By Felipe Lemos

On October 28, I had the pleasure of walking along the Tidal Basin along with my Japanese Plus classmates as well as some visiting teachers from Japan. This was a great opportunity to practice my Japanese along with my classmates and learn new words and phrases from the teachers. The rules were clear, we were only allowed to conversate in Japanese throughout the entire walk. This meant we would practice both long phrases to describe various things we saw on the walk, and short filler words from daily conversation. We learned how to play “I Spy” in Japanese as well. We learned how to say the different colors in Japanese and used that to play I Spy with various different monuments that we could see around us. This was helpful for learning not only the colors but also the names of common objects, like trash cans or trees.

We were also able to appreciate Japan’s cultural influence in DC as we walked by the out-of-bloom but still beautiful cherry blossom trees that would turn beautiful shades of pink come spring. The walk was an overall success as I felt that it was a great chance for me to practice my Japanese in a more casual setting outside of the classroom. We were also able to catch some tidbits of Japanese influence along the way, such as a lantern that came from Japan and references to World War II in the FDR Memorial.