Reinforcements Have Arrived!

...or not.

So, not being fluent in the language means you're at the mercy of what the English teachers decide to actually tell you. Important things like "You have a class next period" might reach your ears seconds before you have to suddenly and rapidly do something, if such information arrives at all. It's not too common of a problem at my schools, but it happens.

But this time, they actually told me in advance. Mostly. A teacher informed me that we were getting study abroad students. She gave me a list of names and abbreviations for countries (one of which I still think is made up) and eventually I was able to talk details out of her. Apparently it was the first time my school had study abroad students.

I was super excited. I was looking forward to helping our new students adjust to living here. I told her I was ready to help them whenever they needed help, too. Nothing of what I said ever made her realize I was missing a key piece of information - they weren't study abroad students (nothing I'd call study abroad), they were there just for the day.

So I spent a few weeks thinking we were getting new students. I thought it was strange that while they all spoke English very well, none of them had any real Japanese experience. I wondered how they would take classes.

They arrived Monday and I was right on time to meet them as they were waiting in the office I first came into. I was expecting them to have school uniforms and everything, but saw they certainly were not - one was not even appropriately dressed by school code. But I thought they must be getting them later or something. All the events that were planned, too, seemed strange and a lot more than what they did for me, but I thought they were just welcoming events.

The students were divided up among the many ESS members and given classes. Some of the teachers said it would be nice if I came and helped them, but they disappeared when I wasn't paying attention and just left me in the room. When they got back from homeroom, the math teacher joked that it would have been good if I came. So I said I'd come to his next class when I was free. I was supposed to help out with the two calligraphy classes and then later the after-school tour / tea ceremony.

The calligraphy class wasn't as much a class as a demonstration, but most people seemed happy with it. Most of the students knew zero Japanese so drawing was difficult. The Malaysian student, however, had no problems and made many great drawings. The vice principal taught them how to write 友 (friend). Well, he showed them how he did it and then had them try at least. So everyone tried a few times, then he'd evaluate them, then eventually they got a special square to write their final versions on. Then he made them one himself of a word of their choice and signed and stamped it with his calligrapher's name. Which is apparently a thing. The Malaysian student donated his artwork to the school.

I went to the math teacher's class, which was apparently a computer class. The students had made gifs. The teacher attempted a few minutes of English before rapidly giving up. The students all found it hilarious. The study abroad students basically just sat there and watched the animations, but the student's presentations weren't very enlightening anyway. Japanese students are not very good at explaining things or giving reasons; they make strange assumptions about what everyone knows already or something.

I decided during this that I, too, wanted to make a gif to show. So I tried to get the student next to me to show me, but I think I just ended up bothering her slightly and she seemed confused. I ended up watching what another student was doing and made a short animation of explosion and text. When we ran out of presentations, I showed off mine. The class found it funny.

Other than that, I was not very helpful at all.

After school was the tour. I was still operating under the assumption that they were actually study abroad students, so I thought it was a good idea. The older woman that came along as a "teacher" insisted that someone (not her for some reason) wear the traditional Thai dress she brought. I said she could just do it another day, but she said she was going home the next day, but I assumed it was just her. I did think it was strange to have a study abroad teacher. Eventually fingers were pointed until one of the ESS girls was stuffed into the dress. She wore it for a while in the room until we were actually going on the tour, a total of maybe 5 minutes. The Thai lady seemed disappointed when she took it off, but what did she really expect?

Everyone was split up and led around the school. I ran around, changing groups, but was not helpful at all. I did manage to find new parts of the school I never went to before. We also heard a few songs from the band.

Then we had the tea ceremony. The sitting style was difficult for everyone, so we were allowed to relax. There was a flurry of camera pictures, even with flash on. I thought the poor old lady trying to run the tea ceremony must have felt a bit strange, having her picture taken so often without anyone asking at all. Honestly, a few of the "study abroad" students were pretty rude most of the time anyway. They seemed to be acting more like they were on vacation.

During the tea ceremony I found out one of the students was staying with the principal and apparently he had taken him to an onsen. He said it was very awkward. I guess there was probably nudity involved, which would definitely make any non-Japanese person very unsettled.

We drank tea, did some bowing, and filled out the questionnaire the teacher made. Then everyone was heading home. They had told me they were going to Tokyo for the night the next day, which again I found strange, but still figured they were coming back. It wasn't until they were leaving that I finally pieced it together. I finally figured out they were only here for a day, and only even in Japan for a little less than a week. I was pretty disappointed.

Oh well, at least for a moment there were some new, interesting people at the school. Maybe there's a way to arrange it to send our students abroad or get new, actual study abroad students. Or maybe a kitten. That'd also be nice.

It's Not Up For Debate!

I should have wrote this post a little less than a month ago, but I thought there'd be a follow up to it, so I was going to wait for that. But as always, ESS is very busy, so we won't have our own debate until next term.

So, one day early on, I got an email about a debate competition. One of the JETs was training his students for debate and wanted to hold a competition for practice. I thought it was a good idea to try to participate, but I guess I ended up forgetting about it. Then some months later, a follow up email came. It sounded like he was pretty desperate for schools to participate. I knew we didn't have much time and we were busy, but I asked around and there was interested so I told him my school would be in.

Then I started looking over my calendar...

Every week was either tests, speeches, I wasn't there, or Halloween parties. We had to use the Thursday before the competition to just learn the rules. There wasn't even time for practice. The competition was Saturday so the students had almost no time to prepare, and the day I explained the rules, I was kind of learning them myself and had to change my mind and explanations a lot. The students had a lot of difficulty understanding it seemed and I was getting really worried.

I got to school a bit before we were scheduled to head out so I could eat breakfast. I figured if I had to be awake early on a Saturday, I might as well eat McDonald's breakfast. Some other competition was going on, and the teachers from that let me into the building and told me how to close it when I was done. I had the office all to myself, so I was finally able to get some pictures of this place - and eat McDonald's without my supervisor scolding me for not eating vegetables. Eventually the teacher and students showed up, we locked up the place, and drove off.

On the car ride over, we worked on making their opening statements more grammatically correct. When we started to get car sick, we pulled over to a rest station. There was a vegetable stand and eventually we all wandered over and gathered there. One of the students picked up a giant melon she intended to buy for some reason and asked me what it was called in English. I didn't recognize the fruit, so I asked the teacher what it was in Japanese. She replied with some word, and I parroted a slightly different word which apparently meant testicles. This was rather funny to the students. On the way back to the car, one of the girls asked what the word I said accidentally meant; her innocence was cute.

We then resumed talking about the debate. Everyone was very nervous, and I felt pretty guilty because I knew I had not prepared them at all. Probably because of the guilt and nervousness, I was acting more hyper than usual, and using a lot of Japanese - an ability I usually hide from students.

We got to the school and we greeted and showed to the waiting room. I think. I saw some people I hadn't seen since Kudamatsu, including "Howdy", as he liked to be called.

We had an opening ceremony, as all things in Japan do, and heard some speeches or something. One guy explained the style of debate in Japanese which was probably very helpful to the students. Almost certainly better than my explanation. I was able to understand a lot of it and learned some new ways to explain the two teams and their goals and methods. One of the speakers explained that our main goal was "Making friends", which I told the students at every opportunity after that. Like when one of the students returned someone's pencil that rolled away, I told her, "Make friends!"

After that we ate lunch. No one told me or maybe I just forgot to bring a bento, so I had no food. But I ate a ton of McDonald's in the morning, so I was still pretty fun. Still, the teacher and students insisted on giving me food. I fought the good fight, but eventually accepted something small and a drink. But then after rapidly drinking the drink, I said, "They always make these too small, huh?" to which the teacher said, "Well, sorry!" in a joking manner.

But the students seemed to be getting annoyed with my jocular attitude. I wanted to reassure them that they were mostly there for the experience and not to worry about winning (also to "make friends"), but it's only natural that they'd worry. Of course, I didn't realize just how bad it'd be.

They were short judges, and having unlimited ambition, I wanted to do some judging. The teacher said she'd judge the first competition so I could watch my school and I'd judge the next one. We got taken to the judging room and had pen colors explained to us.

I then went to go watch my students try to debate. The room had a camera man and everything, I'm sure the students were very nervous. My team was the negative side. The topic, which was decided a while ago and announced so the students could prepare was "Japanese universities should begin their term in September" (as opposed to now in April). Even I wouldn't be able to argue effectively against that. When the debate started, I realized how bad it was going to be. The affirmative team was the team that practiced every day for a year - you know, the team with graphs. They had stop watches and everything. They rattled on so fast, even I didn't know what they said. They had tons of research and were well-prepared.

Then it was my team's turn. Now, one of the rules is that you have a certain amount of minutes for each section, regardless of if you use it. So after my team read their few lines at 1/10th the speed as the other team and sat down. The remaining 2 minutes were painfully slow and maybe a bit embarrassing. The follow up question time was mostly "You said _____. Do you have evidence?" "...... No."

The rest of the debate went on like this. The affirmative team attacked with their full strength, and my team did what little they could, but mostly just confused the other team. I guess it might have worked in Pokémon, maybe they'd hurt themselves in confusion.

Needless to say, my team lost by unanimous decision. I felt awful for them, but when I saw them outside, they were in a flurry of action, trying to improve their argument for the next round. But before I had much chance to talk to them, I was pulled off to judge a different competition. I was a bit nervous to judge. These two teams were much weaker and would have probably not so brutally destroyed my team. I announced a winner and went back downstairs to see how my team had done. They lost again, but it was still good experience for them I think. They were finally done competing at least.

I thought we were finally done, but then I found out I had to judge another competition. I tried to tempt the teacher to take my place, but she was all too happy to let me do it instead. So I judged that, too.

Then I thought I was finally done.

No.

I got drafted to judge the final round, too. It was the ultimate team from the host school versus the West version of my high school in my city. I think the hyper team was on the negative this time, so I got to hear them arguing the opposite of what they argued originally  which is kind of strange. It was actually a pretty intense debate. However, I really could not understand a lot of what the ultimate team was saying. It was either too fast or just unclear enough that I could not understand. And even though they showed graphs, they only lasted a few seconds. The opposing team put up a good fight though. I was secretly rooting for them, but they ended up proposing something as important in the opening, then essentially said it wasn't important, thus destroying a large chuck of their own argument. The super team also made a bunch of mistakes, but I ultimately felt their mistakes were less than those of the underdogs.

I was given the task of announcing the winners for some reason. I was also told to give my advice and said since I was a native speaker, my advice would carry the most weight. I announced the winners and made sure to tell the super team that it's all fine and great to have that much to say, but if even a native speaker can't understand you, you can't hope for anyone else to and to slow down and speak clearly.

Afterwards, one of the students told me she was impressed to see my rare serious side. Not sure if it was an insult or a compliment, haha. The students told me they wanted to practice, improve, and try again. And that they wanted to teach the club how to debate and have their own mock debates. I was pretty moved. It was a pretty good competition overall, and I was happy in the end we went.

We had a closing ceremony and announced winners. One of the students told me, "Make friends!" So I guess they eventually had fun, too. As we were leaving, the teacher tried to convince me to change my major to teaching, but I told her one day I need to return to my one true love - programming.

Since the teacher's mom's house was nearby (which isn't that great of a reason), we stopped there for a bit. Her mom lives in a mansion... Like big even by American standards. It's huge! She gave us some fancy cakes, and we talked about the debate a little with her. One of the students needed to be home soon, so it was a short stop.

Then we drove home, and I talked with the teacher the whole way.

When we finally arrived, we all set out for buses and trains. One of the students told me she wanted to study abroad in Canada (or maybe America [she added because I'm American, but she totally means only Canada <my predecessor's home country>]), which is pretty awesome. I'm all about the encouraging study abroad, wherever one goes.

Overall, it was success I guess. But the follow up won't be until next term. Next time, we'll win! (Okay, probably not, but it'll be fun to try)

P.S. The school is getting some foreign exchange students Monday. I said it was exciting and one of the students replied, "Make friends!"