On January 16th, Menlo’s Japanese class took a visit to the nearby Trinity School in Menlo Park. The Japanese students gave various presentations on the disasters that happened last year in Japan, the most notable being the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that haunted the country’s capital of Tokyo and other nearby cities like Fukushima.

Trinity students cracked smiles on their faces as they were given papers and pens to write letters to their own assigned pen pal buddies; other students of their age whom still live in the affected areas of Japan. Based on the presentations they were given, they warned their pen pals about the dangers that still lingered around the area they lived in; nuclear waste and radiation poisoning being the most lethal.

They were also taught various Japanese phrases, and each learned how to spell their own names in the Katakana and Hiragana Japanese scripts. As they depicted the dangers to be weary of, the students took particular interest in the new Japanese characters they had learned, and many noted on their way out that they would most probably choose Japanese as their dialect to study when reaching their high school years.

The Japanese 4 class at Menlo was thankful to have had such an experience with Trinity school. Each student took their assigned presentation eagerly, and with the helpful prepping of Menlo School Japanese teacher, Kumiko Sakamoto, were able to convey the disasters in Japan quite effectively. The Japanese class was particularly happy with the fact they were able to get potential future Menlo School students to get interested in the Japanese language.