January 26, 2015

It was meant to be a 3-5 minutes speech but I believe mine was more around the 3 minutes mark, since my previous speech had been much longer. This time, I did ALL the translations myself and, as I anticipated, it was much easier to memorize the whole thing. Another thing I did this time: I didn’t stress myself over it. I didn’t even completely perfectly memorize the whole thing to be honest. I just smiled and decided to see how it would go if I just relaxed.

So the first performance was on January 15th, and it went fairly well. Everyone from my class presented that day in front of our class as well as some Japanese students that usually come for our culture class. I performed pretty well, and although it wasn’t perfect, I was one of the few who had memorized most of it. Tonosaki sensei picked out the top three performances: two that tied for the 2nd place (Jaeyun, Korean and Kara, America/Hawaii, probably the two other most serious students besides me), then me as the winner. Tonosaki sensei gave us all little gifts; I got a blue towel from Tokai! 

First performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDDP_c3ueK0

I was happy of course that I had one, but most importantly that the nerves hadn’t gotten to me that day. I was able to “redeem” myself from last time, and it felt good. I also now had the chance to compete with class 7, one below mine, next week. 

After showing my family and my grandmother Masako my speech, they all gave me a few pointers which really helped me I believe for the second round.

The competition took place one week later. Now going into this next “competition”, I had the upper hand since I was the first place winner of the higher of both classes, and therefore I knew I had good chances to win. I practiced a little bit throughout the week, and somewhat more the night before. This time I felt more nerves probably because there was more pressure: my Japanese would be judged not only by all those in the class below us, but also by Nishiyama sensei, my sister’s favourite teacher during her time at Tokai.

My performance went well. I had brought my text up front with me, but I didn’t even look at it. It wasn’t perfect unfortunately, but apparently it was good enough. 

Final performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNVUJ-J1YCY

My roommate, Cho was the 2nd last to perform and I was very happy that he started with confidence professionalism. Even though he made a few mistakes, he was much better than all those from the 7th class. Usually, he doesn’t talk much and he is kind of shy, so it took me a little off guard. But like I said, I was glad to see that from him.

Last was Kara, and her speech was the longest out of us all, written down. Therefore memorizing it all was quite a task. Now Kara and I have this thing in common: Our fathers are Japanese. Therefore, our thinking pattern is usually pretty close, and when it comes to pressure, I can understand how she felt. But I think she really put too much on herself that day. During her performance in class, she had used her paper a lot when she forgot her words. But this time, she left her paper next to me, since we were sitting next to each other, and stepped up in front of everyone and started talking.  It went well at first, but eventually, she started forgetting. At one point I could tell she wasn’t going to remember on her own, so I quickly looked at her paper, and thanks to me being able to read Japanese well, I quickly found her spot, and called out a few words of the beginning of the next sentence. She looked at me surprised, then recalled the rest of it and kept going. After that, she stumbled many times, and I had to read out to her many parts. She finished and sat down embarrassed next to me.

The teachers had once again picked out two 2nd place winners, and one first place. My roommate Cho and Jaeyun were called up for the second place winners. I was glad for Cho, he really deserved it. Jaeyun, well he’s just crazy haha. 

I got called up to receive the first place certificate. I had done it. I was proud, and this only proved the efforts I put in class. I helped Kara get back on her feet after that, because I think she was pretty rattled. She expected so much out of herself, and “losing” to someone from a lower class isn’t the funniest thing. But I also learned something from that whole situation. Even though pressure is good, too much only kills you. Now I wonder if I can perform properly in front of a big crowd...