About Renata (click here for site info)

Renata Suzuki was born in Scotland, but spent most of her secondary school years in Germany before returning to the British Isles to study a language degree at Oxford University.

Today, Renata lives and works in Japan where she has more than 15 years experience as a teacher behind her, first in Kyushu, later Yamanashi and now in Yokohama where she works for the Yokohama Board of Education, specialising in teaching language and cultural awareness to the young.

Renata is a well known environmental campaigner in Japan and has contributed regular print columns to a variety of publications as well as appearing on TV with the songs you will find in this site. In Yamanashi, Renata was a rare thing, a foreign member of the prefectural government, working as environmental advisor.

Renata lectures in English and in Japanese on the environment and on the role of the teacher in promoting environmental awareness in the young. She also writes Jazz lyrics, translates books and finds the time to raise two sons. She is a whizz with knitting needles!

About the Site

The first thing to say is that this site is designed to be simple. There is no Java, no Flash and no cookies. This is quite deliberate and hopefully will make the site available to as many people in as many environments as possible. If you do have a problem, e-mail the webmaster here.

All the words on the site (except this page, we couldn't let her write that!) are taken from the original publication of One Green Leaf (now sold out.) Nothing has been changed so you may need to know that in Japan counties/states are called Prefectures, a correct answer wins a circle, not a tick and any number of other localisation points!

Also, please bear in mind that the songs here are aimed at young children learning English as a second language. If your group is composed of native english speakers, you may find it appropriate to reduce the age range and use the songs in a more sophisticated way.

Dave Greenhalgh