I was a little sluggish today coming out of the gate, likely due to all the alcohol from last night. Kuniko drove to school today, so I walked alone the the train station and caught a ride into Takasago. There are not so many days left in this commute – just a couple of weeks left.
At school I had two classes. In the first one I talked with students that had taken the English proficiency interview. They told me all about it and how they thought they did. I think my coaching helped them a little – at least I hope.
The second class was with Tsutsumi sensei, and she had arranged a small surprise for me. Each of the students wrote a farewell note to me and read it to me in front of the class. I knew it was just an assignment, but the students seemed sincere and it was fun to listen to them and the nice things that they had to say.
I had a short break between periods and then in the fourth period we had a lecture by a guy from Western Australia. The connection is that our school sends a field trip every summer to Western Australia, and this guy lives in Japan now but represents Western Australian businesses looking to open up in Japan.
He did the lecture in English, although I heard that his Japanese was fluent – he studied it in college and grad school. Mr. Hayashi was off-stage and he read a translation of the speech, so it had a weird disembodied voice effect that was mildly disturbing.
There was a reporter from the Kobe newspaper there, and she was smoking hot. She interviewed some of the teachers in the school office, and they must have had seven other teachers just checking their paperwork to get a chance to gawk at her. She walked around with a giant camera and took pictures during the speech, and even took a couple of shots of the audience. The funny part of that was that about 70% of the students were asleep. I wonder how those photos will turn out.
Other than the fact that this guy represents Western Australia, there wasn’t much else that our students could sink their teeth into. The speech was a canned one that highlights business opportunities for Japanese companies, and as such was not really interesting to 17 year old high school students. He even told them they should drink Australian wines and urged them to go visit Australia because the drinking age is lower.
Things got a little hairy when they went off script to do questions. The questions came from two businessmen in the audience as guests of the principal. They were long winded, and came out of left field, and the speaker didn’t quite understand the Japanese being spoken (I know I didn’t). Mr. Hayashi translated their questions into English, and then the speaker gave his answer and then Mr. Hayashi translated back into Japanese. If it sounds like a long boring process, it was.
Afterwards I was chatting with Nozaki sensei and she and I both noticed that Mr. Hayashi had dropped a lot of pertinent information out of the translation. I think that Nozaki sensei is pretty sharp – she caught all the details and I think she would do a great job in the same position.
The rest of my day was pretty mellow – I stayed out of trouble and inside where it was dry and air conditioned. After school I stopped in at the eye doctor to buy some contacts, and now I’m back home getting ready to cook dinner (okonomiyaki).
Tomorrow I’m headed into Osaka to sign my contract for the next job, and on the way back I’m going to a Nintendo store to have them look at some strange behavior in our Nintendo DS lite. I hope it isn’t a serious problem – there’s a new kanji game that comes out Thursday. Want, want, want!
