Ahn Show Tie Kai
Normally, I consider 5:30 am too early to wake up, especially on a Sunday morning, but there was a speech recitation contest in Kagoshima City today! In this prefecture-wide competition, one second-year and one third-year student from each junior high school can memorize a set speech and recite it in front of judges and an audience. Only one of my schools had students who did this: Matsuyama. Haruki Morioka, one of the funniest students I teach, was the second-year, and Yuka Kusanose was the third-year. I also briefly met and helped the third-year from Shibushi JHS, so I had three people to root for.
I left the house at 6 am, and traveled by car, boat and bus for about 2.5 hours. It turned out that there were about 60 third-years and maybe 50 or so second-years there. When I came to this event last year, both of my students were in the middle or towards the back in terms of order. This year, Yuka was scheduled to go 4th, and Haruki was 11th.
Both of them were very nervous, and I have to admit that I was pretty nervous, too. When Yuka gave the speech, her pronunciation was excellent and her gestures were on target and not overdone. The only problem is that she was very quiet, at least when compared with the rest of the first five third-years. If she had been louder, I think she would've been a contender for a trophy.
As soon as Yuka got back, the four of us (the two English teachers came, too) went to see Haruki. I said that he's really funny, but I had no clue what he was going to do during the speech. The second-year students' speech is a short story in which an uncle comes to visit his family. He really likes cheese, but they're out. His nephew finds some cheese, and the uncle has already eaten it before the kid tells him he found it in a rat trap. Anyway, the mother has some dialog in which she apologizes for not having any cheese. When Haruki said this part, he made his voice go comically high, and almost everyone in the room laughed. Also, when he said "rat trap," he used his hands to make mouse ears on his head. I don't think he expected to win. Still, if any of my students were to throw a competition in order to make everyone laugh, it would be Haruki.
The speeches started at 9:10 am, and both of my students were finished before 9:45, so we grabbed some free Coca Cola (they were the sponsors of the contest) and sat around talking for about an hour-and-a-half. Due to the company I was with, it was a lot of fun.
Well, I'm going to go play a video game or something, but first:
One of my Japanese textbooks is made up of a bunch of short stories about Japanese Culture. One of these stories is about Japanese people bowing on the phone. At first, it seemed kind of silly to me, but when I'm talking on the phone in Japanese, I bow as though we were face-to-face. I noticed that Keith does the same thing, and when I told him this, he said he didn't even realize it.
Also, oftentimes, when a phone conversation is about to end, the person on the other end will say several things in succession. In Japanese conversations, you're supposed to let the other person know that you're paying attention by nodding, saying "hai" (yes), or something like that. So, I find myself saying "hai" a lot at the end of phone conversations. I'm still not sure what the best way to say "goodbye" over the telephone is, so I always revert to English. For an example of what this sounds like, I suggest watching the episode of the Simpsons where Homer eats the poison blowfish. When they first walk into the Japanese restaurant, Akira (the Japanese character), is talking on the phone. He says: "Hai...hai...hai...bye". I unintentionally do that all the time.
I left the house at 6 am, and traveled by car, boat and bus for about 2.5 hours. It turned out that there were about 60 third-years and maybe 50 or so second-years there. When I came to this event last year, both of my students were in the middle or towards the back in terms of order. This year, Yuka was scheduled to go 4th, and Haruki was 11th.
Both of them were very nervous, and I have to admit that I was pretty nervous, too. When Yuka gave the speech, her pronunciation was excellent and her gestures were on target and not overdone. The only problem is that she was very quiet, at least when compared with the rest of the first five third-years. If she had been louder, I think she would've been a contender for a trophy.
As soon as Yuka got back, the four of us (the two English teachers came, too) went to see Haruki. I said that he's really funny, but I had no clue what he was going to do during the speech. The second-year students' speech is a short story in which an uncle comes to visit his family. He really likes cheese, but they're out. His nephew finds some cheese, and the uncle has already eaten it before the kid tells him he found it in a rat trap. Anyway, the mother has some dialog in which she apologizes for not having any cheese. When Haruki said this part, he made his voice go comically high, and almost everyone in the room laughed. Also, when he said "rat trap," he used his hands to make mouse ears on his head. I don't think he expected to win. Still, if any of my students were to throw a competition in order to make everyone laugh, it would be Haruki.
The speeches started at 9:10 am, and both of my students were finished before 9:45, so we grabbed some free Coca Cola (they were the sponsors of the contest) and sat around talking for about an hour-and-a-half. Due to the company I was with, it was a lot of fun.
Well, I'm going to go play a video game or something, but first:
One of my Japanese textbooks is made up of a bunch of short stories about Japanese Culture. One of these stories is about Japanese people bowing on the phone. At first, it seemed kind of silly to me, but when I'm talking on the phone in Japanese, I bow as though we were face-to-face. I noticed that Keith does the same thing, and when I told him this, he said he didn't even realize it.
Also, oftentimes, when a phone conversation is about to end, the person on the other end will say several things in succession. In Japanese conversations, you're supposed to let the other person know that you're paying attention by nodding, saying "hai" (yes), or something like that. So, I find myself saying "hai" a lot at the end of phone conversations. I'm still not sure what the best way to say "goodbye" over the telephone is, so I always revert to English. For an example of what this sounds like, I suggest watching the episode of the Simpsons where Homer eats the poison blowfish. When they first walk into the Japanese restaurant, Akira (the Japanese character), is talking on the phone. He says: "Hai...hai...hai...bye". I unintentionally do that all the time.