Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

11/7/2004, Volunteering at the Himeji International Friendship Festival

As I was planning for a few months, I went to Himeji and volunteered in a festival.  I taught English.  It was unusual.  There was a long table with language teachers teaching various languages, including Portugese, Korean, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and of course English.  People would come up, sit down in a chair in front of me and I'd give them a 5 or 10 minute English lesson.  I prepared some handouts ahead of time.  Typically, I taught them how to meet somebody new, key phrases, or how to do a self-introduction.  What was neat is the variety of people who came.  Their ages ranged from 2 to senior citizens (maybe 70s).  Maybe half were kids around 9 years old, spurred by their parents.  A quarter were college age or adult.  A quarter were retired.  Something like that.

After that, I met a Japanese friend and we rented a practice room with a piano.  We played latin music and jazz.  Then, we came back to my apartment and I cooked dinner - chicken and egg rice bowl (oyakodon) and pumpkin (kabocha).  It was a novel experience to cook Japanese food for a Japanese person in Japan, not being Japanese myself.  My friend was quite complementary, for what that's worth.  Actually, I think it turned out quite well, if I may say so myself.

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