Over the last few weeks all of the workshops have been in places where the teachers are actually having to teach English right now, so are in the “help, we need teaching ideas quick!” mode. Whereas today I was invited by the Educational Research office ( who are very much into things), but the actual teachers and many of the high-ups in the city, are still very much in the “why on Earth do we need to learn about the World and other peoples?” frame of mind. So the majority of today’s workshop was addressing that.

As usual I have a rough idea of what I’m going to do, but then take questions and go on the audiences responses to figure out what to do next. And they weren’t getting it!! At one point I was talking about the current fad the media have of seeing people as groups of “winners” ( the kachigumi who have great jobs and buy all the Gucci bags), and the “losers” ( the “makegumi” who don’t want to do anything, live at home and work as “freetars”) to try and get the teachers a bit genki. So I asked “Are your kids winners or losers?”. And one of the teachers said “They’re losers!”. Oh my goodness!! How am I supposed to counter that? So as things happened I ended up doing the War Speech part way through, and that actually get them sorted out. And even the hard nosed Head Teachers at the back started paying attention and realising what this is all about. So then in the final hour we could play some games, and finish off on a high (ish) note with the Thank you song. ( I wrote up what we did for on the site as well.)

When you see places like this, where the head of the education board saying things like “we’re not really serious about international understanding education, let the kids just play a bit” it really does make you see how people could believe the CIA link! But luckily, and there usually is a silver lining, the Board of Education has some really cool people. Last year when I was here ( I did a show and workshop at one of the schools hence how I got invited back), they were talking about how they’d like more ALTs, but couldn’t afford one. So I went through the funding with them ( i.e. they don’t pay, ALTs money comes from Tokyo), so they phoned up and sure enough they got another ALT for free this year! And all three of them are really top people.

So even though the high ups won’t report what’s going on the schools, with such good ALTs, good people in the BOE and now hopefully more teachers who see what can be done, they’ll have a great effect on the kids here. We’ve certainly got to give all the kids a chance to be the “winners”.

Then in the evening it was a very nice dinner and then out to see the Awaodori (see right), one of the most famous dance festivals in Japan. That was really cool!
I love Summer, I wish it could be like this all year round, with great festivals and such a cool party atmosphere. Brilliant!