Kuniko and I split up some bakery breads for breakfast and took some to work for lunch. We’re skipping the bento lunch today because we will have to go into the wedding place one more time for some last minute decisions.
At work we had a short schedule, with only four classes lasting 40 minutes each. The classes were shortened to make room for a speech our school is attending at the community center near the train station in town.
Before the day ended two of my classes were conducted by a visiting professor from one of the local junior colleges. He is an American guy – he came to our school last year, too. I wasn’t too impressed with his lesson last year. He just pointed the kids towards a web page with lots of English games and activities, and then walked around making sure they understood everything. He gets paid a lot to come here, but whether he guides the kids on the activities or someone else does – I don’t think it matters a great deal.
Anyway, today was much the same as last year. He speaks one or two words of Japanese, but mainly he tells the students how to do things in English, which is great. The activities that the students did were created using an online website, and they were Jeopardy-like quizzes. The kids really enjoyed them, and for the most part it was a successful lesson. The students’ skills on the computer varied quite a bit, so I walked around and helped here and there. The students liked getting help from me rather than the strange short old foreign guy from New York.
One of the kids followed a wrong link somewhere on the website, and ended up with a tough question from somebody elses quiz. It was about landfills, and so one of the Japanese teachers asked me what a landfill is. I thought to myself that it was a pretty tough question for a high school English quiz. As it happened the guest teacher came by and saw it. He pointed at the screen and said, “That’s not mine!” in a defensive voice. That confused the student and the teacher, and they both thought that they had done something wrong. The guy could have calmly apologized and put in the right web page, but he just kept saying “That’s not mine!” in a louder and louder voice. I was beginning to think he might have snapped, but he shook himself out of it, and I set up the kid on the right page.
At the end of the lesson he pulled me aside and showed me his web page. I politely watched as he showed me his page, and he clicked on link after link to various internet resources. He led me to a movie script archive and said “Name a movie, any movie! They’re all here, and they’re free!”
I mentioned “Gone with the Wind” off the top of my head, and he said “Oh, that’s easy”. As you might have guessed, he couldn’t find it on the list. I just smiled politely and thought about how much money this guy was making to be bumbling through this lesson. I’m thinking I should do something cool on the web and show them how it’s really done sometime.
After classes ended I got a really nice wedding gift from the first year teachers, a set of cherry blossom ice cream bowls with pink plates and gold spoons. It was a really nice thing for them to do. I took all my stuff with me to the train station, locked up my gear in a coin locker, and then went with the rest of the students to Takasago City Culture Center.
The students all lined up outside under a sky that was threatening rain. We were a little worried that everyone would get rained on, but as it turned out only a few drops fell. My job was to walk around and chat up the students. We joked around and talked about how exciting the speech was sure to be. Little did we know….
Once we got in, everyone got settled, and they introduced the speaker. He was an older guy from a college somewhere in the area. He started the speech with everyone awake, but within 45 minutes nearly half the audience was asleep in their chairs. I was struggling myself to stay awake, but in the end I made an activity out of estimating the number of people still conscious in the auditorium.
The speaker made no attempt to make his speech interesting. It was mind-numbingly boring. He just spoke and spoke, never checking with the audience for feedback, no visual aids, no pictures, illustrations, or props. I haven’t done much public speaking, but I do know that keeping your audience engaged is an important part of it.
The students weren’t the only ones crashing in their chairs. I’d say about 40% of the teachers were asleep, too. Down the row from me Mr. Yamamoto was sleeping soundly. Around 90 minutes into the speech he started snoring.
At first it was just heavy breathing, but soon it turned into audible snoring that had some of the students who were still awake looking. I started giggling to myself, and the students near me saw me giggling and I think that undermined my status as a teacher a little bit. After a few minutes, an embarrassed teacher came over and woke up Mr. Yamamoto. I steadily looked the other way so as not to cause him further embarrassment.
As soon as the speech ended I wandered to the lobby looking like I was stepping out for a cigarette. I walked along the front of the building, took a look around the corner as if I was wondering if there was a restaurant around here, turned the corner, and BOOM – I was gone, baby. Fourteen days off in a row, oh yeah.
I hightailed it to the station, raided the stuff from the locker, took the train to Akashi and put the stuff in a locker there. Then it was a train to Kobe to meet Kuniko. We had dinner at Taro – one of my favorite ramen places – and then we went to the wedding place to make some final decisions.
Actually, it was pretty easy tonight. We did a run through of how we are supposed to stand, which hand to hold the gloves, how and where to kiss her, etc. I’m sure I’ll forget all that the day of the event.
Finally, we headed to Starbucks for a nightcap and then went home collecting my packages on the way back. The last stop of the night was at Denya. I stopped in to chat with the gang about the second party. They are really looking forward to it, and they asked me all sorts of mysterious questions, including how much I weigh. Sounds scary.