When you think of Business Japanese, you might think of keigo, business etiquette, or perhaps formal emails and meetings.
But the students who come to Nihongo Picnic to learn Business Japanese have a much wider range of goals.
Some want to build their vocabulary and learn expressions that are actually used at work. Some want to be able to talk about a wider range of topics in professional conversations. Others want to express their thoughts or explain a situation more clearly and concisely.
At Nihongo Picnic, we create our own materials around familiar topics such as current news, society, and the way we work, with a focus on Japanese that students can also use in professional settings.
As well as learning the Japanese used in business, we want students to use Japanese to think, express their ideas, and communicate with others.
From convenience stores to business discussions
Here is one of the original materials we actually use in our high-intermediate Business Japanese class
🔗 進化するコンビニ
In this lesson, students talk about recent convenience store trends from a consumer’s point of view, but also discuss the topic from the perspective of the companies that operate them, including areas such as branding.
Through these discussions, students are encouraged to use vocabulary and expressions that commonly appear in business settings. The example sentences in our “Expression of the Week” section are also written with business situations in mind.
Using real documents from work
In some lessons, we have an NDA in place between the student’s company and Nihongo Picnic, allowing us to use documents they actually work with as lesson materials.
Rather than simply explaining the content of the documents, the teacher identifies vocabulary and expressions that appear frequently in them and creates activities to help the student practice using them in their own speech.
The aim is not only to understand the Japanese they come across at work, but to be able to use that language themselves.
Using AI to find patterns in your Japanese
In another case, with the student’s permission, we sometimes record conversations using keigo during lessons and use AI to transcribe and analyze them.
The goal is not to correct every single mistake. By looking at the analysis, students can identify grammatical mistakes they may be repeating without realizing it and become more aware of their own patterns.
We can then focus on these areas in lessons and help students work on correcting them consciously.
Business Japanese looks different for everyone
“Business Japanese” covers a very wide range of needs, and what each student wants to work on can be very different. There may also be confidential information involved, depending on their work.
For these reasons, we currently offer all of our Business Japanese lessons as 1-on-1 lessons.
If you’re interested in Business Japanese lessons at Nihongo Picnic, we’d be happy to first meet with you on Zoom to hear about your needs and discuss what we could work on together. Please feel free to get in touch with us!
Meet our growing team of teachers!
We have more teachers at Nihongo Picnic!
We’ve updated our website with their profiles, so if you’d like to get to know our teachers and learn a little more about them, have a look here:
https://www.nihongopicnic.com/instructors
Our JLPT Preparation Courses have started!
Our JLPT Preparation Courses started in September.
It’s still possible to join our N2 and N3 classes if you pass our level check.
If you’re preparing for the JLPT this December and would like to join us, you can find more information here:
For lesson inquiries, contact us anytime!
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