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From: Atsuko Akamatsu
To: Irina Trefilova
Date: 2012-Nov-14 13:45:44
Hello, Irina!
Thank you for your mail! I am glad you like their songs!
It is exciting to hear that our communication will be on a newspaper! I hope local people who will read the
article will be interested in such international communication and Japan.
Would you please send me the photo of the newspaper article when it is published by attaching it on an
email? If possible, would you send me a summary in English of the article? I don't think I can read it, but
I would like to show it to my students and teachers who are going to attend a seminar for English teachers
in western Japan which will be held in January next year. I am going to make a presentation about our
communication. I hope many other teachers will be encouraged to start international communication like
ours by listening to our students' comments about this communication! It is my dream that multitudes of
students will enjoy international communication like this and be motivated to learn and practice not only
English but also many other foreign languages to make friends around the world. If we make many friends
around the world, we will surely feel that it is stupid to threaten our friends with terrible weapons and to
practice killing them. Then the huge amount of money we spend to buy the weapons and to employ many
people for the practice of murder can be used
to restore damages from and build protection against natural disasters,
to build more schools,
to plant more trees,
to clean more water,
to help starving people grow their own food,
to take care of sick, handicapped, and old people,
to train more teachers to help more students to communicate with foreign people to understand different
cultures and make more friends to cooperate with to create a more peaceful world together.
I asked my students who attended the Skype communication to write short messages about it;
It was fun to communicate with you all, though I couldn't speak English well. I want to try this
communication again! Misaki
I learned "Спасибо" in Russian for the first time!
(I am sorry I don't know the right spelling for thank you in Russian.) Remi

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It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot, so it was good. Nene
I enjoyed the communication very much. Russian students are cute.(she added a sign of heart at the end of
the sentence.) I want to talk much more with them. I want to meet them. Russia seems to be a fun place.
Haruka
I enjoyed talking. I'm glad to meet you. Yuri :)
"Спасибо!" It was great! ¥(^^)/
I enjoyed the communication. (She added a sign of musical note at the end of this sentence.) Erina
It was a lot of fun. I am going to send my song next time. Would you listen to it? (She wrote this before
recording the song.) If we have other chances to talk, let's enjoy talking again. Thank you very much.
Yukino
Haruka came to me after one class and asked me if she can go to Russia to see your students or we can invite
them to Japan! She seemed very happy to talk with your students and want to see them in person.
Actually some of my students who joined the communication don't like English and sometimes sleep in my
English grammar class! So I sometimes wake them up. But I often see such students who don't like
"studying" English more eager to communicate with foreign people in English. I think I should make my
classes more exciting!
Thank you very much for your great cooperation in this wonderful communication between your students
and my students.
Is 2:00 p.m. to 2:20 Japan time on December 11 OK for the next Skype communication? I am sorry it will
be short, but 2:20 is the end of the period of the English class. Shall I ask my students to bring something
to introduce Japanese culture? If you have an idea about what to talk, would you tell me? You said your
students have questions about Japan, didn't you? If you send us before the Skype communication,
my students can prepare for the questions. Because my students are not good at English, it is sometimes
hard to answer quickly.
I am looking forward to hearing from you.
With lots of love,
Atsuko