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Our ‘Farewell, Pim! Welcome Back, Kim!’ Tea Party

Today, we bring you a blog post from Motoko, JapanesePod101.com lesson creator, host and Office Party Planner! Motoko will be sharing more bilingual posts on our blog, so check back often and leave a comment!

On the 17th of April here at Innovative Language Learning, we had an afternoon tea party.

Although Kim (a member of our Business Development Team) moved to Hong Kong, last week she came back to Japan for a brief visit, so it was her ‘welcome back’ party. Meanwhile, Pim (host of ThaiPod101.com) is going back to her home country to have her baby, so it was her ‘farewell’ party.

We all ate pastries, chatted, and enjoyed ourselves.

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There was a choice of pastries: strawberry, green tea, custard… It was really hard to choose!

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By the way, everyone, do you know what a shikishi is?

It’s a plain piece of card that measures roughly 20cm by 20cm. Actually, because it’s quite thick – about 3mm – it might be better to call it a board. It usually has a piece of Japanese paper pasted to one side of it. In Japan, when there’s a celebratory occasion, or someone is leaving, everyone writes a message on this piece of card. At ILL, too, when someone has something to celebrate or a staff member is leaving the company, we present them with a shikishi.

First of all, we write the name of the person in the middle. This time, it’s Pim. Then, so that the person we’re giving it to doesn’t see it while we’re writing on it, we put it inside the Secret File.

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Everyone in the office then takes it in turns to write a message along the lines of ‘Congratulations!’ or ‘See you!’ before passing the card to the next person. Of course the company president also writes a personal message.

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When everyone’s finished writing their messages, we decorate the card and make it cute and colourful.

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Finally, we give it to Pim! She seemed really pleased with it.

Bonus : The True Face of ILL

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ピムさんまたね&キムさんお帰りなさい ティーパ-ティ

4月17日イノベーティブランゲージラーニングで午後のお茶会をしました。

香港に引っ越したキムさんが一時来日したので、「お帰りなさい」パーティ
新しい家族を迎えるためにピムさんが帰国するので、「またね」パーティです。

みんなでお菓子を食べて、おしゃべりをして楽しみました。
お菓子には選択肢もあります。いちご・抹茶・カスタード・・・どれにしようか迷います。

ところで、みなさんは「色紙」を知っていますか。

20cm×20cmくらいの無地の紙です。でも3mmくらいの厚さがあるのでボードと言ったほうがいいかもしれません。たいてい和紙が表に貼ってあります。日本ではお祝い事やお別れのときに色々な人みんなで色紙にコメントを書きます。ILLでもスタッフが会社を辞めるときやお祝いの時に色紙を贈ります。
まず真ん中に送る人の名前を書きます。今回はピムさんですね。そして本人にばれないように秘密のファイルにはさみます。

一人ずつ「おめでとう」や「またね」などのコメントを書いて次の人に渡します。もちろん社長も直筆で書きます。

みんなが書き終わったらデコレーションをして可愛く華やかにしましょう。
最後にピムさんに渡しました。よろこんでくれたみたいです。

【おまけ】 ILLの本性