A Great Weekend

This weekend was another great one in Japan. On Friday, my friend Spencer came over and stayed at our apartment. He had never seen Point Break or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (two of Keanu Reeves' greatest films if I may say so). 

Just a little bro love between Bode and Johnny Utah...

We watched both movies while enjoying a variety of Japanese desserts along with some Japanese whiskey, and a seasonal Japanese beer. There are not many seasonal beers out here, and even this one didn't taste much different from most, but it was a nice night anyway.

On Saturday, Heather, Spencer, and I got up and headed to Tokushima Station to meet up with some other people for Saturday boot camp. I am running a boot camp for other Tokushima JETs every Saturday. It helps me keep my workouts fresh, and it gives me an excuse to workout every day during the week so I don't get my butt completely kicked when I run the workout on the weekend! Afterwards, we went out lunch with our fellow boot campers at an Udon shop and then to the amazing onsen near our house.

I can't remember if I've mentioned the onsen yet or not. The onsen is a public bath. They are all over the place in Japan. This one has multiple baths, including a hot tub, a cold tub, a "silk" bath that is essentially a mineral bath, and a sauna that has a big basket of salt that you can rub on your skin to exfoliate. It feels so good. 

Pictures from our favorite onsen. Men's side on the left, women's on the right

You have to get over the initial public shared nudity issue, but after that you realize that no one really cares and you can just enjoy how amazing it is to be able to do something like this. They are typically same sex, so guys in one shared area and ladies in another, but I've heard there are some place in Japan that have co-ed baths. It's a bit expensive (a little less than $10 a person), but the post boot camp onsen is becoming one of my favorite things, and it is totally worth it.

After the onsen I went straight to my school for one last practice session with my student that was competing in the prefectural speech contest on Sunday. More on this in a bit...

I came home and relaxed for a while, until another JET sent us a message inviting us to dinner. We went out to Uoroman, a wine bar near the station. I'd walked by it a few times but never had been inside.

 It was really neat inside, and they had amazing pizza! I was surprised because I've heard you can't get good pizza in Japan, but this definitely bucked that trend. It was a great evening with great people. It made me happy to be a JET, and as I looked around the table at an Australian, a Canadian, a couple of Brits, a French person, and three Americans (including Heather and I), it made me realize that coming to Japan has been even more of a cultural exchange than I expected. I'm inundated with Japan and Japanese culture, but there are so many JETs from outside of America I get to learn about things from all of those countries too!

After dinner I came home and relaxed, messed around on the internet, and went to bed.

This morning I got up early to head to the Tokushima Prefectural English Speech Contest.  First, a bit of background. I have been working with an awesome female Jr. High student named Hiroko as she prepared to give a five minute speech that she wrote and is performing in English. We have been working together for well over a month. She is a hard worker, and we usually practice everyday. We work on pronunciation, physical presence, gestures, finding ways to emphasize words and phrases through actual spoken emphasis as well as using pauses, etc. She finished 2nd at the city speech contest and qualified for the prefectural (essentially state in Japan) contest.

Today was the big day. The top three students out of 24 qualifiers would qualify for the national competition in Tokyo taking place in November. There were a number of great speeches. Some were funny (a student talking about trying to translate Harry Potter into Japanese: "Harry Potter is a LONG book), some were inspiring (a student who had been in an awful accident and had to relearn to walk and to speak, both in Japanese and in English), and some were very sad (a number of family struggles, a lost parent, etc.).

All of the speeches were very good. Hiroko was the 23rd speaker out of the 24 qualifiers, and was very nervous. She is a quiet, reserved girl (as are many Japanese students), but I am always impressed by her composure and her skill the minute she gets on stage to begin her speech. I explained to her that in America, we would call her a "gamer." She practices hard, and does well in practice, but she always seems to bring her best performance when it matters most. This was the case in the city competition, and again today at the prefectural competition. I had listened to her give that speech at least 100 times, but this one was the best. I believed that she deserved to be in the top three, but I'm clearly biased, and I wasn't sure what the judges would think.

The judges deliberated for about 40 minutes, and then returned with the results. They read 6 names of students, and none of the names were Hiroko, but since they were speaking Japanese I didn't know what this meant. It turned out these were honorable mention. I sat listening as they read the results for the top six speeches. I was secretly hoping not to hear Hiroko's name until at least the top three. After I heard the third place finisher, I started getting nervous. Maybe the judges didn't feel the same way about the speech. Was I blinded by my own bias? Then I refocused...

"In second place, Ms. Hiroko ________ (no last names, don't want to get in trouble) of Johnouchi Junior High School."

Hiroko is in the middle, sorry for no real pic, but I don't get to put identifiable pictures in public spaces!

Hiroko finished in second place and will be representing Tokushima in the national competition in Tokyo! I was so proud of her! 

My now famous student being interviewed by the newspaper!

Depending on whether or not there is money in the budget, it also may mean that I get to go to Tokyo to help her prepare and watch her speak in the national competition!

Watching Hiroko perform her speech so well in English motivates me to continue studying and practicing my Japanese. If she can do such an amazing job of speaking English, maybe someday I can do the same thing in Japanese. There is a Japanese speech contest for non-native speakers that the local international association puts on every year. It is my goal to someday be able to compete in this competition, and give my own speech in Japanese. Who knows, maybe by the time I'm actually ready, Hiroko can help me with my speech contest!

It was a great end to a great weekend. Now I'm sitting here writing this as I get ready to eat dinner with my lovely wife. After dinner, it's back to reality and planning a couple of lessons for tomorrow. Starting next week, I start working with the high school students to help them prepare for their city competition on October 20th. The work of an Assistant Language Teacher in Japan is never done :). Who knows, maybe one of them can make it to the high school finals, but let's just take things one step at a time...