Speech Contest

It was speech contest day.  What an experience.  There were about 30 kids giving speeches.  Half were speeches that they had written, the others were recitations of stories.  Both were interesting by their own merit.  The English pronunciation was...developing.  Some students spoke very clearly in their speeches, some speeches I think were in English.  But that is neither here nor there.  There were also some very interesting topics.  The winner gave a speech about suicide in the junior highs.  It was titled, We Are All Involved.  Heavy, but she was looking for a KO and she got it.  Another heavy topic was people who had to hide in a cave during the war and another was about being in a car accident.  Very intense.

The second section was students reciting stories they had memorized.  These stories are unlike any I've ever heard before.  Stories of a little girl dying under a tree after the bombing of Hiroshima, stories of sinners bobbing up and down in the river of blood in the floor of hell, nursery rhymes here.  Brilliant.  Unfortunately (for my 4 young aspiring English speakers) the people who won this category recited stories of Beauty and Beast and Goldie Locks and the 3 bears.  All of which had alternative endings like I had never heard before...I think my favorite was the story where 1 man lost his wallet and another man found it.  The man who found it returned it with all its original $300 in it but the owner of the wallet wouldn't take it because technically he "lost the money".  But the person who found it, couldn't take the money because it wasn't his!  And after arguing back and forth the landlord settled the argument by throwing in $100 of his own money so they could each have $200.  The reasoning, the rationalization to this story : they could both take the money because they were each at a loss of $100, including the landlord (who had nothing to do with the wallet) and then the landlord took them all out for dinner!  Doesn't this make sense?  This is Japan.

As the judges came back in the woman with the microphone announced the weinners.  The weinners.  one more time, the weinners.  I know this is bad karma or something, but really just cultural observation I feel it is my obligation to share the irony of an English speaking contest, critiquing on pronunciation and repeating the words weinner more times than I could handle.  I loved it and yet was disturbed by it all at the same time.  I think that is the definition of acclimating to another culture...don't question just take all in.