As we've been getting ready for the homestay, I've been doing lessons with the Junior high school students on American communication. I have a bilingual book (“Do as Americans Do”) that talks about American manners, and it is often quite funny to try and teach the kids from this book.
For instance, the book had a section on eye-contact. In Japan it is often disrespectful to make eye contact with superiors, but the book said that in America eye-contact is important in a conversation. But, the book cautioned, staring too intently can make the other person feel uncomfortable. So the book said a good rule of thumb is to try and make eye-contact 60% of the time during a conversation.
Perhaps good on paper, but you can imagine these kids practicing their English conversation, and trying to get the eye-contact just right at 60%. They were so frustrated.
Last night was a lesson on small talk. Small talk doesn't really exist in Japan in the sense you would never strike up a conversation with someone you don't know. I had the students pretend that they were waiting at the bus stop, and that they didn't know each other, and to come up with a conversation. They wrote it out, and then performed it. It really made me laugh, so I’m reproducing it here. Mistakes are of course uncorrected

Ryosuke; It sure is a nice day, isn't it?
Marie: Yes, it is.
Nozomi: Yes, and I heard on the radio that it’s going to stay like this.
Ryosuke: Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Marie: Yes, I have two brothers and one sisters.
Nozomi: Me too. I have two sisters.
Ryosuke: Really? I have a sister. She is very fool. How about you?
Marie: Everyone too.
Nozomi: I think my sister is more fool than yours.
Ryosuke: Really? Good. Where do you live?
Marie: I live in Ajimu.
Nozomi: I live in Kamiichi in Ajimu.
Ryosuke: Really? I live in Ajimu too.


Perhaps you had to see the performance to really laugh about this. I endure a lot of mockery at the junior high school because of my bad Japanese, so I don’t feel too bad about enjoying the humor in their mistakes (I didn't laugh at this to their face obviously). That said, I could never have produced a dialogue like this in a foreign language when I was 15, so fair play to them.