The Japan Foundation, Sydney
MITSUYA Mayumi, HIRAKAWA Shunsuke, and KADOI Minako

2020 was a turning point in a variety of fields because of the global pandemic. In Australia, we experienced a lockdown at the end of March 2020, with restrictions on gatherings, etc. At the Japan Foundation, Sydney (hereinafter "JFSY") as well, we introduced remote work in accordance with regulations from the Australian government. Additionally, numerous in-person projects were postponed or cancelled, but, even amidst these circumstances, we have developed a new online project this year based on the idea of the "strong connections that people living in Oceania have with Japan, Japanese culture, and the Japanese language!"

Calling All Japan Lovers! Holding the "What's Your J-Talent? Online Talent Contest"

The "What's Your J-Talent?" online video contest is one of our new attempts at an online event. With the cancellation of the Australian Japanese Language Speech Contest that was the main event in JFSY's Japanese-language education programs and the cancellation of a variety of other events for cultural and art exchanges, this contest was born as a place where fans of Japan, Japanese culture, and the Japanese language could gather and participate.

With the four categories in this contest – "Japanese Language," "Lifestyle," "Traditional Arts and Culture," and "Pop culture" – we have set up a place where each contestant can convey the charms of Japan, show what they are good at, and show what they like. The entry period was the three months from mid-July to late October. During that time, a total of 160 videos were entered from Australia and New Zealand. The approximately two-minute videos were posted to YouTube and then all of the works in each category were screened by experts, by JFSY staff, and by the general public. The posted videos also received a lot of attention, with a total of 4,874 "Likes"!

The Grand Prize Winning videos that were selected were "Japanese Rice: My Love Story," which expresses a passion for rice with advanced video techniques, "Mizuhiki knotting," which shows the traditional Japanese art of Mizuhiki (tying decorative wrapping knots for letters and presents), "Kimi no Mask ('Your Mask')," a musical video that depicts a sad love story, and "The girl who tells scary stories," which was produced by mixing illustrations and acting. In addition to the prize-winning videos, many of the videos showcased the unique J-talents of the people living in Oceania, and all of the entered videos includes the participants connections with Japan and their feelings for Japan.

What kind of thoughts did the contestants have about the online video contest? Many of them said "Two minutes is too short!", and I think that this reply is a testament to the fact that the special skills that they wanted to show off and the feelings that they wanted to convey wouldn't fit in two minutes. By holding the contest in a new location, online, we were able to feel the "strong connections that people living in Oceania have with Japan, Japanese culture, and the Japanese language" as well as the possibilities for expanding the program in the future.

The new online "What's Your J-Talent? Online Talent Contest" program, which attracted 160 highly original video entries

Online Teacher Training Program-- Bringing the Training to the Teachers!

March is when the full-scale teacher training program begins, organized by the Department of Education in each state and the Australian Japanese Language Teachers’ Association. For us teacher training teams, this is the season where we say "Alright, here we go!" However, as mentioned above, at the end of March 2020, many Australian states had restrictions on travel to other states, so as to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and all scheduled trainings were either cancelled or postponed one after another. Therefore, the JFSY held a variety of types of online teacher training throughout 2020, and here we will introduce one of them, "Let’s Create Digital Resources! – Enhance Your Skills In ICT."

This project is a workshop-style training that is mainly for teachers who are not familiar with ICT, and the participants create teaching materials while actually using ICT tools. Five sessions were held to introduce how to use ICT tools according to each theme, such as "Online tools for making lessons interactive" and "Attempting to make Japanese-language teaching materials with PowerPoint."

What we kept in mind while designing this project was not only for the participants to acquire ICT skills, but also to create teaching materials for their own students. We support a wide range of Japanese-language teachers, from primary schools to senior secondary schools, and there were large differences in the purposes that teachers had for participating in this training program and the skills that they required. Therefore, while presenting sample teaching materials in the workshop, the goal was to eventually apply the skills to teaching materials that participants envisioned for their own students and aiming to make them useful for many teachers.

Unlike with in-person trainings, it was difficult to see the participants' progress and we felt that it was difficult to set the pace, but, as a result of being online, about 190 people participated in the 10 sessions. The participants were not just from Australia and New Zealand, but also from Canada and Thailand, and there was a lot of feedback. (Details of the workshop and the online tools that were introduced can be found on JFSY's website.)

Fortunately, in 2021, in-person teacher training program was gradually resumed in Australia. We begin with the teacher training in Darwin, Northern Territory at the end of February 2021 and then held the training for the Japanese Teachers' Network of Tasmania in Hobart, Tasmania at the end of March. It was a deeply emotional business trip for us as it was the first in-person training in about a year, but what made us even happier was the "reunion" with the teachers who had participated in the online teacher training -- instead of saying things like "Nice to meet you" and "It's been a while," we instead exchanged new greetings such as "It's actually you in real life!"

As for our results, JFSY has held a total of 12 online training programs over the past year, and we have greeted a total of 730 teachers. Initially, this project was started as a response to a situation that made it impossible to actually get together in person, but it can be said that it was a big shift for us to get "such a connection because it is online." In the future, we want to take advantage of the further possibilities of the internet and provide support in a form that fits the future.