit more.

My daughter's Japanese school here in Michigan only does a one おおそうじ (oosouji), or big cleaning, before the end of the year.

Three おべんとう obento lunches

Obento 1 (for こどものひ Children's Day). Imitation crab, rice, carrots, rasberries, grapes, broccoli

Obento 2. Hotdog, onigiri with nori and furikake, carrots, rasberries

Obento 3. Family Obento: Coldcut sandwiches, apple slices, broccoli, cherry tomatoes, carrots

First day of Japanese Summer Camp

It's the first day of Japanese summer camp here in Michigan, and both my six-year-old daughter and three-year-old daughter are old enough to go this year. It's a full-immersion environment, so I am eager to see how my youngest one enjoys it and makes friends.

Of course, I wanted to make them a cute obento (お弁当) for their first day. This is plain rice (ごはん) with nori (のり) "waves," fish-shaped omelet (たまごやき), broccoli (ブロッコリ), clementines (みかん), and grapes (ぶどう). A typical kids' lunch in Japan with five colors. Healthy and easy to make ... IF you have a rice cooker. I used a food coloring marker for the fish eyes and smile, which I'm sure will bleed and look terrible by lunch time. It's better to use a hole punch and nori to make little details.

I buy the obento boxes (お弁当ばこ) from www.jlist.org. They have a great selection of boxes, much better than our local Japanese store, and good prices as well. The heart one is here, but I can't find the other one anymore. Since the items are shipped from Japan, you do have to pay international shipping, but it's not that bad.

Reading Japanese Is Easier Than English

"Japanese is easier to read," says my five-year-old daughter reading her Nontan ノンタン library book. And it is!

English has crazy spelling rules that can be broken (ex: sight, site, cite, psyte, seit ... ok, i made up the last two), hundreds of sight words to memorize, and lots of frustration for beginning readers before they can read a book on their own. The Japanese language has a hiragana alphabet chart to memorize. Once you do that, you can read a children's book. By yourself! Yes, it gets more complicated than that afterwards, but for beginners learning to read in Japanese is straightfoward. If you take the letter "su" す and add the letter "shi" し, you get sushi すし. The names of the letters are the same as their sounds. Spelling is a breeze. None of this "H says hhhhh. T says tttt. S says sss" nonsense. In fact, there are no such things as spelling bees in Japan because it would sound like this: Spell the word "sushi." "Hmm, SU, SHI ... sushi." Boring.

If you don't yet have a hiragana chart, here are some cute ones from hiragana mama's blog. Start memorizing!

Is It Possible to Make an English-Japanese Bilingual Yearbook?

Since my daughter's school is very young, they have never had a yearbook before. So I've decided to head the yearbook committee. The problem is that none of the easy-to-use, print-on-demand online yearbook creation companies can handle Japanese characters. Why, you ask?

"(The multitude of characters in the Japanese language) cannot fit in the 256-character code space of 8-bit character encodings, requiring at least a 16-bit fixed width encoding or multi-byte variable-length encodings. " (Wikipedia)

Or put more simply, when I type in Japanese on the yearbook layout software, nothing shows up. *sigh* There are yearbook companies in Japan, like sotsuenalbum.com, that can easily handle Japanese characters, but I can't navigate the sites very well and the shipping would be crazy expensive. So I may just have to photoshop each and every name onto the pictures beforehand. Lots of work.

A few favorite Japanese kids' songs - with some listening practice

Ton Ton Tomato-chan (Pow-Pow Little Tomato)
Listen for the use of と to mean "with," as well as very child-like pronunciation of あそぼう (let's play) and かくれんぼ (hide and seek).

Omocha No Cha-Cha-Cha (Toys Cha-Cha)
Listen for さよなら (goodbye) and こんにちは (hello).

Anpanman No Okao (Anpanman's Face)
Listen for the use of the honorific お in the body parts. おめめ instead of め for eyes, おくち instead of くち for mouth, and おはな instead of はな for nose.

Inu No Omawarisan (Doggy Cop)
Listen for どこ (where) and ～ても form of verbs ('even when').

Donguri Koro Koro (Acorn Rolling)
Listen for いっしょう　に　あそびましょう (Let's play together).

Genkotsu Yama No Tanuki-san (The Badger From Genkotsu Mountain
Listen for また　あした　(see you tomorrow).

Do Your Friends Have Piano Teeth?

My daughter checked out one of the Dekoboko Friends (でこぼこフレンズ) books from her preschool's library. It's one of my favorite series(es?), and it's easy to read for a beginner. They have the craziest 12 characters, like the guy with piano teeth, an egg that gets really mad and cooks himself with the heat from his anger, and a chestnut who can't jump rope without tangling it on his huge nose.

If you don't happen to have a Japanese school to send your child to, try finding easy Japanese-language books such as this for reading with your child to expose them to more Japanese. Besides Dekoboko Friends, my suggestions include Anpanman (あんぱんまん is a character made out of pastry) and Nontan (ノンタン) is a selfish cat who reluctantly learns to share, etc).

Respect for the Aged Day

In honor of "Respect for the Aged Day" (Sep 19 in Japan), my daughter's preschool is taking the kids to the post office to mail letters to their grandparents. They get to go up to the counter and buy a stamp and everything! That means at our house we are currently writing letters to her five grandparents, 2 grandmas (obaasan), 1 grandpa (ojiisan), and 2 great grandmas (hiiobaasan). I take dictation and my four-year-old daughter tells me what she wants to write. Here is a sample of what she wrote: "Dear Grandpa, I love you, and have a wonderful day. I love you very much. We went on an airplane. Love, Sheradyn." Have you written to your grandparents lately? Above is a picture of an American woman's gift to her 105-year-old grandmother. Wow!

Sit Like a Rice Ball

"Mommy, you're supposed to do おにぎりすわり when sensei reads a book." This is what my daughter told me yesterday when she was pretending to be my sensei. The "suwari" means sit, and onigiri means ... onigiri. She showed me, and you're supposed to bend your knees so they make a triangle, like a typical onigiri shape. Cute! But my legs are pretty long, so it's a little uncomfortable. Oh well.

Snow Daruma?

ゆきあそび Yuki asobi means ... playing in the snow! The kids are doing lots of this lately, and I have to pack a special bag every week with snow gear just in case they go outside to play in the white stuff. And ゆきだるま yuki daruma means ... a snowman! ゆきだるまを　つくりましょう！ Let's make a snowman! I wondered why they just don't say "yuki hito" or something like that to mean snowman in Japanese. It's because the "daruma", that little round guy that gives you good luck on tests and stuff, is a similar shape to a ball of snow, so it made more sense to say yukidaruma. In Japan, if there is a hat it is usually a bucket or something, since there is no history of wearing "silk top hats" in Japan.

Learning a Million Japanese Kids' Songs

A few of my favorite Japanese kids songs are posted here.

In my daughter's backpack each week is a summary of what the children did, learned, and enjoyed that week. There are always lyrics of two or three new songs they learned that week. Since school started, that's added up to about 35 songs so far! I thought I would learn all of them, too, by looking them up on youtube or whatever, but it's just overwhelming. All preschool teachers in Japan can play the piano, and every preschool has a piano or organ used frequently throughout each day. Songs are sung throughout the day, and the kids practice special songs for special events that parents attend, like the Autumn Festival, Halloween Party, and the upcoming Christmas Party (Tuesday). My daughter is constantly singing songs like the ones used in your Japanese course. Her favorite is "ookina kuri no ki no shita de," which she pronounces completely wrong after the first line. Very cute!

.

Chat Circle

I went to my first Chat Circle (おしゃべり　さあくる) for parents (ok, for moms) at my daughter's preschool. The other moms were happy to speak to me in Japanese, so it was great practice for me. It made sitting in those tiny kindergarten chairs worthwhile. A good way to start a one-on-one conversation with someone is to act like you forgot their name (everyone introduced themselves at the beginning) and ask their name (すみません、おなまえは？). If they have a child with them, tell them their child is cute (かわいい　ですね) and ask them how old their child is (なんさい　ですか). You can use even very basic Japanese in daily life situations. As you get more advanced, you can say more interesting things, of course. So if you get the chance to, please use your Japanese with a native speaker! If you can't, then stop your friend in the hallway and use it on them. Good luck!