Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

9/12/2004, Meeting to discuss the Himeji International Friendship Festival

In the morning, after a couple nice phone calls from Seattle, I went out for a waffle with some other English teachers at a Western style cafe.  The waffle had fruit, strawberries, and raspberry ice cream on it.  Delicious!

I had no idea you could get tasty waffles like this in Japan.  Incidentally, I took this picture of my waffle using my cell phone.

After breakfast, I went to Himeji for a meeting to discuss the Himeji International Friendship Festival.  I'm going to be volunteering there.  Most likely, I'll be teaching a few 1 hour English classes to anybody who wants to drop in.  There will be other people teaching Chinese, Korean, and even Portugese.  All of the meetings were in Japanese, but I understood a little, and I learned some new Japanese in the process.  For example, if you want to make a really, really polite request, you can say something like "If you have any questions, I think I'd like to receive the favor of being asked a question by you (who is great, wonderful, and honorable)." In Japanese, it's "Shitsumon ga attara, kiite itadakitai to omoimasu." It's typical of super polite, indirect Japanese

At one point, I realized that everybody around me got some handout, but I didn't get one.  I went to the sign-in desk and asked for the document (in Japanese).  They responded by reminding me that the document was in Japanese and asking me if I really wanted one.  Sheesh.  There are some people here who just don't know what to do with foreigners who speak Japanese.  I used to think it was because my Japanese is primitive.  Then, I found out this stuff happens to everybody, even people who have excellent Japanese.

After a big meeting with around 150 people, I went to a smaller meeting with about 20 people who are interested in helping with the language teaching part of it.  Most of them are Japanese people who happen to speak some foreign language.  They discussed all the logistics of scheduling the classes, what would be taught, and how.  We all did self-introductions.  At one point, a Canadian guy came in.  He has been living here for a year and a half, but he didn't seem to speak a word of Japanese.  It's fascinating how people like this can exist.

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