Communicating with someone from a different country takes more than just knowing their native language — it is also important to be aware of cultural customs and cues on how to act appropriate in various situations.
To help their students in this, the Washington Association of Teachers of Japanese — with financial assistance from the Consulate-General of Japan’s Seattle office — sponsors a Japanese Immersion Camp every year, and this year the event will be all day March 30 at Redmond High School (RHS).
The event will include classes and workshops — all in Japanese — in cooking, tea ceremony, martial arts, taiko drumming, calligraphy, arts and crafts and more.
“The majority of the cultural teachers are volunteers,” said RHS Japanese instructor Sam Kuyper, who is also this year’s camp director. “It’s all teacher run. It’s an all-volunteer event.”
The only exception, Kuyper said, is a small group of experts or “honorarium” instructors who actually have their own schools in their field such as the tea ceremony, martial arts and taiko drumming. He said the money for these activities goes toward the materials needed for the day. Funding for this comes from a grant from the Japan Foundation in Los Angeles, Kuyper said.
In addition to the instructors and experts, students from Bellevue College will be on hand to help out throughout the day.
There will also be a Japanese field day and quiz bowl in the afternoon.
Next week’s camp will bring about 110 ninth- to 12th-graders to RHS from 13 schools. Kuyper said they will be mostly Western Washington schools coming from as far north as Marysville to as far south as Tacoma. This will be the first time in its 15-year history that the camp will include a school from outside of the Puget Sound area.
A school from Ellensburg will be coming to the camp, as well. Kuyper said logistically, it is too difficult to bring schools over from Eastern Washington, but coming from Ellensburg is feasible. He added that he also has connections with the Ellensburg school as he used to teach there before coming to the Lake Washington School District.
RHS sophomore Conner York will be attending the camp for the first time this year. The third-year Japanese student first learned about the camp last year. He said Kuyper, who also teaches at Redmond Middle School, told him about the camp. York also heard from classmates who attended the camp and had “a great experience, so (he) wanted to try it this year.”
“The things I’m looking forward most to are the various culture activities there are, including cooking and origami,” he said.
York said he believes it is very important for people to learn foreign languages because it allows people to connect with other cultures.
“People need to be able to be sympathetic to others, but that can only happen when they understand the other person’s culture,” he said. “These foreign language classes allow us to learn about the other cultures of the world. I’m actually a bit sad that we can only learn about one country for an extended amount of time.”
Although he is looking forward to camp, York admits he is a bit nervous to spend a whole day speaking only Japanese.
“I’ve never even gone a whole class period without speaking some English, so I hope I don’t have too much trouble doing it for a whole day,” he said.
