English Recitation Contest and Lunch with the Murayamas

I just had another busy weekend with a English speech contest for Kure city and a nice lunch with my old English teacher.On Saturday, all the JETs from Kure made our way to Yasuura for the annual Junior high school speech contest. I had been helping my first year and third year students for the past 2 months and I was pretty excited to hear them perform.

I was also one of the 3 judges along with my supervisor, which made the day long but more enjoyable as I had really had to concentrate to grade all the performances. In total there were about 50 speeches spread among the 3 Junior High School grades and another category for students who have lived abroad. (Picture above: My supervisor, Mr. Sakata)

There were some really good performances as some of the kids’ pronunciations were great. Unlike last year, there was a good variety of stories and it was actually quite hard to grade some of the students. The second graders were especially close as only a point separated the top few scores. My first year student Sho did pretty well, but not enough to get a top 3 placement. He’s a great student in class and I really wanted him to show a bit more enthusiasm but he was to shy to put on a great speech.(Picture above: My first year student)

My third year student, Tamaoka placed second in the returnee category. I felt she should have been in the third graders grouping as she hadn’t lived in an English speaking country, like some of the other participants. Tamaoka is half-Chinese and was born in China, so her Japanese isn’t completely fluent. I had a lot of fun practicing with her and getting to know her after school the past few months and I was very happy that she got second prize, as some of the returnee participants were pretty much fluent.(Picture above: My third year student)

On Sunday, I went my old teacher, Ms. Murayama’s house for lunch. We had a takoyaki (octopus balls) party and I spent a few hours playing with Sougo and her new baby Kaho. It was really nice seeing the family again as I hadn’t seen them for a few months. Seeing her really makes me miss her at school since we had such a great relationship and had a lot of fun teaching together. (Picture above: Me and Ms. Murayama)

The new baby was really cute and chubby. She didn’t cry much and spent a lot of the time sleeping while we ate. I brought them some roots clothing from my trip back home and got a Canada T-Shirt for Sougo.

Sougo had grown the past few months and was still a lot of fun to play with. We visited this local shrine near there house and me and his Dad, Shinji had fun playing hide and seek and carrying him down the shrine.

Japanese Factoid #37- In Japan, when you go to a shrine there is always a stone basin or fountain near the entrance. As you can guess, the purpose of this is to clean or "purify" your hands before you enter the temple. Usually, you are suppose to pour water on your left hand first , then your right. There is usually just a bamboo shoot trickling water into the basin, but more elaborate shrines sometimes have water coming out of stone dragons.