Feeling a bit like a celebrity

Apparently Tom Cruise, aka Tyler Andrews, has strolled into the small town of Bandai and everyone is itching to hear him speak! Haha, I kid you not! This week shall now be known as speech week... On Tuesday, I was herded like a lost sheep to give THREE introductory speeches... I'll briefly talk about them

1 - The first one was at 810 AM to the teachers/principal of Bandai Machi Junior High School (BMJHS)... I was basically asked to sit in on the teacher's meeting and go up to the front when they mentioned "Tydah-sensei"... I go up, talk for about 2 minutes in English when my Kyoto sensei (vice principal) asks one of my English teachers to translate my speech into Japanese.... clearly NO ONE was listening to the words coming out of my mouth because he could hardly stumble through my name! Ahhh well, i get bored at speeches too, so I dont blame him

2 - THE BIG ONE! This one had me brought in front of the 111 students of BMJHS! I figured I would be super keen and do the speech bilingually, in English and Japanese! Hahaha, so I stumbled through my probably incoherent Japanese followed by the EXACT same text in English... After the english text, however, my other Japanese English Teacher (Nozomi) literally stands there and translates it again!!! Like, cmon, was it THAT bad!?

3 - The cool one! For this one I was brought to city hall to meet the "city staff"... Although I had already met them, they insisted I give an introductory speech... no doubt my picture will appear in the community newspaper... hell, it'll probably be the headline! haha... i love this place!

Oh, I actually forgot one! I had to give a brief question and answer period to the board of trustees.... unfortunately, only 2 of the 7 members showed up, so it was slightly awkward.

And dont think my week of speeches is over yet! I am honorable in this town you know... like the big deal... in fact, so big... THAT IM OPENING THE TRACK AND FIELD DAY! Yes! That's correct. I am the celebrity guest speaker at the opening ceremonies. As part of my gracing the event (totally hung over after a night of nomihodai) I am to run in the 200m relay race... anyone that has seen me run will know this is not going to be a pretty sight... i'll probably make the front page as "white man runs funny"

Japan is one hella random place... It grows on you and you start to embrace its RANDOMNESS!