From making origami figures to playing with kendamas the Japanese Culture Club aims to immerse students into Japanese culture and they will continue to do so despite the pandemic.

“Japanese Culture Club is a cultural club that helps introduce and give students more understanding of the Japanese culture,” co-president sophomore Mika Lal said via text. “Since there are barely any Japanese students on campus, my friend Shiori and I thought it would be fun to start a club teaching others about Japan and its culture.”

Due to COVID-19 and social distancing the club is unable to meet in person which prevents them from activities such as arts and crafts, sharing snacks, and playing games.

“Over the summer, the officers began wondering how we could carry on the club next year, and decided that compared to other aspects of culture, language was the easiest to carry on virtually,” co-president junior Shiori Harima said via text. “Mika and I started off by teaching our non-Japanese speaking officers some Japanese, and since it was successful, we figured that it was what we should do for our club. So this year we aren’t holding any live meetings, and we instead are recording Japanese language lessons to post on social media platforms.”

The club uploads their lessons every two weeks on Saturdays to both their Instagram and YouTube channel.

“Since everything is online this year, it would be the perfect time for people to start learning the Japanese language if they wanted,” officer sophomore Lilya Ma said via text. “Having virtual meetings is a bit difficult as everyone has different schedules. This way people would be able to learn at their own pace, and they could always review and look back on our older videos as well.”

Junior Amanda Meng believes that the video lessons have made the club more accessible to members.

“I like the direction they’ve taken this year in response to covid since the video lessons allow us to watch it at any given time,” Meng said via text. “I like the flexibility of it. Since the videos posted on IG, it doesn’t give me stress to have to attend the meetings like last year when I would have band events or quizzes to do during advisory.”