At Meiji University’s Surugadai International Lounge (Global Front, 2nd floor), several university groups regularly hold student socials throughout this school year. Each student socials have different focus such as casual conversations in Japanese, relaxed hangout in any languages, or quick study groups on pressing global issues.
On October 30, we hosted a joint student social of the Nihongo Café and the Lunchtime Social. The Nihongo Café (organized by Associate Professor KUROSAKI Noriko's Seminar, the School of Commerce) is for students to enjoy casual conversations in Japanese and is usually held during Wednesday lunchtimes. Lunchtime Social (YAMADA Toru, the Director of Japanese Language Education Center, and student volunteers), is a mixed-language social which is held on Mondays with variety of music selections. In this joint social, students interacted in Japanese or/and English, and enjoyed casual interactions. It was lively and filled with their laughter. Some of them stated, "I'm happy to make some new friends."
This joint event was led by KAWAMURA Maika, a Teaching Assistant of Meiji’s International Student Center and the students from KUROSAKI’s Seminar. GOTO Natsuki (3rd year in the School of Commerce) of the seminar said, "With a larger number of participants, it was much livelier and more enjoyable than usual. One of the international students who I talked to today mentioned that these weekly gatherings in the lounge are the highlight of their student life at Meiji. I realized how important this place is for making connections. I'm glad we organized it" (We also would like to thank other seminar students, ISHIGURO Makoto, JEONG Huimin, ZHANG Jiaming, TSUNO Aoi, YUN So Eun, and YAMANAKA Chizuru, for their tremendous help).
Next joint event will be held on November 20 (Monday) at the Surugadai International Lounge (We take music requests in advance!). See you there!
(Contact: MIMAKI Junko, Associate Professor, Organization for International Collaboration)
