ARGH!!

My brain is officially fried this week. I had another 7 hours of exam-check meetings this week and I am over it. I don’t understand why Japanese people can’t make decisions. Actually I think they can make decisions but they don’t like speaking out and so everything drags on. Luckily for them they wanted a foreigner to help and we do enjoy speaking out because we want to go home!!

I managed to sleep well last night which was good because today was the High School Speech Contest and I was asked to be a judge. I have to hand it to the kids; some of the speeches were amazing. One student wrote a very moving speech about a soldier in the war and right at the end disclosed that the soldier was her brother. Another student wrote about their battle with anorexia.

Unfortunately I don’t think the Japanese judges were looking for the same things and so I didn’t fully agree on the outcome. It was very frustrating to see kids who had really put their hearts into writing a truly moving story get beaten out by others who wrote about simple things such as pets or a school trip. I tried to argue the point that it was an essay contest but evidently pronouncing every letter correctly is more important than content.

Oh Japan, when will you learn?!?