You wanted another reason for why I fail?
Yeah, so I managed to write the 5-minute speech for the final test for "Japanese Communication". After people convinced me that talking about "Taboos" might not be too clever a topic, I had a hard time coming up with another. Hell, coming up with "Taboos" was hard enough!
I thought about speaking about cycling in Nara vs. cycling in Heidelberg, but that would come off... not very favourably for Nara (they let KIDS ride bikes without helmets, and if you actually wear a helmet, people stare at you like you're from a different planet. Yeah, it's that bad), so I dismissed that idea.
I also dismissed topics like "Things I Learned About Japan Until Now" that my friends recommended - because how boring and predictable can you get? Also, I'm pretty sure I don't really understand half of what I believe I've come to understand, so. "Understand", more likely.
Then, I was thinking, "well, what do you like?" and... then I thought about what I look at when I go into department stores (or what kinds of stores I frequent, anyway), and apart from the standard "book shops, duh", I thought, hey. Remember how you always spend HOURS (exaggerated, to be fair) in the Stationery department of whatever department store you enter, completely disregarding the fact that actually, you need socks and washing powder? Yeah.
So my end-of-term speech is about Stationery in Japan and Germany. It's more or less exactly five minutes long, consists of the comparison of exercise/note books, letter sets, and folders as well as many errors, and will most likely leave a wtf look on my classmates' faces.
But unless I come up with a better topic and manage to make a decent speech about it (and no, I refuse to do the incredibly uninspired "Cultural Differences Between Germany and Japan", thank you very much), that will have to do.
Because I love Stationery very much. I'm not even being sarcastic or even ironic here; it's the truth. Ask anyone who's been out shopping with me - I end up in the Stationery department even if they wanted to buy groceries (hi, Mama).
I thought about speaking about cycling in Nara vs. cycling in Heidelberg, but that would come off... not very favourably for Nara (they let KIDS ride bikes without helmets, and if you actually wear a helmet, people stare at you like you're from a different planet. Yeah, it's that bad), so I dismissed that idea.
I also dismissed topics like "Things I Learned About Japan Until Now" that my friends recommended - because how boring and predictable can you get? Also, I'm pretty sure I don't really understand half of what I believe I've come to understand, so. "Understand", more likely.
Then, I was thinking, "well, what do you like?" and... then I thought about what I look at when I go into department stores (or what kinds of stores I frequent, anyway), and apart from the standard "book shops, duh", I thought, hey. Remember how you always spend HOURS (exaggerated, to be fair) in the Stationery department of whatever department store you enter, completely disregarding the fact that actually, you need socks and washing powder? Yeah.
So my end-of-term speech is about Stationery in Japan and Germany. It's more or less exactly five minutes long, consists of the comparison of exercise/note books, letter sets, and folders as well as many errors, and will most likely leave a wtf look on my classmates' faces.
But unless I come up with a better topic and manage to make a decent speech about it (and no, I refuse to do the incredibly uninspired "Cultural Differences Between Germany and Japan", thank you very much), that will have to do.
Because I love Stationery very much. I'm not even being sarcastic or even ironic here; it's the truth. Ask anyone who's been out shopping with me - I end up in the Stationery department even if they wanted to buy groceries (hi, Mama).