Time is FLYING!

I can't believe it's already the middle of December. That means I've been in Japan for almost 5 months now... crazy. Did I mention that it snowed about 2 weekends ago? It was the first weekend in December... no, I never mentioned it. Well it did! There were snow flurries... luckily they didn't stick though : )... but it was cold! However, last week it was in the 50s and even got up to 60 at one point! The weather here hasn't been too bad lately.

Last Friday, Fuji Sensei - another English teacher - came up to me and asked if I (well, more like told me) would give a presentation in front of the whole school Monday for 20 minutes about some of the differences between Japan and America... mostly cultural differences... but basically anything was game... oh yeah, one more thing... give the presentation entirely in Japanese. So of course I said sure. I pulled a power point presentation together all day Friday and touched it up Monday before 2pm... and it turned out really nice. I didn't have a chance to actually practice what exactly I was going to say though. I knew what I wanted to talk about and I hoped that I knew the vocab and grammar needed in order to say it... basically, I didn't practice the speech AT ALL... I just put the power point together and hoped for the best. I ended up talking about some hand gestures and body gestures that I thought were strange in Japan. I made them laugh too... very good sign : ) I was explaining how I thought it was funny that a lot of people bow while talking on the phone. I mean, the person on the other end can't even see you, so why do you bow?!?! I also talked about other things like the gesture they make if they want someone to come over (top right), or the gesture they make when they're talking about sushi (bottom right)... AND I talked about how it was "interesting" that Japanese people like to throw the peace sign up in basically EVERY picture! I even threw into my presentation how sleeping isn't tolerated in American schools day in and day out - if you sleep in class constantly, you'll get in trouble in America. I breifly touched on food, but then moved on to differences in the American high schools compared to Japanese high schools. I know that high schools in the US vary depending on where they are... but I touched on the general things such as how students in Japan have to clean their schools vs. the US where they hire janitors to clean the schools. Then I focused in on the high school I went to as an example. I used A LOT of pictures in my presentation and that helped A LOT... because my Japanese speaking ability could really use some help. My listening, reading and writing skills are way better than my speaking skills. It's hard enough to speak, but then when it's not even conversational where you can pick up on and feed off of the other person's language... it's even tougher. But I got through it and everybody understood me even though there were a lot of mistakes in my speaking. Let me say though - I actually had a head ache by the end of the day from racking my brain so much pulling Japanese out from ever nook in my brain in order to give the presentation. Seriously! But anyway, I thought this presentation was also a good way to show students that even if their English isn't PERFECT, they shouldn't be afraid to speak because even limited language abilities can be used to communicate and be understood... which is something I've personally been working on since before I can remember - like many other foreign language learners. It's funny because ever since I gave the presentation, I feel like teachers and students have begun to approach me and talk to me much more than before... which was basically never. I mean, students would say hi, good morning, etc.... but today after work, these 2 first year girls caught me before I left and talked to me for 45 minutes in the hallway about my presentation and how they really enjoyed it and they even expanded on it asking me lots of other questions... all in super freaky fast high school Japanese girl speech. It was hard and I didn't catch EVERYTHING in our conversation (even though I totally pretended like I did and made them believe that I did)... but I'm so glad that the presentation opened a little door and made me a lot more approachable... because before I was just the scary foreigner... and now I'm the interesting person... ok, well still foreign, but still. My school's "bonenkai" is this Friday... and I think it'll be really interesting and really fun. "Bonenkai" is an "end of the year" party that offices all over Japan have. I'm looking forward to it... hopefully some of the other teachers in the office will get a few drinks in them and find the courage to talk to me : )

Speaking of parties - the Yamaguchi JET Christmas Party was this past Saturday in Yuda Onsen. It was pretty fun. I'll end this entry with a few pictures from the Christmas party:

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