Club Activities and Dinner with the Professors

The weekend after Silver Week, 10/3-4, I stayed in Tottori. First I went and checked out a local showcase from the various cultural (non-sport) clubs.  Japanese students take their club activities very seriously, and it is much more like a part time job outside of school. Every club meets most every day throughout the whole school year, which is year round, there is no long summer break.  That means these cultural clubs become quite talented. Students from my school built a large bell instrument, which can be played with a MIDI keyboard, or programmed with software to play music. There was also various art put up by students throughout the hall. While I was there another school club was about to begin their shodo, calligraphy painting, demonstration. Shodo is rather impressive, because it is coordinated with music and done on massive canvases. It was fun to see. 

On my way back to my apartment I snapped this nice picture of the sunset.

That evening the Japan Association for Language Teaching was putting on a seminar at the college very close to my school. The local chapter brought guest lecturers from Hiroshima. These college professors presented a variety of teaching styles and information, but most of it seemed geared towards higher level learners. 

None the less it was a valuable experience, and afterwards they invited me to join them for dinner. I gladly accepted, not realizing I was the only non-lecturer attending. So I spent the evening with these various teachers learning about their lives and experiences. They had incredibly interesting and colorful histories. Many of them have been in Japan for over 20 years now, but started in a similar position to me. One teacher took 7 years after university to travel the world, and decided to teach in Asia for just a little while, yet ended up settling down in the country permanently. Another had an amazingly varied background. At one point he was telling me about how he bought a motorcycle and rode for four months around the US, with no prior riding experience. Meeting them reassured me of my decision to travel abroad and follow my interests, since such flippant people have ended up in good careers leading happy lives.