It’s never just a case of saying “cheerio” these days…

One of the traditions of Junten school is for the volunteers, who all year have been instructed only to speak English to their students, to give a farewell speech in Japanese. As a result I have spent the last few days getting to grips with mine, practicing it, trying to memorize it and at the same time desperately trying to remember what on earth it’s about. For your entertainment, here is my speech in Japanese, my attempt phonetic Japanese and the English meaning as best as I can remember it. I added spaces into the written Japanese because I don’t know all the kanji yet, and it gets too hard to read otherwise.?There’s some mistakes in here, especially with my Katakana writing (foreign words), but it’s a close as I can get it.

Speech In English

Hello! It’s Mike!

Thank you everyone for the last year.

Today is my last time to speak to you, so I am feeling sad.

I want to talk about two things I have noticed about Japan.

The first is sports day. For me, I noticed that English sports day is very different to Junten sports day. For example, tug-of-war, group skipping and horseback fighting. Actually, I wanted to join in with the horseback fighting, but the teachers said I was too good!

The second thing is the Easter, Halloween and Christmas parties. At the Christmas party, I was Santa, which was very fun. At the Easter party I ate too much chocolate. Thank you very much to everyone who came to the parties.

Thank you also to the Shorinji Kempo club. We tried really hard to get over the communication barrier and I had a lot of fun doing Shorinji.

Thank you very much to all the teachers, I am sorry if I got in your way. Special thanks to Mr. Nakahara for looking after me this year.

From October, I will go to university to study Japanese. Next summer I plan to come back to Japan, but I think you should speak English to me! Please try hard to learn English!

Just one more thing. Thank you very much to Mr. Watanabe the headmaster and Mr.Nagatsuka the associate principle. Thanks also to all of the teachers, the office staff, and the students. Thank you very much. See you next year!

Speech In Written Japanese

こんにちわ。　マイクです。

一年間　みんなん ありがとうございました。

今日は　みんなんに　話す　さいごのひで、　とても　さびしいです。

私が日本に来て　かんじた　ことお　二つ来いて下さい。

一つめは　たいくさいです。私が　イギリスで　やっていた　たいいくさい　わ　順天のと　ちがていました。

なぜなら、　順天でわ　大縄跳びと　つなひきと　きばせんお　したからです。

ところで、　私も　きばせんお　した　かった　けど、先生が　マイクは　うまいから、　だめだと！　いいました。

二つめは、　エエスタと　ハロウエエンと　クリスマスの　パアテです。　とくに、　クリスマス　パーチ　のとき、　私わサンタ　なったので、　たのしかたです。

それから、エスタパーちのとき、　チョコレと　お　食べすぎました。　さんかして　くれた　みんなさん　ありがとう　ございました。

少林寺拳法 クラブ　に　入れてくれて、　本当に　うれしかったです。　がんばって　コミウニカシオン　おして　おかげで　少林寺も　うまかなりました。

先生がた、　いろりろ　じゃまして　すみません　でした。　とくに、　中原先生　おせわに　なりました。

十月から、　私は大学に行て、日本語おべんきょうします。　来年のなつ、また日本に来たいと思いますので、　そおのときにわ、みんあと　かんぺきな　英語で　話せるよう　に、　がんばって　ください！

もいちど、　いわせて　ください。　わたなべりじちょう先生、　ながつかこうちょう先生。　先生がた、じむしょうのみなさま、　せいとのみんあさん、ありがとう　ございました。

また、きっと会いましょう。

There we go then. Probably the most disjointed Japanese in the entire world. Nevermind, at least they can’t say I didn’t have a go at it. Thanks really go to Lynsey and Tom who wrote pretty much the whole thing for me.

For those of you who can read Japanese, I’m sorry for hurting your language. For those of you who can’t, those symbols sure look pretty, huh?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 7:59 pm and is filed under Gap Year. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.