Editors: Photographers are welcome to attend this event including the demonstrations on Aikido martial arts and origami and performances of the shakuhachi flute and traditional dance.
Â鶹ÊÓƵ 100 Colorado high school students taking Japanese courses, their teachers, and students and faculty of the CU-Boulder East Asian languages and civilizations department will gather on March 18 for Japan Day 2000.
Japan Day 2000 activities will be held at the Humanities Building on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. All events, excluding a Japanese-style lunch at noon, are free and open to the public, however seating is limited.
The all-day event for Colorado high school students studying Japanese is designed to inform and generate interest about Japan and the Japanese program at CU-Boulder. Activities include opportunities for hands-on experience of computer-assisted Japanese instruction, mini-language lessons, exhibits and lessons on Japanese culture and history, cultural presentations and performances. There also will be informal get-togethers with EALC faculty members concerning Japanese study and career opportunities at the university.
"We did it once three years ago and it was a success and we have really developed a good relationship with the teachers and students at the high schools," said Kyoko Saegusa, Japanese professor and executive coordinator of the event. "We want to celebrate and reward high school students, teachers and administrators for their efforts. We, as a university, want to show that high schools are doing a great job."
Community members will provide participants with cultural insight through demonstrations on Aikido martial arts, origami and Japanese healing. There also will be performances of the shakuhachi flute and traditional dance accompanied by the shamisen stringed instrument.
High school participants and presenters also will have a chance to win prizes at the hour-long Japanese-style lunch with a bento, or box lunch, being served at noon.
CU-Boulder students of Japanese will be presenting Japanese mini-lessons, giving tours and assisting with all the events. They also will participate with other students of college-level Japanese in Colorado's only statewide Japanese speech contest. The 16th annual Japanese Speech contest, awarding cash prizes to students, will begin at 1 p.m. in the Humanities Building auditorium, room 150.
Japan Day, which has been funded through grants from the CU-Boulder Outreach Committee, brought more than 90 students from six Denver-area high schools at the previous Japan Day in 1997. For the past five years the EALC department has been working with members of the Colorado Japanese Language Education Association to develop secondary and post-secondary programs to implement as statewide classroom standards.
The EALC department offers an undergraduate degree in East Asian studies as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees in Japanese and Chinese.
For more information about events, call Kyoko Saegusa at (303) 492-4497 or visit the Web site at .