Talking with adults

Today I went to Oi Elementary School to talk with some of the English teachers there. I wrote an essay on my thoughts on the current state of American politics, which Kojima-san translated into Japanese for me since I didn’t have enough time to do myself. They read it and then we were supposed to discuss it.

However, Japanese adults are very shy about discussing their opinions. Well, really they are shy about just about everything. So it turned into a discussion between me and Kojima-san, in Japanese, with an audience.

It was fun, but I had hoped for a more interactive audience. Hooray for Margaret the performing monkey.

They showed me their new English software. It is basically a DVD, sort of like the one I used to study Japanese only EXTREMELY simplified for elementary students. A lot of “Hi” “Hello” “My name is….” drill work.

But I basically got to see another Japanese elementary school. Enough to assure me that they are all sort of dark, dreary, dirty places. They seem more like prisons than schools to me. The hallways are freezing because they don’t heat the whole building, only the rooms, and the students clean so nothing actually gets cleaned. This school had an unmistakable smell of urine…not what you expect when you think of Japan huh?