Last day at school. I've been out drinking and farewelling since last Wednesday, a bender I just can't get my round. End of term ceremony, farewell ceremony for me. The Kocho Sensei (Head), Harada Sensei had written a song and performed it live at the ceremony, piano and all. Later he presented a cd recorded version of it. Up on stage there was a speech in English then Japanese by Jun Hasegawa, a Third Grade kid I coached for the Recitation Contest last year. This year his classmate Yuto Takeda will represent NanaChu school instead, with a speech about his trip to Italy and Switzerland with the Japanese Red Cross. He talks about not having the words to communicate with a lady called Chris and how it was ぎごちない. As we translated the speech into English, Fujita Sensei explained ぎごちない isn't a word Japanese people are comfortable using, nor a condition they like to express. It translates to 'awkward' or 'clumsy'. That really would mess with the Wa.
I think Yuto's speech trickled in one ear-hole and gathered somewhere deep inside in a little well. My speech turned out part response to Yuto's speech, part advice to the students about studying English, part expression of my feelings about studying English, (the methods and joys of studying English in Japan), partly inspired by Max's account of his speech to 1000 High School kids, partly inspired by Julia's account of her speech to a whole lot of girls somewhere in Sakata. Here it is.
暑いから、少しだけ話します。先生方に、誠にを世話になりました。日本の中学校の生活に関してよく学べました。私の母校に比べて、あらゆる事が違います。もし私も日本人なら、どんな学生だろうとよく考えます。
生徒達に英語の勉強についてアドバイスして上げたいんです。先ずは、英語は学校の教科としてだけと思わないで下さい。その上に、通信手段です。「勉強」として思わないで、「自分の考えを述べる手段」として大事してみて下さい。英語であっても、日本語であっても、人のよって考え方や言い方は違います。自分の言い方探してみてください。
また、日本語の何千何万もの漢字の読み方などを知ることが難しいように、英語をすべて学ぶことも本当に大変です。それで、話している時に分からないことがあったり、伝えたいことをうまく言えなくても心配しないで下さい。七つの「しん」のことを考えて、特に「信じる」の「しん」。話している時に自分を信頼して、自信を持ってみて下さい。自分のベストを尽くして。
最後にいっぱい楽しい思い出本当にありがとうございました。心に残っている。以上です。
I wanted to tell the kids not to worry about not having the words, or enough words. You can never have them all, it's like those cereal packet collectibles. For some reason there's always one or two missing from your collection. There's too many and myriad. People have their own way of thinking and speaking, so as much as we think we communicate, really we just take the words as we see fit, where someone else might see a different cut to them. I wanted to tell the kids to find their own way of speaking, of expressing their selves with words.
I also wanted to tell the kids to have conviction in what they do say. I borrowed from the student council's slogan for the academic year- SHIN + ING, Shining 7. Ridiculous to look at, but quite profound to think. 7 different kanji, each with one of their readings reading, 'Shin'. The kanji all occur in word like 'Belief' and 'Depth'. I picked on Belief and bullied it til I made it my own.
So you see, for Yuto, I had to believe what I was saying, because that's what I was advising. I also had to try and set a decent example of speaking in a foreign language for him. How could I coach him for a week (until the contract expires) about public speaking if I myself was incapable? For Jun, I had to believe and have conviction too- after all, he had just delivered a speech in English to me up on stage, in front of his peers.
In terms on content, the get-out clause was that it didn't matter if it was perfect Japanese or not: this was my own way of speaking. But then the flaw was that this was a foreigner borrowing Japanese words for a speech and perhaps using them in roles unfamiliar to anyone there- who knows if our manners of speaking collided with each other, who knows if the message got through or not.
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