By Jazmin Angel-Guzman

We are back to Japanese Plus year two school year! We are starting off with a game of Karuta, a game where a speaker sings Japanese poems and the players have to look for a card that matches what the speaker sings. It was my first time playing Karuta, and it helped me get back to reading hiragana as review. Hiragana is one of the three Japanese scripts for writing. I did not know how competitive Karuta is until I saw my teammates and the other players kept on snatching the Karuta cards within nanoseconds. I barely had enough time to read some of the Karuta cards myself.

Playing a game with my classmates made me feel happy that I got to see them again. I hope that this year all of us can grow and achieve things together. Hopefully, this year we would have the opportunity to go to Japan and make a lot of memories! I am also happy to see my teacher Eshita Sensei and my coordinator Sally Schwartz again.