School Festival

This weekend was the school festival. As usual, the third years set up stalls selling food in the classroom. The other students did various activities, such as the music festival and sport. I helped out with the English speech contest. It was really hard because they were all so good and I had to choose three winners out of 21 entries. Impossible!

I also went to the tea ceremony club and I watched a presentation by a girl who had just been on an exchange trip to America. On the morning we had a speech by an amazing man by the name of Omomi Murata. He was born with some sort of disease which meant his growth was quite stunted and he had to use crutches. He was never predicted to live beyond 18 and told he shouldn't go to school, but he overcame all the odds to go on to study at an American school and later set up his own charity helping orphans in the Philippines. He talked all about his life, and although I could only understand about half of it, he was a captivating speaker.

500 yen note

The other day, a boy in my class gave me this as a present. It is a 500 yen note. The smallest note in circulation today is 1000, so it is similar to being given a £1 note. They were in use about the time of WWII I think, but I'm not sure when they were phased out, and the notes have no date unfortunately.

Update: aparently these notes are not that old after all, maybe only about 20 years. Still, they are no longer in circulation, so quite exciting.

Mike's Birthday

So I'm sorry posting has been a little slow of recent. Basically, I just haven't been doing anything worth the internet space. IHowever, did manage to drag myself away from the study books a couple of weekends ago to celebrate Mike's birthday.

As you may well notice, Mike is not actually in the picture (no, the other Mike!). This is because having gone all that way to celebrate with him, he gulped down his food and ran off to meet Kumi. The cheek of it!! Anyway, we partied in his absence, and polished off two bottles of wine, even though it was only midday.

A side note: I bought Mike a very funky, happy frog for his birthday, but he had to hide it in a cupboard as his gf is afraid of them. This lead to conversation turning to "what is the worst present you have ever given/received?". Please discuss in comments section in essay form, minimum 1500 words.

onigiri

Now I know most of you don't get quite as excited about novelty food as I do, but this I think will have you shrieking with glee. Well, I did...

This may look like an onigiri (rice ball), but it is in fact made from cheesy bread!!! Amazing I hear you cry. And what's more, inside is salmon mayonnaise, just like a real onigiri!!!

And for those of you who have never seen an onigiri and have no idea what I am getting all worked up about, here is a picture of the real thing...

Hanamaki

This week I was "hand picked" to attend the Hanamaki English Teachers Conference. I'm not sure what hand picked means, but it certainly makes it sound like you have just been given the chance of a lifetime, not about to be stuck in a centre that is so good it is affectionately called "The Prison".

Luckily, my two roommates were really nice. Both were quite young and had only been teaching for a few years, so they still had lots of enthusiasm and really wanted to practice English and had loads of questions. This week is quite easy for the ALTs; we just have to make the JTEs talk English. But the JTEs have a big English test at the end of the week, and they have to speak a foreign language all the time, so I think it must be quite hard for them.

One of the best parts of the conference was the debate. We had to talk for 6 minutes per team about whether they should teach English in primary schools. It was very interesting and our team won when we spoke for and against. There were some really good points made and I was really impressed at how well the English teachers could think on the spot and come up with ideas in English.