Leeds Japanese Language Study Group 2026

Hello.

My name is Masaru, but you can call me Josh if you like. I'm a native Japanese speaker (Kansai-ben to be more specific =). I've been enjoying meeting people and helping them learn Japanese. I'm hoping to run 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.

Fist timers: Depending on your skill you will be sitting at either beginners' table or advanced one. Please just join.

Beginners: We will practice how to introduce yourselves, how to ask and answer questions and how to read and write hiragana and katakana. Please bring the papers from previous meetings.

Advanced learners: We will discuss a simple topic, write about it and present it in Japanese. If you complete your writing from previous meetings, I can check it for you if you'd like.

If you have any other ideas about what to do, please send me a message.

As an organiser I pay a monthly subscription at meetup.com. To help cover this, I'll ask for an optional donation of £2 per meeting. If you don’t carry cash, you can just buy me a beer and that would cover three meetings.

We tried a Thursday meeting last time, but all attendees said they can do on Wednesday. So let's meet on Wednesday.
We will be at Parkside Tavern on Merrion Street (LS2 8JE, https://www.parksidetavern.co.uk/) on Wednesday, 25th 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 Wednesday!

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!