Garden Party

Yakisoba, games, singing, kabobs, garage sale, vegetable stand, marshmallow’s, 114 visitors and a beautiful day! The annual Garden Party took place last week (October 11) here at Ayashi Chuo Christ Church.

The event started at 12:30 where we indulged in some delicious yakisoba. Following lunch we sang some songs and then Hisashi sensei shared a bible story. The whole time he was sharing I was sitting on the grass mentally preparing for mylittle speech. I was not worried about getting up in front of all those people at talking. This presentation was going to be a little different because I wanted to surprise everyone and do it in Japanese. If you have not seen the video yet, take a look. Only two people knew about this surprise, Junko and Hiromitsu. Junko knew because she was the one that translated and helped me memorize it. Hiromitsu knew because he was in the room when I suggested the idea. Anywho, I was not completely natural sounding, but my think the subtle message got across. I wanted to demonstrate to my students and potential students that I am learning a foreign language too, and it’s a difficult process. It’s important to have confidence in speaking, so the goal was to lead by example and show that its ok if its not perfect.

Speech:
It’s important to be able to speak two languages. Right now I only speak English, but right now I’m taking Japanese lessons. I’m having a good time in all of my classes now, so those of you that are in my class, I hope you are too. There is still room in all of my classes for many people to join. Lets learn together. I hope you have had a good time today. I look forward to seeing you in class.

Following some more songs, the part of the event called “joyful time” started. Joyful time is essentially a chance for the children to go play the different booths that were set up and run by the youth and young adults. There were 5 booths set up, and each booth gave out stickers depending on how well the child played. Three stickers were awarded if they did really good, two for good, one for okay, and no stickers if they were terrible. You could play old Japanese top games and one of the booths, another one was shooting big darts through targets, the last indoor booth was bowling. Outside there were two booths. Hiromitsu’s booth was where you could demonstrate your shot accuracy, and shoot a soccer ball at targets in a goal. There was a line at his booth the entire Joyful Time. The booth that Yoshi and I were running was called, Goriyata…or in English, Goliath. I dressed as Goliath and stood there like a statue. The children were given pieced of cloth tied up in a ball with a string dangling out. They were supposed to spin it around their head, just like David did when he shot Goliath with his slingshot. You can probably guess what the goal of the game was…but to make it a little more fun the rags were soaked in water. They got 2 chances to hit me from each place. The father back they hit me from, the more stickers they were awarded. Once the children got enough stickers, they could take them in and buy prizes.

By the end of the day, I was pretty wiped. Luckily a number of people stayed to help clean up. After a closing meeting with the staff, I went back home and crashed hard...well, that’s what my mind and body wanted to do. Unfortunately, I hadn’t really planned a head for my Tuesday classes and consequently, still needed to plan them. So, off to plan I went.