Yatagawa Shogakko

The second smallest of all the elementary schools I teach at. Once again its a great school, all the kids live in the surrounding rural area and love having fun. Its great that they all enjoy learning english but having said that, learning english may be a good break from all the Japanese they have to memorise! We have the english alphabet, they have three distinct systems : katakana, hiragana, and kanji. The first two systems are considered the easier forms to master but the third (kanji) originates from the chinese characters that have been modified for the Japanese. The children are expected to know over 2000 kanji by the end of grade 6. There are well over 10,000 kanji and most Japanese people are able to read/write this amount or more. Makes you happy we only have 26 letters!!