Spring has finally arrived in the north country of Wisconsin. It is always amazing to see everything turning green and all the flowers come alive, sometimes overnight. Soon the air will be filled with lilacs and apple blossoms.

As I take the office of president of the ATJ this spring, I would like to emphasize that there are three presidents of the ATJ. Although the public duties seem to fall mostly on the current president, we serve for three years, as President-Elect, President, and Past President. I see the Association having three heads, and three heads are better than one. So, with three presidents, I hope we can make wiser decisions, take more initiatives, and move the Association forward.

In this regard, the ATJ, in cooperation with NCJLT (National Council of Japanese Language Teachers) and Columbia University, is planning an International Conference on Japanese Language Education (ICJLE) on August 5-6, 2006. It will be held at Columbia University in New York City. There has been increasing awareness of the need for cooperation and networking among the various Japanese teachers’ organizations around the world, and such international conferences have been held in Tokyo (1998, 2004), Korea (2000), and the People’s Republic of China (2002). This will be the first time that ATJ hosts a major international conference, and we hope it will provide a forum for Japanese language educators from around the world to share and discuss new challenges they are facing as well as to propose solutions. We hope the conference will bring together teachers of Japanese from both college and pre-college levels as well as teachers and researchers across disciplines: language, literature, and culture.

The conference will feature at least two keynote speakers, a number of invited panels, informal discussion groups, paper presentations, and a poster session. For the year 2006, our annual Seminar will be moved to August and be part of the ICJLE. The ICJLE steering committee, which includes representatives of both ATJ and NCJLT, has met several times and has been working hard to plan the conference. A call for papers is forthcoming. We have set the deadline for abstract submission as October 15, 2005.

Although we will not hold our Seminar in conjunction with the Association for Asian Studies, we will still hold a board meeting, a general membership meeting, and SIG meetings in conjunction with the AAS conference. We expect to have a couple of ATJ-sponsored panels at the AAS, and we encourage members to propose panels for the AAS conference. ATJ can endorse these panel proposals, so please get in touch with us if you need our endorsement. The proposal deadline for AAS is August 1, 2005. Information is available online at www.aasianst.org.

It was wonderful to see so many ATJ members at the ATJ and AAS meetings in Chicago. We had five concurrent sessions going, and for the first time SIGs were given their own panel slots. The Seminar concluded with a keynote speech by Professor Emeritus Takie Sugiyama Lebra, who gave us some anthropological perspectives on Japanese culture and the Japanese self. The lecture was very stimulating and gave us a lot to think about, and the Seminar as a whole was a great success. We are grateful to Yasuko Ito Watt and the other members of the Seminar Committee for taking such great care in organizing this year’s program.

At the board meeting held on April 1, we welcomed Wesley Jacobsen as this year’s president-elect. Three new board members were also announced: Janet Ikeda, Yoshiko Mori, and Eve Zimmerman. We express our sincere appreciation for their willingness to serve the Association. We also thank outgoing officer Pat Wetzel and outgoing board members Yuki Johnson, Lawrence Marceau, and Ken’ichi Miura. Pat Wetzel, in particular, deserves special recognition. She was the first President of the ATJ under the new triumvirate system. She also had previously served as the general editor of the Journal for many years. We appreciate her leadership and dedication to the ATJ.

One of the important new initiatives in Japanese language teaching in the U.S. is the introduction of the AP (Advanced Placement) exams and curriculum in Japanese language and culture. Yasu-Hiko Tohsaku and three other members of the College Board’s Japanese AP Task Force were on hand at the general membership meeting on April 2 in Chicago to talk about the program and field many good questions from the audience. Tohsaku sensei made a very concise presentation about what AP is, the benefits of having an AP program in Japanese, and current and projected activities. Specifically, the AP Japanese Exam will target students who have completed approximately 300 hours of college-level instruction, and it will be based on the National Standards. Tohsaku sensei’s presentation is posted on the ATJ web site; please use it to explain the program to your colleagues, especially those at the high school level. Current information is also available at AP Central (http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/), and interested members are invited to register at this site to receive regular updated information.

I would also like to thank Ms. Mariko Oka-Fukuroi (Managing Director, Japanese Language Department, the Japan Foundation) for attending the Seminar and addressing the general membership meeting. She expressed great enthusiasm for the proposed International Conference on Japanese Language Education, and ATJ and NCJLT are working closely with the Japan Foundation to make this a successful event.

I also would like to take this opportunity to thank JP Trading Company and the Consulate General of Chicago for hosting a wonderful reception for ATJ members at the close of the Seminar on March 31. It was a wonderful finale to the day!

For the rest of this "Year of Languages," we will be busy with planning and organizing the 2006 International Conference. In the meantime, please let us know if you have any suggestions, comments, or concerns about our activities or any aspect of the ATJ.