Got picked up at 1:30 and driven right to the other side of the island to a teachers meeting in Oita. Usually I do these things as a consultant hired by the school or board of education, but today the local school suppliers had brought me over and set everything up, so that meant I wasn’t allowed in to see what the teachers were studying in the other sessions!! And then my workshop was afterwards, billed as a talk about the Genki English materials. This is quite strange as usually I have to go out of my way to not mention anything about the CDs, but purely be there to help the teachers. But I actually did a standard workshop, with questions and solutions, rather than a bookstore sales pitch. Which I think confused a few people. But the teachers were actually really great and it most of them will probably buy the superpacks, which will keep the schools suppliers happy that they paid my travel expenses!!

In these sorts of meetings the teachers are very happy that my job is to sort out their problems, rather than bombard them with another theory or set of rules to abide by, which is what many presenters do. So the reaction was really good, and although the time was short, hopefully it will open the doors to some bigger, education focussed workshops in the future!