I have had interesting experiences preparing for our Open High School weekend. It’s a common thing around here for high schools to invite junior high school students with their parents to come visit and meet teachers and students and possibly take an example lesson. Yesterday I did an example lesson, and today I am just giving a short speech.
I have not prepared any notes for this speech today, although perhaps it’d be a good idea to jot the main points down. This is simple and will take 2 minutes. On the other hand, I’m sitting here in the morning (8:05 on Sunday and the 4th or 5th one here), and a teacher is already helping student adjust the grammar of her 2-page English speech that she wrote last night and is giving today!!! That is way too much work and too much stress for such a small thing! Japanese people are very comfortable writing a speech for something that I/Americans/Westerners would leave to improvisation. Maybe they are also less comfortable listening to an improvised speech? Not sure. So I just helped her, and fortunately she is relaxed.
Yesterday I had to actually give a lesson with the youngest member of the English department. He and I had vacation days scattered all over the place and it was impossible to meet very often. So on the last night we met for okonimiyaki and worked out our plan at dinner. This, to me, seemed like a very Japanese thing to do. (I get the feeling that, or have read that, or kind of see that) they often get stuff done after hours, when I would think no one would want to be working. Usually I would never meet for dinner to work for school, but this time I really understood his situation and mine and I felt bad because I had been unavailable. In this case, because I was part of the situation, I thought a dinner meeting was reasonable. Maybe if I were closer to more situations generally, I would agree more with the idea of working late and stuff. Then again, nah, I think it is usually crazy.
I have to give a speech in an hour and a half. It will only take a few minutes. Now I’m going to walk around and show my smiling face and try to be of help.