MIFA held an online event to introduce Japanese summer culture to non-Japanese residents on 15 August.
17 Japanese high school and college students volunteered to give presentations and put their time and energy to make their projects interesting, insightful and easy to understand. The presentations by 4 student groups were given in Easy Japanese (Yasashii Nihongo) and covered topics such as firework/summer festival (Hanabi Taikai/ Natsu matsuri), Japanese summer food and Japanese school life. After the presentations, student volunteers were split into 8 groups and welcomed guests in each chat room. Every participant enjoyed chatting and getting to know each other in smaller groups for about 50 minutes.
Thank you all for joining us. Looking forward to seeing you again!

Time & Date	Sunday, August 15/ 10:00a.m.-12:00p.m. （The pre-workshop for presenters held on 24 July and 7 August.）
Location	Online (Via Zoom）
Contents	① Presentations by Students (in EASY JAPANESE)   – “Firework Festival” – “Summer Festival” – “Japanese Words and Phrases Related to Summer Food” – “Japanese School Life” ②Interacting with Students
Participants	33 people (17 Japanese student volunteers、12 non-Japanese participants, 4 MIFA volunteers）
The excerpt of comments from non-Japanese participants	● It was a great experience and opportunity to interact with people with who they usually do not have a connection. It was a great chance to meet Japanese young generation and talk about ourselves. ● I liked chatting with the students. Their future plans and interests are very interesting to me.  ● The topics presented were very interesting. It was clear that the students took great care in preparing the presentations, so, to me, the event was great!
The excerpt of comments from Japanese Student Volunteers	● I will always remember that foreign participants tried their best to communicate in Japanese during the interacting session. That has inspired me to study foreign languages harder. ● Although I was afraid that it’s hard to communicate well online, it turned out to be great with a lot of ideas we came up with after discussions and we could make the most of the online communication. Thanks to this online opportunity, we had participants from all around Japan from Kyushu to Hokkaido! ● I’d like to use “Easy Japanese” I’ve learned through this event when I interact with people from other countries.