Speech Contest

This past Friday I had the chance to judge the Tottori East Junior High School Speech contest. The winner will head to Tokyo to compete nationally in the next month or so. It was a really fun reprieve from the office life. The speeches themselves were either recitations or self written speeches, so of course the ones that were written by the students touched my heart the most. Some of the kids wrote about being bullied, saving animals or their relationships with their families. It is so hard to choose one winner from a group of really awesome students. To have the courage to stand up in front of your peers and a bunch of foreigners and express yourself in a second language is amazing! I still find forming sentences in Japanese tough, so a speech seems way off! At the end of the day the judges were gifted with some delicious German cake, which was totally unexpected and fun! I will definitely miss these fun random days here in Japan. 

Sarah managed to capture me giving my closing comments. It looks like an empty room but actually those seats had been filled by the contestants but at that point the students had moved back to sit with their teachers. I was actually a bit nervous and shaking voice but it was a good challenge. Gotta stretch myself sometimes :)