Shirakawa!

Brought to you by the second grade students of Shirakawa Second Junior High School (白河第二中学校).

In the schools that I teach at, we are assigned to a different teacher every day. The first day that I was assigned to the second graders, one of the English teachers, Ms Endo, asked the students to prepare a presentation on the attractions of Shirakawa as a way of introducing the town. This was an awesome relief, because I was sick of doing my jikoshokai (self introduction).

(I think from memory, I had introduced myself to 23 separate classes within the first two weeks of arriving. I was getting sick of having to explain that a wombat is neither bear nor mouse, children guessing my age to be 30 or above, staring blankly when I asked them if they had any questions, or being asked whether I liked the teacher who was in the room at the time.)

The students presentations covered:

- Ramen (Shirakawa’s most famous product – and I thought the students would be impressed when I told them that it was my favourite Japanese food, but I was sternly reprimanded and told that ramen is in fact a Chinese dish)

- Teachers at Shirakawa Second Junior High (the portraits of the teachers were really good, but all of the teachers are frowning)

- The Paper Lantern Festival (see the various Chochin Matsuri posts elsewhere in this blog)

- Nanko Park (the largest and oldest park in Shirakawa)

- Daruma (papier mache dolls that look slightly creepy as they have only one eye; when you buy them you make a wish and if it comes true after a year, you paint the other one on – according to the poster, Daruma means “never give up” and “patience”)

- Kominejo (Komine castle – the castle in Shirakawa; according to the poster the “Otome” cherry tree is in it’s grounds: “ Otome cherry tree is in Kominejo. It’s very beautiful. Otome means young girl. Otome is a person name. Let’s go Komine castle!”)

After each presentation, I was told to ask a question. Trying to think of reasonably easy English questions was a little difficult. After the Komine castle presentation, I asked “How many storeys is Komine castle?”, and knowing the answer to be five, I was surprised at the students response. They stared at me for a while, before somebody started flipping through a dictionary. Then the teacher was consulted, and finally they came up with the answer, “600”.

I had really enjoyed all of the presentations, when, at the end, I was told to provide criticism for the students’ benefit. I think I got up and said something like “please use louder voices in future”, as I didn’t want to put the students off public speaking. Apparently this was not what was required, and they were berated for the next 10 minutes about their English presentation skills.