Today was a workshop at Yokohama’s Yashima Gakuen University. There were quite a few people on the bill, including a couple of big stars. The first one was Oosugi Sensei. He’s famous from NHK TV and radio and had a huge fan base crammed into the rather large room. He’s a nice guy, but his speech wasn’t the most riveting in the world (lots of people “concentrating with their eyes closed”) and the content really wasn’t there. But everyone seemed very happy to be there. The effect of being on TV, eh?

Then it was my workshop which went really well. I was asked to speak about elementary school stuff, but none of the teachers there were from elementary school (not surprising, seeing as it was a Sunday). Usually these types of gigs go down really badly if people don’t empathize with the problems. But one of the themes of today was how to build a curriculum from elementary school right up to university, so they were all very much into what I was saying and they were really, really good. Actually everything I said today is applicable right up to university level, that’s something I might have to PR further for future gigs. Content wise it was really cut down to the elementary school FAQ (Japanese) along with Come on and Genki Disco Warm up to warm things up.

The next big speech was by Koike Sensei, again another big name. His speech was very interesting as he was presenting the new data that has been collected regarding Japanese business people’s communication abilities compared with Taiwan, China and Korea. Basically he was saying it’s a “dangerous situation”, because without international business communication Japan basically stops growing. His numbers also totally blew away the myth that although Japanese people can’t speak they are good at reading and writing, as the data showed that compared with the other countries the Japanese level was way, way, way below in every skill, even in such areas as vocabulary. If you ever visit Korea or Taiwan then people’s English isn’t really that hot, but yes, it does really beat Japan where I don’t think I’ve ever been able to do real business only in English. Koike sensei was saying that whatever the politicians think about English education, reality is going to come up and bite them pretty soon, so a real improvement in English education in Japan will come about no matter what. All very interesting, especially from such a noted professor!

I also attended another couple of workshops and met a whole lot of new people which was great, then an evening out in the posh bayside area of Yokohama.