Recently, I have been planning a series of videos for Youyou in English. Although we do have ongoing videos in Japanese, I decided that it would be an excellent opportunity to expand beyond just having Japanese videos and to have English ones as well.

Basically, my plan is to discuss things that pertain to studying in English, of course, but also to discuss other related subjects. One of my students recently mentioned to me that she would like to study abroad. Many of my other students have mentioned this to me in the past, as well, or have specifically mentioned that they want to study abroad or are at least interested in possibly going to study abroad. Some schools or programs may even require a study abroad period as part of their graduation requirements, as well. I myself have not participated in an actual study abroad program, but I have did go to a university that is located outside of my home country, so I think that my experiences might likely be somewhat interesting to students. One of my coworkers has also studied abroad, so we are planning on discussing our experiences with studying in and also simply being in other countries, as I think that our discussion will likely be highly interesting for those who are interested in studying abroad but have not had the chance to do so.

Another aspect that I would like to explore, one that is also related to study in other countries, is specifically overcoming the language barriers of living in a foreign country. One of the most difficult aspects of living in a foreign country can be the fact that you may not know how to express yourself in the language of that country, even if you can do it in your native language. I’ve encountered this many times and I still sometimes do, so this is another subject that I want to discuss at length.

Yet a third subject that I wish to discuss with my colleague is our experiences in learning foreign languages and how each of us has found ways to become fluent in English, in his case, or relatively fluent, in my case, to the point where I can live in Japan with a relatively low level of difficulty with the language and even enjoy Japanese media entirely in Japanese. I have always thought that while learning languages is fun and interesting, it can be difficult and I understand that difficulty, so I think that a lot of my students would be interested in learning how I have become very comfortable with expressing myself in a language that is not my native one.

I hope to shoot the first video this week and then post it that day. It will be posted on Youyou’s Youtube channel, so please look forward to it.