Today I got a chance to sleep in early, because I was mysteriously recruited to do some work for the prefectural board of education. They had asked about me through my principal, so I volunteered to help them out.
I met Mr. Hasegawa, the very friendly supervisor of the prefecture. He’s the top dog of the JET program in my prefecture, and he’s really a great guy. He had remembered me from some conversations we had early on in Tokyo and later in Yashiro, so he thought of me when this job came up.
My principal and vice-principal were pretty “cloak and dagger” about this, and I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone what I was doing. Mr. Hasegawa was also kind of secretive about it, and as we waited for one other ALT we chatted about my school, how my first year on JET was, and my expectations for the next year.
A few minutes later, Monica showed up and met us. A JET from the northern part of the prefecture, she spoke great Japanese, and she’s been studying hard and taking classes. I got the impression that maybe she studied a little too hard, but she seemed nice enough. Together we drove over to the library at the center of Akashi park, and went into a audio video room to be briefed on our mission.
Mr. Hasegawa introduced us to two other teachers, one of which also spoke English. All together the three teachers were responsible for creating the teacher’s exam for prospective teachers in the prefecture. These exams are notoriously difficult, and cover topics like English, Japanese, kanji, biology, history, you name it. It turns out that we were going to make the listening part of the English exam.
We were given the script, and then we went inside a sound studio to do sound levels and testing. The room was also set up for video, but we didn’t use it. The lights illuminating the stage were really bright, and you couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous when under the scrutiny of the teachers and the lights.
After fooling around a little and doing some practice runs, we started recording small pieces, and then the sound guy would put them together onto a tape in the right order. I had to over-enunciate words and basically sound like I was speaking to a kindergarten class. The only hitch was that I had to speak at a natural speed – without noticing my voice had slowed down to accomodate the people I speak with at school.
Monica was a natural at the voice part, and she did great. My voice seemed a little too nasal, but at the end the test sounded pretty good, and very professional. We took a break for lunch, and then worked until about 3 p.m. Afterwards, Mr. Hasegawa asked us if we could work on a few more secret projects in August. I volunteered to do that, so he said he’d talk to my principal. Monica is attending a Japanese language workshop in Nagoya during August, so she won’t be able to make it.
Overall it was a really interesting experience, and I was sworn to secrecy afterwards. In an interesting conflict-of-interest sidenote, it turns out that I know three teachers that are taking the teacher’s exam next week, one of which is Kuniko. We joked on the phone about it afterwards, but we both thought it would be best not to share anything about it. I’d hate for her to pass the exam and then think that it was only because she got some inside info from me.
Mr. Hayashi, Mr. Komuri, and Mr. Urakami all wanted to take me out to sushi as a going away party. We met up in Akashi around 7 p.m., and had a great sushi dinner. The beer was flowing, and we had lots of sushi. Lots. I don’t remember everything we had, but it started with a big plate of sashimi (straight raw fish – about eight different kinds). Then we had onigiri sushi (raw fish on top of a mound of sushi rice). We had around seven or eight different onigiri sushi, and then moved to makizushi (sushi rolls). We had four different rolls of makizushi.
Mr. Hayashi had kind of guessed what I was up to, and hinted around looking for details, but I didn’t give him much to go on. By now, I’m pretty good at keeping secrets from him. At one point an older guy bought me a beer because he was impressed with my chopstick skills – that was very nice.
Afterwards we headed back, and I took my usual anti-hangover precautions, four aspirin, and about 500 mL of water. Tomorrow is a school day – and it’s back to work!
