平成1年8月8日 (火)

Dateline: Tuesday August 8, 1989

English Summer Seminar

Despite being only ten years old, JQS is drafted into teaching at the English Summer Seminar. Not only did he attend all the sessions with me, when we broke into small groups to do exercises, he got his own group.

On the last day, we foreign teachers put on some sort of silly skit. JQS participated in that as well.

Although it seems strange that he basically came to work with me, this was a big improvement over his having to stay alone in the hotel room, as he did during the JET orientation session in Tokyo.

Notes from 2019

JQS says what he remembers most about this adventure is that the hotel had a video arcade version of Super Mario 3 which had not yet been released in the US. Also, he thinks that if he had been a high school student paying big bucks to attend a Japanese Summer Seminar that it would have pissed him off to be stuck with some elementary school kid teaching his group. He remembers that the conversation dialog his group was studying had to do with going to a restaurant and not having money to pay the bill and being forced to wash dishes in recompense. Apparently the students in his group found the concept very foreign.