Kagoshima is one of the interesting cities in the World, where the people who were deciding where to build it must have said “Where shall we build our new city?” and someone said “Oh yes, right next to a live volcano!”. As you do.

So today was a “mini conference” sponsored by JALT and the Jellybeans Bookstore ( a good place to get teaching stuff if you live in Kagoshima, tell them I sent you!). I had a teachers workshop in the afternoon, but they also managed to solve one of the big problems of workshops like this. Namely, that teachers very often want to attend but can’t leave their kids at home. And if you’re doing an actual teaching workshop then the kids get bored and start crying and stuff, which sort of messes things up a bit. So this time as there were so many presenters, we each also took an hour to do a kids “baby sitting” type thing. Which is fair enough, and it really did help with the teaching workshops, so I was pleased to help out.

The only thing was that I didn’t know how many kids there’d be, nor their level! And the first four girls that walked in were 20 year olds. Younger kids also turned up! So I just prepared a few things and decided that rather than teach anything, to just do lots of fun stuff. So I started off and the kids were actually quite cool. And then what happens next? A couple of dozen teachers file in to watch!!! Ah. Well, I couldn’t really change to do something like a proper lesson, so just continued on. But the funny thing was it got rave reviews from the teachers. Oh well, you never can tell what people are looking for!! The cool thing was that they joined in with the games, so along with How are you?, Rock, Paper, Scissors and What are you doing? we also went through Mingle and the ever popular Harry Potter! Then the Thank You song to finish ( which only took 1 minute to teach!)

I tell you what though the Japanese adults were just as much into the songs and games as the kids ( maybe even more so!). I should really think about doing adult eikaiwa shows, but just do the normal songs and games!

After lunch Chris Hunt did the kids gig, and I stayed around to see what he’d do. I never used to like Chris, mainly because the first time I met him he interrupted the very end of one of my big motivation talks and killed the atmosphere!! But once you leave the politics to one side he’s a good bloke and has some really good ideas. One cool thing he did was to do a Warm Up and had a stopwatch. For 30 seconds the teacher told the kids what to do, then for 30 seconds the kids told the teacher what to do. That worked very well. He also had a very cool “How are you?” game based on What time is it, Mr Wolf? where the kids shout out to a monster ( the teacher!) across the room “How are you?” and the monster replies along with a number of steps the kids have to take. Then if the monster says “I’m hungry!” the kids all have to rush back to their start line without being tagged! In the beginning the kids could also choose whether the monster should be big or small, fast or slow. So there were lots of really good ideas there and it really should have been videod as it was a perfect kindergarten class and I’m sure many teachers would have got lots of great ideas from it.

Then it was time for my main gig of the day which was the teachers’ workshop. As usual the room was packed, and it was pretty difficult to get people moving around! I also wasn’t sure what language to do it in today, so I said “OK, let’s start” and no-one moved, then on “hajimemasyou” everyone spun around and started listening – so Japanese it was! Now I have the “Basics” workshops online, I could go straight in to the newer stuff, with “When, when, when“. As yesterday the month picture cards were a big hit with the teachers. Then we did Where is Mr Monkey? ( not that popular with the kids, but a big request from teachers), and I found I had to count in between the teacher’s line and the kids’ line to keep everyone in time. But it worked well, and as usual the dragon eating Mr Monkey completely changed the atmosphere. So then the food song ( and lots more motivation as teachers were complaining that “apples and bananas” was too difficult!!). Then the Balloon and menu games as per the rest of this week. Then I also tried the What did you say …? game with the card game cards. That was good and the teachers could see how it was real communication and not just practice! Then to end on a high note, it was a go through the Under the Sea song!

So overall the 90 minutes was very good, but everyone was still really hungry for more! So I think I’m probably going to be back here for a full day, 6 hour workshop in the future!
Then out for some food, a fireworks display and a lot of beer!