Japanese

​​​​​​​Cashmere High School has been teaching Japanese for almost 30 years. New Zealand is one of few countries that offer Japanese language courses at high school level. One of the fascinations of learning Japanese for our students is the writing system. Students learn the phonetic writing systems of hiragana in Year 9; and katakana in Year 10. Kanji (Chinese characters) are taught at all levels.

Written Japanese is a combination of these three systems. Kurashiki Minami Senior High School, in our sister city of Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture is our new sister school. Senior students have the option of taking part in a biennial school trip to Japan.

There are also opportunities to host exchange students from Japan and many different scholarships and programmes students can apply for if they wish to spend a longer time studying at high school in Japan.

Learning Japanese and being able to read and write Japanese gives students deep intercultural understanding if they visit, live or work in Japan in the future.