Speecherooni

This weekend was all about the speech. Saturday B and I spent a good 5 or so hours sorting stuff out. I had my speech written and checked by a Japanese person, I just had to sort out the slides on powerpoint. That was kind of fun really. Then I had to practice saying my speech over and over again so it would seem like I am fluent. My part went for a good 25 minutes or so and it took a long time to rehearse. Sunday morning I spent doing the same and in the arvo it was all on. First everyone watched Rabbit Proof Fence, which I have never seen while B and I had a run through in the room with the projector and so on. It was a long wait. At 3 o'clock we were all on. I think it went pretty well, although the quiz was quiet dull. We would ask a question and they would sit in silence. That, or whisper the answers under their breath but be too scared to put their hand up and say it out loud. And then when someone finally did answer the question correctly she refused to pick out a prize! We practically had to drag her up the front to collect something. And they were good prizes too, bottles of wine, honey, jams, lanolin soaps and so on. Some of the questions no one could answer so there were heaps of prizes left at the end which B and I managed to get hold of so we had a chocolate wind down fest. We showed the Where the bloody hell are you? video at the end and then it was question time. Only one question, one bloke wanted to know why the NT and ACT are not states. I just made up something about their population not being big enough to warrant it or something and he seemed happy with that.

Afterwards a few people came up and said that my speech was really interesting and easy to understand and that my Japanese is really good which is nice to hear even if you know that they hand out compliments like we hand out greetings. All except one old bloke who came up and shoved a piece of paper with notes on it under my nose and said "You made a mistake". OH? Apparently I used the wrong kanji for the "sen" part of "sensuikei" (submarine). He went on and explained why it was the wrong kanji and then just walked off without saying a single nice thing about the rest of the speech without any mistakes in it. What a wanker. Luckily I was too busy basking in the relief of having the whole thing over and done with to ask him to repeat himself in English so I could pick on everything he did wrong despite the fact that I understand his meaning perfectly.

I have noticed that with the Japanese are either annoyingly relectant to help you with your Japanese, or completely hardarsed about it. It is very rare that my Japanese friends will correct my Japanese grammar, if I say something with the wrong particle or use an odd verb they will just let it go because they get my drift. In those cases I wouldn't mind if they just repeated the sentence correctly so I wouldn't go on thinking I was saying it right and compound the mistake. And then in the opposite end there are people like this old guy who will pick on every tiny little mistake that even native speakers make and never say anything nice about your Japanese. Someone makes a speech in their second langauge, you gotta expect a few mishaps.

Well, I am just very very relieved to have it all over and done with now. Now what am I going ot do with all my time? Christmas shopping I guess! Tonight B and I are heading out to the AEON mall in Kurashiki to do some of that. And sometime this week I am going to go to the doctor to sort out my finger. I'll post a picture of it later on, it's all swollen and stuff for no reason. Weird. Hmm, it's 10 already and I haven't done any work, better get on to that!