The Japanese Friendship Society (JFS) is located at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. We are a group of students that are of different nationalities with a common interest in Japanese language and culture. Not only do the Japanese members share their culture with the other members, but all of our members share their cultures with everyone else. Mostly, though, we just party! If you are in the Athens area and are interested in joining or have any questions or comments, please feel free to send us an e-mail.
--Jessee aka JPOP
The Japanese Friendship Society's original purposes were international cultural exchange and mutual language aquisition. It was a means for Japanese teachers, TAs, so-called "Native Informants", as well as undergrad/grad exchange students along with American undergrad/grad students to interact and share ideas about the two languages and cultures. JFS considered parties, activities such as ski and camping trips, and pot-luck dinners as the best, most comfortable, most natural approach to meet this end.
This is a formula that has worked quite nicely prior to this school year (1998-99). Yet recently, we have had communication and organizational problems that have resulted in a loss of a substantial portion of our membership.
This semester we obtained WWW-space (the site you are currently viewing), and we obtained a listserv (jfs-l@listserv.uga.edu). Through this listserv, officers of JFS can communicate to the members through email, and the members can communicate to the officers. We hope to have a Java-based chat function incorporated into this web site, as well as a message board and other neat-o communication functions by the beginning of the next school year.
Aside from the bureaucratic stuff, I would like to note that JFS is a good organization. It has helped me gain a greater, real-world understanding of Japanese culture, apart from what I read in books. I've learned how to use certain Japanese grammatical structures that I would never be able to understand without testing out example sentences with my Japanese friends. And I think that it's fair to say that my Japanese friends have also benefitted from interacting with me in English. I've seen many of my friends achieve an astounding level of fluency in just a few months.
Now's the part where you say, yeah yeah yeah, JFS sounds like a bunch of Japan-freak weirdos who wear hawaiian shirts, eat sushi, name their pet mouse "Pikachuu" and their dog "yoshi", sing karaoke and like it, watch anime, imitate Kimutaku from Smap, winning the adulation of cute asian schoolgirls, and joking in Japanese with the boys about obscene kanji like "kabe". Well, you couldn't be more correct ;)
---Chris aka Negu
Created by: 
and revised by 