Community Education Japanese Class

At $60/person, we have started a Japanese community education class through the city of Minneapolis.

Learn greetings, numbers and shopping conversations as well as practical conversational skills with useful vocabulary. Gain an understanding of the culture of this intriguing and mysterious country. Instructor: Tetsuya Shimano is an experienced, native Japanese speaker. Includes supplies.


Although community education is generally more informal than other classes, our teacher is very organized and dedicated to his students. We meet Mondays from 6-7:30pm and each week begins with a 15 point quiz with terms from last week. He says a word in Japanese and we write its meaning in English. If you score the highest in the class, he gives you a handmade paper origami throwing star (shuriken), and whoever has the most at the end of the course gets a prize.

We have learned how to introduce ourselves, how to say different nationalities and occupations, about numbers through 99,999, time and dates, money, and an introduction to the counting system. This week we are going to learn about place names. Our teacher explained to us that Japanese is a tonal language, which my husband heard as, "atonal," and continued the rest of the class talking like a robot.

As a graduate of Macalester College, I am also able to audit a course for free each semester. I found this out a little too late, however, just after the add/drop deadline, and the professor of Japanese I and II does not believe there is a way for me to make it up and only Japanese II is offered next semester. How unfortunate.