Today I got up early and headed into Kobe to actually go to work. My staffing company had a little three day job at Kobe University that they needed people for, so I took it along with another guy I know.
I met up with Corey and a guy named Robert in Rokkomichi, which is just past Kobe towards Osaka. It was my first time to meet Robert, a 32 year old balding Scot with a good sense of humor. He has been working at the college as some kind of assistant, so he guided us there.
Once there we met the professor and learned a little more about his project. He is collecting videos of native speakers of English making speeches. He takes the videos and converts them to a digital format, then is making a database so that students can review the tapes and learn how to make a good presentation. In an interesting twist, we actually watched some student tapes and then redid some of their speeches. Hopefully they’ll get to watch us doing their speeches someday.
We did lots of different kinds of speeches and also interviews and introductions, in a variety of situations. It was a real challenge to take a topic and stand up and make a good speech about it for a couple of minutes into a camera. It was great practice, though, and I was really happy that somebody was paying us to do it.
At the end of the day we had made rougly 12 speeches each, with different topics and angles. They even gave us some homework to write some more for tomorrow. I’m not a big fan of homework, but the money for this job is so good that I really can’t complain.
Something else to look forward to tomorrow is the return of Kuniko from New Zealand. She will fly into the airport late in the evening, so I’ll be there to meet her and take her home. I’ll head over there after work tomorrow – it worked out that I’ll be in Kobe anyway.
I’ve got a little more studying to do before bed tonight. I had another taco dinner and there’s still lots of taco fixin’s to eat. I might be burned out on Mexican food by Friday. I never thought I’d say that in Japan.
