A Christmas market in Japan??

November 25, 2023

Last week, some of the NativShark team and I met up with a few NativShark learners who are in the community!

We went to the クリスマスマーケット (Christmas market) in 天神てんじん (Tenjin), which was really nice

We actually went on the day it opened so you would think it would be absolutely packed, right?

While this is normally the case… the skies opened up and a flood of rain, sleet, and thunder came down right as we were all meeting up to go.

Thankfully, the weather lightened up a bit and was only sprinkling when we got there, but I think it killed everyone else's desire to go.

Just take a peek at this:

Almost nobody but us and the TV people there.

Compare that to a pic from last year:

We could barely walk haha.

クリスマスマーケット

The クリスマスマーケット is a fun thing to experience if you're in Fukuoka between now and Christmas. Just be sure to go on or before Christmas, because once Christmas is over it's actually scary how quickly ALL the decorations around town get put away.

Casual

町並まちなみが怖こわいくらい一気いっきに変かわる。

The town's look changes so fast it's scary.

There are actually 6 other places where decorations are set up, including spots in 大名だいみょう (Daimyo), 博多はかた (Hakata), and 中洲なかす (Nakasu).

Here's the website if you wanna visit them all!

↑ If that website is difficult to understand, don't worry too much. There are a lot of place names in there which come with time and visiting/living in specific places.

That said, having a solid foundation in Japanese will really help make things easier.

NativShark is a comprehensive learning resource that can help you with that and more, if you wanna give it a shot. And it's all already planned out for you, so all you have to do is show up as often as possible and hit this button:

If you don't have an account yet, you can make one here:

↑ No payment info needed! It's free to get started with no risk of accidental charges.

Each market varies somewhat, by the way. The Tenjin and Hakata markets have live performances going on often, which are pretty nice to watch while you're snacking or drinking your festive drinks

Speaking of drinks, my go-to is either ホットワイン (hot wine) or ホットココア (hot cocoa).

The main reason I go for those? Well, while they both are tasty, they come with a mug. And I always get myself one of the mugs, because you can never have enough mugs (of course )!!

Every year they have ~5 new mugs, though I restrain myself and only buy 1 or 2.

Here's my collection. This year's Tenjin mug is the pink one:

The new one is so cute. It says "SanChan to KumaChan", with of course SanChan being サンタさん (Santa) but cuter haha.

I've always found it funny/interesting how in Japanese, we add a さん to Santa^^

There are also plenty of snacks and other Christmas-y things that you can buy there, such as candles, snow globes, decorations, etc.

Once we finished our drinks, we snapped a pic and headed over to Fukuoka Craft (which I feel like perhaps I talk about too much at this point ^^;)

From left to right: Bellissimo, Caleb, Chie, Me, Ironsouled

Thanks for meeting up! It was actually my first time meeting fellow NativShark learners in person and was a ton of fun^^

If you're planning on being in Fukuoka and want to meet up with some fellow learners/team members, feel free to let us know in the #travel channel in the community discord!

You can also ask for general travel tips or suggestions for places to visit. I have an ever-growing list of cool stuff I wanna see someday thanks to everyone who posts in there.

Anyway, would highly recommend the Christmas market because it's a fun stop along the way in your travels around Fukuoka, and Fukuoka looks so pretty with all the イルミネーション (decorative lights) everywhere.

I can share more pics of this and the other various markets I've taken, by the way. Feel free to come ask for them or let us know whatever questions you may have in the #newsletter channel in the community!

And if you've been there as well, I'd love to hear what you thought of it. Maybe there's something really cool that I've missed somewhere 👀

Weekly Japanese practice:

You're talking to a new potential friend and they ask you why you started learning Japanese.

This one is a common one that can be way harder than you'd think! I'd also just love to see why you started, so…

Post your responses here and let's talk about them!

We're active in there all week, so don't feel like you're late to the party if you need some time before you have the chance to respond. In fact, I usually post the above prompts around Thursday JST, which means people who are in the community get a bit of a sneak peek at them!

Would love to see you in there as well ^^

Feel free to ask for help if you want to say something specific. Both myself and other learners will be in there offering advice and help~

Submit prompts you want to see here.

Great job from everyone on last week's prompt 💪

We had a good discussion on the power of paraphrasing:

Perhaps in an upcoming newsletter, I can write more about paraphrasing.

It really is such a strong tool that can instantly boost your ability to have a conversation because it's perhaps one of the easiest ways to get unstuck from not knowing a certain word.

目から鱗 (me kara uroko)

I feel like I've heard this phrase before, but never fully understood it.

It's used when you have a sudden understanding of something, as explained below:

This comes from a lesson I studied the other day in Phase Three, Unit 84. It's cool cuz it also shows where the phrase came from, which was a bit unexpected

Anyway, this lesson is full of interesting phrases that you should check out. You uh… definitely won't see them in a textbook.

If the above Japanese is difficult for you, all you need to do is keep hitting the Study Now button, and you'll understand it when you get there. Especially when using a study resource like NativShark, you'll be fine as long as you show up as much as you can. The above comes from a lesson in Phase Three, Unit 84.

NativShark goodie bag

New Units will be coming out in December ^^

Have you been through all of the 645 Units currently available, though? 👀

If you have extra time and want to practice more, don't forget to…

…check out the native materials list the NativShark community has helped put together, or…
…try this week's Japanese practice and improve your production skills! You don't have to be a NativShark sub and you get free feedback

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

Hope you enjoyed this one,
Ty & the NativShark team