My friends interested to teach Japanese on italki, and I have a mix feeling.

I’m staying at a hotel in Kyoto, Japan.

I start Podcast for Japanese learners! April is a season to start in Japan. Schools, companies, all starts in April. I start making Podcast for Japanese learners. I tried it before, but last time I used my iPhone and sound crowd, and almost nobody listen it. This time, I bought professional mic, and start using Anchor. Anchor is awesome! Because when I record my Podcast, it automatically distribute to Spotify, Google podcast, and other music tools. So far, I'm speaking something related to Japanese language, culture, society, and history. I speak 70% in Japanese then summaries it in English 30%. But a few episodes, I speak almost all in English, and surprisingly these episode listened more. So I might speak 20% Japanese, then 80% in English from now on. It's a learning process, so if you listed it and give me a feedback, that'll be helpful. I'd like to offer something useful for Japanese learners. After they listened it, if they want to take my lessons, that'll be great. or if they can join my Patreon community, that'll be great too, because on Patreon, I'd like to make a community that Japanese learners gather, and can ask questions, or can have Zoom chatting sometimes. 🎤 Podcast: “Small talks in Japanese” – Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2pE7A9AXRAxVndX1tJ5M3N – Anchor: https://anchor.fm/akari-japanese – Google podcasts: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xYjA3YTg2Yy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==

coronavirus... please go away.. (report from Japan) It's bee about a month since I starting to worring about coronavirus. I have some friends in Shanghai, Canton, and HongKong in China, so I was hearing about it from them. Then when 春節, Chinese new years start around Jan 23rd, I posted on my facebook and blog, that Japanese government should stop flights from China for now, but they didn't, and they still can come except two region. I myself living in Japan. I'm teaching Japanese on italki. I feel very disappointed how Japanese govenment react for the coronavious for now. I guess there's some reason why Japanese government haven't stop entering from all China is 1. Tokyo Olympic, 2. Official visit of Xi Jinping planed in spring, 3. "human rights" 1 and 2 are in the bad timing, because of these two, I guess they couldn't be strong. 3. is strange reason, but there's some people who say "we should not discriminate some people" but it's infection. Most important thing is not to spread it anymore. I really hope politician in the world use true leadership in this hard situation, and really hope this coronavirus thing gone as soon as possible.

I met italki members on Polyglots conference in Fukuoka, Japan 2019 I've been teaching Japanese online on italki, language platform, for six years. In this six years, I've met so many amazing people, and I got lots of influence from them, and they're are very important friends for me. The reason why this can be happen is because the lesson happen on 1 on 1, once a week (or more), you meet someone, student pay money to buy teacher's time, and seriously focus on their conversation. Of course, main topic is language, but using the learning language, we talk about our selves. Our family, interests, hobby, major, carrier, dream etc. After you share these information, teachers and students sometimes become very close friends. Until this weekend, I didn't know how much I needed to see italki team members and teachers in person to share my stories and feeling. I wanted to share my excitement, ideas, and future hope etc. which I've been feeling everyday for six years. Attending "Poliglot Conference" together with them was really exciting experience for me. It means a lot to me. italki is a startup company which started as a language exchanging site, I luckily found it some how on 2013 April, then they start providing lessons so I registered as a teacher and start having lessons, then they gradually start translating site into English only to many languages, so I start helping translation from English to Japanese. So, I've been feeling that I've having the same journey with them. But we've been contacting only online over the screen. I waited this opportunity so long! I feel online teaching have a huge potential. It can solve many social issues, wonderful way to understand other language and culture, and it contributing to the World Peace. Now I finally met italki team members in person and had a great time together, I hope I can get involve italki more deeply. Thank you italki team ❤️ You changed my life.