EXCELLANGUES

On November 21 and 22, the language festival “EXCELLANGUES” was held at the Halle aux Foires of Libramont, located in Luxembourg Province, and was attended by Ms. Ikoma. The aim of the event is to allow elementary school pupils in Luxembourg to get familiar with foreign languages by participating as teams and learning basic words at the different booths which each represent a different country, including Japan. Every team competed with one another, based on their results obtained at the 3 booths they visited.
The Embassy of Japan in Belgium, together with the cooperation of the Belgian Association of Japanese Language Teachers, has been holding the workshop “Hajimemashite” (nice to meet you) every year since 2011, which was very popular this year as well. During the workshop, they learned simple expressions such as “konnichiwa” (hello) and “arigato” (thank you). Also, Japanese culture was introduced through Japanese characters and the folding of a “kabuto” (samurai helmet) using a Japanese newspaper. A total of 225 pupils in 12 teams learned Japanese.
The children were very passionate with their first Japanese language lesson, resulting in the impressive sight of the children being able to repeat and exercise the Japanese words they had just learned.