Leeds Japanese Language Study Group 2026

Hello.

My name is Masaru, but you can call me Josh if you like. I'm the organiser of this group. I'm a native Japanese speaker (or Kansai-ben to be more specific =), and I've been really enjoying meeting people and helping them learn Japanese. I'm trying to organise weekly meetings for this group.

Everyone is welcome, from complete beginners to advanced learners. Beginners are especially encouraged to join — no experience needed. Also, feel free to bring your friends.

Beginners;
Fist timers, please just join.
All others, please bring papers from previous meetings.
We will practice how to introduce yourselves, how to ask and answer questions and how to read and write hiragana and katakana a little bit.

Advanced learners;
We will discuss on a topic and write and present it. I may give a topic here so stay tuned! Please bring your writing from the previous meeting and I will check it for you if you want me to.

If you have any other idea about what to do, please send me a message and suggest it.

To be an organiser I had to start a monthly subscription at meetup.com. So I will be asking donations of £2 per attendance to cover this cost, although it is completely optional. It will be really nice if you come along and join us.

It looks like there are about equal numbers of people who can meet on Wednesday and Thursday. So let's try Thursday this time.
We will be at Parkside Tavern on Merrion Street (LS2 8JE, https://www.parksidetavern.co.uk/) on Thursday, 19th of February. We'll start at 18:00 and plan for 90 minutes. We will be seated upstairs if tables are available.
Don't hesitate to come late. Better late than never, OK?

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to message me.

See you on Thursday!

All the best,
Josh

[Below are the old descriptions. I would keep these for now.]

A meeting to practice conversation, share study tips and generally chat about learning Japanese. Absolute beginners welcome, there'll be plenty of advice to help you out!

I've made some changes to the event and hope to host these more regularly!

What to bring
Speaking
Try to prepare a short piece of writing in Japanese beforehand to read out during the session, the topic can be anything but here's some prompts to help you out

• Your plans for the weekend
• Tell us about your last holiday
• Tell us about a gift you have given/received

If you're happy to, please add to this doc after the event so others can have a read

Show and tell
Bring something to discuss with the group related to learning Japanese like an article, a book or a movie recommendation, anything you've found useful

Neither of these are required but try to bring something along if you can!

Hope to see you there!