KOBE 2006: Good or Bad Learner?

So, last week 900 JET's descended on a super swish hotel in Kobe for a three-day re-contracting conference. Of course, the seminar itself was not the main source of amusement although I must say I actually found some of the talks quite useful. The one that struck me the most was about learning Japanese while we're in Japan. They showed this video in which they identified a good and bad learner and as cliched as it was, I knew instinctively which category I fell into.

I have always been interested in languages but it's never been my passion because I've never been able to master one. I've always been too afraid to speak, worried that I'll look stupid and incompetant. And it is this that makes me possibly the biggest hypocrite ever...because I get frustrated, even exasperated when my students won't participate and take risks, yet I am exactly like them. So, I've returned to Tokuyama much more motivated to practise what I preach; to make more effort with my Japanese; to try and brush off the ritual humiliation which will inevitably ensue and to prove to myself and my students that people can and do master new languages.

Equally, I still don't feel teaching is for me but I have learned that, just like languages, maybe teaching is a skill you can learn and hone as opposed to being something you either can or can't do. One of my teachers told me the other day that my teaching had really improved. And rather than brushing it off, I thought about it and realised she was right. Of course, there's always going to be someone who is, or at least seems, more confident and competant but that's not to say my own effort is any less invaluable.

On a lighter note, Kobe rocks. It was so much fun to be in a big city, listening to people busking, seeing people on the streets past 10pm and having more bars and restaurants than you can shake a stick at. We found a couple of small, chilled bars and spent the evenings with the bars to ourselves, talking and playing connect 4 with the owners and trying to conquer our fear of slow dancing under Ginny's instruction. So here's to the slack ballroom hold, racing taxi drivers and the weird man with a dressed-up chicken with painted toe nails/ claws- viva Nihon!!!