みなさま、おひさしぶり〜！We are back from a FABULOUS trip to Japan and (sadly) back to normal life. It was a whirlwind trip– we hit up Tokyo, Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Nagoya, Hakone, and Yokohama in 2 weeks (I know, we are crazy). We saw lots of friends and family, ate tons of mouth-watering Japanese food, saw gorgeous sakura everywhere, and had the time of our lives. What I want to say to all of you out there is, “Don’t be afraid to go to Japan with young children. It is a blast, and worth the extra effort to take them there!” My daughter is already begging to go back. I’ll be sharing what we did with our children in Japan over the next few weeks.
I also want to thank my loyal readers out there who frequent my blog. Your insightful, kind comments always make my day. I know a lot of you out there are just like me, trying really hard to teach your children Japanese. SO, I have a little giveaway this week. I am giving away a waterproof Hiragana Chart to one lucky reader. I will ship to anywhere in the world except for Japan (because if you live in Japan… you are already a lucky duck). All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment and answer one of the following questions:
1) Why are you passionate about learning Japanese/ teaching your children Japanese?
2) What is your favorite/ most useful post on Hiragana Mama?
The winner will be selected randomly and announced on Saturday, May 5th, which just happens to be Children’s Day! I will contact the winner to see where I can send the prize. Sorry it is such a little giveaway (I don’t make any $ on this blog)! But these charts are hard to come by in the States. My kids love practicing their hiragana while taking a bath with their chart. Here are some pictures I took of the Hiragana Chart I’ll be giving away:
I didn’t take the chart out of the package to take the photos. But we have a similar bath chart, so here you can see what it kind of looks like:
At 60 x 42.5cm, it is a pretty large chart. It just sticks to the wall of your bath with water. Good luck, and check back for posts about our trip to Japan 🙂 Thanks for reading, and please share with your friends!
Hiragana Mama 
I haven’t been doing a great job of teaching my kids Japanese so far but I think it’s important for me to do so they can communicate better with their grandparents and other relatives we might meet in the future.
It’s not too late to start 😉
Don’t be sorry. This is an AWESOME prize. I would like to teach my 5 yr old daughter Japanese. Her grandmother was from Kobe. Unfortunately we lost her grandmother (my mother in law) about three years ago. It saddens me to know that my daughter will not know her grandmother’s Japanese heritage. I am trying to keep it alive for her the best I can. This would be an AWESOME help to get us started learning Japanese. PLUS to have it for tubby time would make tubby time that much more special. THANK YOU!!!
I’m glad you want to keep her grandmother’s heritage alive! You should take her to visit Kobe one day 🙂
I love so many of your posts and find them useful. I especially like your posts about holidays and links to Hiragana practice sheets and videos for kids.
Good to know, thanks!
My husband and I are both Caucasian but we love Japan, lived there briefly, and we were living in Japan when we found out we were expecting our first child. We decided to teach our children Japanese because we feel it’s a great way to improve our own skills while helping our kids become world citizens with a better understanding of different races/cultures while also learning a valuable life skill.
We love your website but, due to our kids’ ages, the best parts for us are your video links and book recommendations. Thanks to you, my boy adores Nontan!
If we win the hiragana chart, he will be excited to learn in the tub where, currently, he loves to learn the alphabet.
Yes, knowing more than one language/culture definitely gives you a better understanding of the world! Glad your boy loves Nontan, he is the best!
I’m not a parent yet, but I’m trying to learn Japanese so I can permanently move to Japan to teach ESL. When I do start having kids, hopefully they’ll be living in the country. I want them to grow up at least bilingual (maybe trilingual since my beau is Puerto Rican) since it would give them such a massive headstart in life. As for most useful post, I’d actually have to say the kids videos. I love watching them, they’re super entertaining, and I can actually get a little out of them.
Thank you so much for having this blog! ♥
I’m glad you like the videos! Good luck learning Japanese!
I’m studying Japanese at University (so I can become a High School teacher) while raising my 18 month old son as a sole parent. I’m passionate about Japan, Japanese culture & the language. My son is Australian-Japanese and therefore I want to teach him about the Japanese culture & language as well. I find very helpful in your blog are the KIDS VIDEOS from Youtube. I download them and play them for my son so he is getting some language and culture exposure.
You are awesome! Good idea to download the videos, I need to figure out how to do that.
Dowload a free program called aTubecatcher
http://atube-catcher.en.softonic.com/download
Then here is a video to download video’s from Youtube.
http://onsoftware.en.softonic.com/how-to-download-youtube-videos-with-atube-catcher
This video is a bit outdated as Youtube and aTubecatcher have been updated.
Hope this helps for Mum’s who want to store the video’s onto a PC/harddrive/ipad etc.
You can also download just the music from the Youtube video using this program.
It is a great tool to have because sometimes people take down their video on Youtube and it’s no longer there.
You are awesome for sharing this! Thank you : )
I just accidentally found your blog while looking for Japanese educational materials for my son. I am happy that I found it! I want him (his first birthday is coming up in 2 weeks) to learn Japanese because he is half Japanese (I am Japanese). I think knowing Japanese would become important for him as he develops his identity. But I am struggling to teach him the language!
Happy birthday to your son! Yes, it is hard to teach Japanese but you are right, it will help him as he develops his identity. Do you have Japanese friends in the area you could hang out with so he’s exposed to the language more?
Hi Hatsuho! Welcome back!! Oh my – you really went so many cities in 2 weeks! I always go back for two weeks but I’ve never been to that many cities in one time! Seems like you all had a great trip. My kids also say they want to go back too. 🙂 We have similar chart, so please exclude me from the giveaway. It’s a GREAT giveaway!!!
We packed a lot in to our trip since we don’t know when we’ll be able to go back! Thanks for the visit Nami!
こんにちは！
I’ve been looking for educational material for my girl but as I’m not fluent in Japanese yet, I wasn’t able to find them on my own. My little one is becoming 3 this month, and I’ve started learning Japanese with her (well not really, but I became serious then), as I was teaching her Japanese as her mother tongue since she’s a baby.
She’s really skillful so far, she already knows how to read kana (not yet びょorきゃbut well, she’s only 3) She stopped dreaming in japanese lately, I must keep up and make it happen again ! I’d understand if you were thinking “well, if she knows how to read, she doesn’t need it!” but as you said, she enjoys checking everything she knows on colorful displays, and I’m sure she’d love your gorgeous chart, especially in bath. What a lovely idea!
We’ve never been to Japan yet, so all I can have if from friends going there and getting us some おみやげ, and we’re working hard with しまじろう こどもちゃれんじ program and youtube/ニコニコビデオ and your blog.
The most important post maybe (though I love everything on traditional events like setsubun and hinamatsuri) would be the one about カルタ, from which everything started
(becoming able to get japanese stuff in our lives and not “only” japanese language) and it enabled me to find the site with kanji sheets to work on, from a link on this karuta post page (because in learning books they teach how to write like computers and this site teaches the “real” deal, かんしゃします u__u).
The karuta you provided us with were the starting point for my girl to get interested in reading! thank you! I didn’t even know about karuta before, you’re our angel 😉 )
I’d like to go teach french or english in japan from summer 2013, but even when I’m there, I’m sure your blog will stay a perpetual source of insights. Thank you for all your hard work!
I’ve always wanted to write you a little something but came in too shy, thinking I wouldn’t add anything interesting but today, I’m daring. I really wanted to thank you, I’m talking about your blog to all my japanese learning friends. Please do keep up 🙂
regards,
サシャ
If you’ve already taught her the kana, I am impressed, and would say you are doing a great job! Karuta is such a fun way to review Japanese. I hope you get to teach over in Japan… being immersed in the language is definitely the best way to become fluent! Thank you for the compliments!
Hello!
I am a Filipino American trying to teach my 4 year old son Japanese so that he can communicate with his Dad’s side of the family. I also just think that learning a second language is just a great idea and since it is soooo easy for kids his age to learn, I want to seize this opportunity while he is still a little sponge! I grew up bilingual because my parents both spoke the same language. However I am learning that it is very very different when only one person speaks the language that you want to teach your child! Not as easy but I believe still doable. So glad to have found your page! (found it because our little one just started watching the show with the cat, squirrel, and, apparently, sheep!)
Yes, it is hard when only one parent speaks the language you want to teach. But I believe it is worth the extra effort to keep the language/heritage alive! Haha, yes that sheep/cow character cracks me up! 🙂
I love any video with Japanese children songs you post. I found them extremely useful for my half Japanese girls (aged 3 and a half and 2). They love them! And I always pass them on to other Italian mums like me, who have half Japanese children.
Are there a lot of Japanese people living in Italy?
Yes, there are. At least, I know there are many in Milan, the city where I come from.
I appreciate the blog post about Omeyagi ideas–such great suggestions for when we travel to Japan this summer.
Yay! Glad it was helpful 😉
I found your site a couple of months ago in hopes to help my son learn Japanese. We just moved to Cali two years ago and my son has started a Japanese Language Immersion Kindergarten class. My husband and I are love Japanese culture but we are both foreigners to it. We’re both from Canada and I speak English and French. We both believe learning a language opens doors to learning about new cultures etc. We also know that the younger you start the better it is to retain and speak. I’m amazed at how much he has already gotten from a couple of months of kindergarten and I’m happy we are exposed to your rich culture. But I fear because we don’t know the language at the rate he’s at we will not be able to help him in the future.
I love your site because it allows me to read about important cultural days, hear and collect videos and just be up-to-date.
Oh, I am jealous your son gets to attend a Japanese Immersion Kindergarten! I would love, love, love to have that for my daughter.
Oh my gosh, I have seen this here at the stores. How fun! I was going to try and win, but I was thinking maybe that wouldn’t work since I live so far away AND if I can go get it myself then I should just do that. I love this website. 🙂
If you ever really want something from here let me know and I will ship it to you!
thanks Ashlee! 🙂 Wish Okinawa wasn’t so far away!
My 3 kids who have dual citizen-ship in Japan and the US (my husband is from Matsumoto City, Nagano, Japan and I’m from Chicago, Illinois, we live in Los Angeles, California). Their grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins in Japan only speak Japanese. We are trying to teach them Japanese and they go to Saturday Japanese school not only so they can communicate with their family in Japan but also they can understand their own Japanese heritage and culture. Who knows, they may want to go live and work in Japan someday!
Lisa
How lucky are your kids to have dual citizenship! They will be very grateful for your efforts to help them learn their Japanese language and culture in the future.
1) Why are you passionate about learning Japanese/ teaching your children Japanese?
Japan I feel is the most Western influenced East Asian Country/Culture, and therefore has a lot more accessibility to content and ideas. If my children can master Japanese, then they can engage in eastern thinking and gather ideas from another perspective other than western.
2) What is your favorite/ most useful post on Hiragana Mama?
Your posts on getting free activity sheets to practice hiragana, katakana is really great!
sweet : )