Discover Top Posts Tagged with #engaru

紋別郡遠軽町の、ドライブインどか弁で、焼きうどん、700円也。

Stir-fried udon noodles at Dokaben in Engaru cho, Monbetsu county, Hokkaido.

#udon #うどん #yakiudon #焼きうどん #engaru #遠軽町 #hokkaido #北海道

最新の車見つけた🚗✨#軽トラ #車 #軽トラが雪上車になってる #爆笑 #誰が改造したんだろう #car #ski #hokkaido #powdersnow #engaru #rockvalleyski #hokkaido #japan (ロックバレースキー場)

#powdersnow #rockvalleyski #japan #engaru #軽トラ #hokkaido #爆笑 #car #ski #軽トラが雪上車になってる #誰が改造したんだろう #車

So one day my supervisor came to me and said “Nikolai. I have a favor to ask. There’s a meeting of the town’s Rotary Club coming up in about a week and a half, and... well, since your Japanese is pretty good and since *ahem* out of the three of you ALTs in Engaru your schedule is the most free that day... We were hoping you would give a speech at this meeting.” I was quite taken aback, as you could imagine. And I had some questions. First and foremost was: “What is a Rotary Club?” It turns out that Rotary International is an organization, so there can be different branches of clubs, and I guess the idea is to support good neighborhood and cooperation and internationalization? Honestly I’m still a little fuzzy on the details. (But I just choose to imagine it as a serious, adult version of the Boy Scouts.) Also, I had lots of questions about, well, the speech. How many people will be there? How long should it be? English or Japanese? What should it be about? Will there be lunch included? ... ~15 people; 20 minutes; Japanese; Whatever; Yes. ...Ok then. I’d never given a speech that long in Japanese before, so it was certainly a daunting prospect, but at the same time, I didn’t let myself get too worked up about it, and I didn’t spend too much time rehearsing or practicing the speech. I know how my head works and if I tried doing practice runs of the speech I would run across certain phrases that I’d definitely want to remember and include, or get too caught up in the details, and when it came time to do the actual thing I’d try to remember to say every little thing I had said when I practiced. Essentially, I planned to do it mostly off the top of my head, rather than writing it out first. And practicing + improv doesn’t really always work together, at least not for me in this case. In the end, these were my notes that I used to do the speech:

The general flow, as you can see, was to talk about myself for the first half: Why I’m here, why I like Japan and why I can speak Japanese, what I like about the town, and stuff like that. The second half I was doing to dedicate to talking about Donald Trump. This was only two weeks or so after he was elected, and the way he was hitting the news had been very off-putting and worrying to the Japanese populace at large. This choice was validated during the meeting actually, since one of the items on the agenda was talking about Trump or some way he’d popped into the news recently. (And actually, in a totally crazy coincidence, my supervisor had brought a copy of my dad’s book “Zen Ties” in Japanese for me to talk about, and it just so happened that the bag he brought the book in said “TRUMP” on the side in big letters) I didn’t write down many of my ideas of what I wanted to talk about with regards to Trump. They actually transcribed (and cleaned up) my whole speech in the news release pictured at the top, but essentially I wanted to touch on: the current worries that Japan has about America and Trump, why even now I can still be proud of America, why Trump supporters don't necessarily represent the hostility and xenophobia that world senses from Trump and his policies, and how even still, in the end, I want to be a better representative for America in my town than Trump has been. The meeting of the Rotary Club took place in a nearby hotel. My supervisor accompanied me as we entered a meeting room full of round tables, old men seated at them, and pre-set lunch platters (a very welcome bonus). They started the meeting after lunch, and we sat through a slightly perplexing series of announcements and club chants/songs. Then they called me up! So... I got up, gave the speech... and in the end, I think it went really well! I think they were mostly just surprised I could speak Japanese at all, much less communicate all the things I wanted to. When I finished I got some polite applause, and the head of the club (who I’m standing next to in the photo above) said “His Japanese is better than mine...” My supervisor too told me afterwards that it was “really interesting and wonderful”. I’m proud of the speech, but more proud that I’ve gotten to the point with my Japanese proficiency where I can simply get up at a podium with half of a scribbled page of notes, and give a whole 20 minute speech all in Japanese. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t always super smooth, but I was able to do it, and still do it well! That’s pretty amazing, and I’m going to keep working so that I can get even more fluent and proficient. I love being able to speak Japanese. :)

#japan #rotary club #japanese #speech #townies #engaru