On August 26, after work, our Metals Department held a "Language Study Session & Social Gathering," which was attended by six of our voluntary employees. Since the Metal Department has many overseas customers and many employees are interested in foreign languages, the event was held for the first time with the aim of "deepening friendship within the department through language study.

Chinese was chosen as the language for this first session. China is the country with the largest number of transactions within the Metals Department, and two employees belong to the department who are native Chinese speakers. The participants learned simple greetings and self-introductions from native Chinese-speaking employees, as well as daily conversation and how to order at a restaurant. In addition, participants were given "Da Bai Rabbit Pnonglutinous rice cake" and "Shan Za Piece ( Piece of sansho)," traditional Chinese sweets, and enjoyed discussing the differences between them and Japanese sweets. At the reception after the study session, the participants actually ordered at a Chinese restaurant using the Chinese they had learned in the study session and practiced their skills.

One participant commented, "I introduced myself to my husband as soon as I got home! It was my first time to learn Chinese and pronunciation was difficult, but I would like to make use of it in my work".
In the future, we plan to hold study sessions for Korean, Portuguese, and other languages.