The MFL Unit directed by Emanuela Ponti continues its collaboration with the Japan Foundation London, the Asian Studies Department at the University of Edinburgh and BATJ (the British Association for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language). While in early 2024, thanks to funding received by the Japan Foundation London, the MFL Unit visited a few secondary schools in Glasgow and offered taster sessions in Japanese, in October and November 2024 two events for our students of Japanese successfully took place.

On 21st October, the event 'An Evening with Franponais' saw approximately 40 students take part in a workshop with Franponais, a Manzai duo from the Yoshimoto Entertainment Agency, the biggest comic agency in Japan. The session, called "Learning Japanese Through Manzai", showed students a few techniques to create Manzai-style comedy, and then asked students to make a short dialogue or sketch using their own Japanese. It was a lot of fun, and it was great to see how well our students could interact with the two Franponais comedians, Manabu and Priscilla Shimaoka, and actively use the Japanese learned during our Languages for International Mobility classes. We hope to host again Franponais in the next academic year; their fantastic work can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/@Franponais-manzai

On 11th November, the MFL Unit received a visit from a few students of Yokohama National University, and their lecturers Alec McAulay and Kota Sugimoto. After a guided tour of the campus, a series of talks took place in different venues: the Yokohama students started by giving a presentation called “Economic Aspects of Anime and Manga's Global Popularity”, followed by Mr McAulay's talk on “Transnational aspects in contemporary Japanese cinema”. “French and Japanese Surrealism” was the seminar conducted by SMLC's Dr Ramona Fotiade, after which a nice lunch was held in the Wolfson Medical School Building, a chance for our own International Mobility students to meet and talk to (in both English and Japanese!) the Yokohama students. In the afternoon, Dr Saeko Yazaki of the School of Critical Studies presented “The historical connections between Japan and Glasgow / Scotland”, while SMLC's Adam Donnelly illustrated the “UofG Pre-sessional English Programme” to all attending students. The day closed with SMLC's Izumi Kuroda conducting the class “Japanese Language for International Mobility 1”, which again gave our own students the opportunity to interact with the Yokohama native speakers. The day was very enjoyable and we hope to welcome again the Yokohama delegation in the next academic year.

ありがとう - Arigatō!!

First published: 29 January 2025

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