In every friday nights in WISE OWL HOSTELS TOKYO, the guests from all over the world are joining a special Japanese phrase lesson. However, it is not that academic like you might think. The whole point of the lesson is helping foreign guests to enjoy Tokyo more authentic way.

We are teaching dozens of phrases and the most popular one among those is always how to order a cold fresh draft beer like local in Japanese. This sometimes leads all the staff and the guests (or you can say teachers and students) to go to the bar down stair or other Izakaya to "practice" what they have learned :)

The guests also got fascinated by how to say hi in different ways in Japanese. Since most of the participants are from Europe or America, they also get curious about Japanese Alphabets like Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. So we also teach them the difference of those three characters, and what their name would look like in Katakana.

Then, we help them to WRITE. We introduce Shodo as a Japanese Calligraphy and teach them how to do it. We show them their name in Katakana first, and they are trying to copy it.

It is really fun and the ice breaks quicker than you can imagine, and everyone is ended up with making lots of friends all of the globe. Being a Japanese phrase lesson's teacher is a previllage with relatively tiny effort. If you are Japanese who can speak English, or non-Japanese-Japanese-speaker like me, you can help the tourists to enjoy truly while they are staying in Tokyo. Please come and join us!