Went down to breakfast this morning and there was an old guy, in a nice suite, on the next table who was pretty insistent that he was going to have a conversation with me. Which was OK, but he was sat at a table with three bottles of budweiser and was insisting that I have a beer with him – at 7 in the morning!! Needless to say I refused ( got a kids show today so no drink till afterwards) but he then went on to put his genkiness at the age of 80 down to drinking beer for breakfast every morning!

Anyway, then it was on to today’s show. To be honest I can’t quite remember how this came about as it wasn’t a show & workshop at an elementary school ( the usual story of as it’s the first time in the prefecture the schools wouldn’t take the risk of being first!), but although it was just a show at a hall and kids could come if they wanted, it wasn’t a paid private show. But it was sponsored by the city Board of Education so I think I justified doing it as a volunteer show that way. But in the end they actually paid me, which was cool and everyone seemed pretty impressed. So hopefully I’ll be back for a teachers workshop soon!

The kids were all good but in the beginning the parents were just hopeless! I always ask the parents to join in, pointing out to them that if they don’t try and just sit there then however hard I try their kid will never get good, ( the show’s benefit is often more for the parents than the kids ) ! But even then far too many of them were just doing the “English is too difficult for me” thing and looking all gormless! Even the trick of “Right, the obaasans please sit down, everyone please else join in!” didn’t work for everyone. So that called for drastic measures and a few rounds of mingle which included the parents. Then once they were settled in amongst the kids I just went on with the show and they had no choice but to join in!! Parents need to realise how big a part they have in their kids’ success – they are the role model the kids will follow! And of course by the end of the show, they had lost their inhibitions and were singing and moving with the kids and getting totally into the “If you think you can do it, you can!” and “Losing just means try again!” attitude! Cool! The local TV station came along as well, which was really good considering there is an election tomorrow.

Then afterwards it was a nice coffee break down by the beach with some of the staff. That was really cool, and they are a very clever bunch of people, talking about not only politics and stuff but also lots about motivation materials. In fact one of them was thinking of buying the Japanese version of the Napoleon Hill programme and seemed well impressed that I had written the Kids English series with the same publisher!

The organisers of today’s event area group called Be-Com ( for Be a Communicator) and they also do a great project with 6th Graders called “Hug Net” where they use Yahoo Messenger to do video exchanges with schools around the world. They stagger the time zones of the countries who participate so that the kids go all the way round the World – what a cool project.

Then a quick break and the evening banquet, which was really nice as well. Great!