Sunday, April 28, 2013

Imai Tsubasa as one-day lecturer at Nihon University

Takki & Tsubasa's Imai Tsubasa took on the role of a one-day lecturer at Nihon University's Mishima campus in Shizuoka on 26 April where he talked about Spain to 400 students from the International Relations faculty while dressed in a new grey suit. Imai is the first Japanese individual selected as the Spanish Cultural Special Ambassador last year due to his extensive knowledge of the country and its country thus he was invited to be the lecturer by the university's professor Sumita Tetsuyasu. This is also the first time that a Johnny's Jimusho celebrity became an university lecturer.

Imai developed a deep interest for Spain ever since he went to learn the flamenco dance there in August 2007 for his stage play that year and even picked up Spanish. He was selected to be the navigator of NHK's Spanish learning programme in 2011 and had visited Spain 20 times within the last 7 years. Although Imai hoped to perform a flamenco dance during the lecture, he had to give up the thought at the last minute as he was down with appendicitis since last weekend.

Imai greeted the students with the Spanish greeting Hola and expressed his gratitude for being asked to speak at an university like Nihon University which has a long-running history. He began the lecture with his thoughts about Spain and showed a video of him performing the flamenco dance before teaching two verbs which he thought were very useful in Spain. Imai even prepared materials in advance to be given out to the students who were mainly from the first year. Professor Sumita praised Imai for being well-prepared, gave him 120 points for his performance and expressed his intention to get Imai to be a visiting lecturer in future. The students who attended his lecture would have to write a report about their thoughts so Imai said that he wished to go through every report and hopefully return them with his own messages to the students.

Source: Sanspo

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