I attend yet another Ceremony
Yesterday I had to go to a ceremony at the Elementary school. It was a ceremony to honor everyone who had helped out at the Elementary school over the course of the year. I was up on stage with the local policemen, the fire department, the librarian, and the lady who serves tea in the office. I got a bouquet of flowers, which was a nice gesture, but I thought what I’m sure all of you think every time you get flowers. “Oh, great. What am I going to do with these things? They’re just going to rot in my sink.”

I started thinking that since I’ve arrived in Japan, I’ve been up on stages and in front of crowds introducing myself numerous times. And yet it some weird way, since it is in Japan it doesn’t seem to really count. For one thing I guess I’m not being honored for my achievements so much as I am for just being an American, so in that respect it is different than being back home. But also for some reason it doesn’t seem real because it is in Japan. When I come back to the United States, if I ever have to get up on a stage in front of a crowd of people, I won’t think to myself, “No big deal, I’ve done this hundreds of times in Japan.” There is something about being up in front of your peers that makes you more nervous than being on stage in a foreign country, at least for me.

Case in point I guess is last year I did a presentation at the Assistant English Teachers conference on teaching about Global Issues in the Classroom. It wasn’t even a presentation so much as it was a workshop, with only a handful of other ex-pat teachers in the room, and yet I was more nervous than any time I’ve been on the stage in Japan.

Although my favorite story, which I’ve told many times before, is when I first arrived in Ajimu, Ryan and I and a student from the local international university were asked to be on a panel discussion about internationalization in Ajimu. And were asked all sorts of questions like, “What can Ajimu do to improve internationalization?” And all of us had only been in the town a few days. It was ridiculous. We did our best to just bullshit our way through it and give answers that sound impressive.