WYATT COKE
ART DIRECTOR
In September of 2018, one of Moanalua’s two AP Japanese classes toured the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport to learn firsthand about Hawaii's multinational travel industry. By the end of the tour, Japan Airlines (JAL) issued the class a challenge: find a way to get more customers to fly JAL’s less popular flight from Japan to Kona (as opposed to their flights to Honolulu which garner more attention from Japanese fliers). The students divided into groups and set to work. By November 2018, they pitched their ideas to two JAL representatives who looked over the students’ proposals and selected the ideas they thought would work best.
“Maybe our ideas will help JAL in the future, whether they use them or create new ideas from the ideas we gave them,” said senior Jaycie Ota.
Ota was the leader of one of the AP Japanese groups who pitched their idea to JAL.
“I think the hardest part [of our project] was making our idea unique,” Ota said. “A lot of us went for an ‘advertising’ or ‘tourism’ kind of pitch, so we had to make our idea seem a little more unique because there’s only so many solutions that we could’ve come up with as a class. Even if it’s just the slightest bit different, that’s be the difference between one group’s [pitch] and another’s.”
Ota’s group’s idea was for JAL to partner with a Big Island tour group that could host more local-centric tours with a focus on education and sustainability in Hawaii rather than on typical tourist hotspots. Their idea, along with another group’s idea to make an advertising mascot for the Kona flight, was selected by JAL representatives who thought the ideas held potential for the airline company.
“All of them did really great presentations.” said sensei Jamielyn Tateyama, Moanalua High School’s AP Japanese teacher. “Their ideas were very versatile and thought about people in this day and age.”
“We had all been doing research on our own, so it was just a matter of using the right research to do your part.” Ota said. “For example, Emily Quach, one of the members of our group, did a lot of research on why advertising is good for businesses.”
All of the research each group did was assembled into powerpoints and pitched to the JAL representatives in full Japanese.
“I was able to raise the level of my Japanese [by doing this project]. I had to learn new words and forms, so that was very helpful.” said Ota. “Our teacher made it very clear that she wanted [our project pitches] to be in Japanese as much as possible.”
“The language was probably the hardest part for them.” said Tateyama. “It takes a lot of practice and it’s really high steaks when you present in front of the vice president of Japan Airlines.”
This project was part of a larger multi-business collaboration AP Japanese is conducting with its classes. Alongside the partnership with JAL, another AP Japanese class at Moanalua High School addressed the problem of encouraging more bilingual speakers to work for Hilton Hotels and Resorts and also performed well.
Seniors Naomi Lee, Pakalana Shiraki, and sophomore Ariel Nagaishi collaborated on a 30-second commercial that hotel executives felt could meet the company’s needs. Shiraki and Nagaishi worked on the script, and Lee worked on the commercial, which was an anime production.
“We wanted to attract the younger people to apply,” Shiraki said.
The group had been working on the project for about two months, and “it was Naomi’s idea to do the animation,” she said.
Lee used Clip Studio Paint to do the animation. Though Lee is adept at making 2-D art on the computer, developing an animation project was more challenging.
“I studied a lot of anime movies and tried to imitate that,” she said.
This involved drawing anywhere from three individual frames per second of animation to eight frames. Lee said she ended up drawing just under 100 frames in less than a week for the 30-second commercial.
Shiraki has been taking Japanese class for the past four years, though she has been speaking it for much longer. She said her mother spoke to her in Japanese as a child, though she concedes that speaking the language is not the same as learning how to read and write all the kanji in the AP Japanese class. Shiraki said she will be applying for the Department of Education’s Seal of Biliteracy certificate this semester, which recognizes students who are proficient in a second language.
Lee, who is also working toward the same certificate, said she is hoping to blend her proficiency in the language and her love of art as a career.
“I want to incorporate Japanese and art together in some way,” she said. “I love manga but I’m not sure I want to pursue that. I am going to try to find a different way to bring these two areas together.”
Though these two business collaborations started this year, AP Japanese has been conducting similar projects over the past couple years.
“We actually started this project two years ago.” said Tateyama. “It was with the Japanese 4 class at the time, [which] has now combined with AP Japanese. I wanted both the AP students and Japanese 4 students to have the experience of collaborating with a business partnership [like] JAL and Hilton because [they’re] connected to Japanese customers and Japan.”
Now that the presentations are over, the AP Japanese classes are waiting to hear back from their respective businesses. Already, Hilton has expressed interest in implementing the students’ proposals into their programs.
“We haven’t heard from JAL yet about what Tokyo has said about the Kona ideas yet. But as [they] and Hilton mentioned, they’re going to continue working with us.” said Tateyama. “Eventually I want to see something produced by our students actually happen. We’re going to keep working at it to make sure that something can be produced [with a] Moanalua brand at a business level.”
“I thought [this project] was really interesting and I had fun doing it,” said Ota. “I really do believe it helped me grow my Japanese.”