culture day

I attended a culture day yesterday at a local elementary school as the token American guy. A friend of mine, and a volunteer with the Aomori multi-culture committee, called me up last week and asked me to participate. With no real clue of what I would be doing(I thought it was like an English day or something), I agreed. Anyways, I kind of wandered in not expecting to find the group that was there. As my peers for the presentation, there was a Romanian, Korean, Chinese, Senegalese, and a Brit…not the typical 6 person group found in Aomori.

We did three classes, each of which were split into groups of around 6 kids per country. I did a brief breakdown of the USA – site seeing spots, foods, sports, population, etc. Afterwards the kids were able to ask questions and then one student per group gave a class presentation to the other groups. It was pretty neat.

The most disappointing part was not being able to speak Japanese like my 5 counterparts(I was the only one that required a translator) and understand when the students told of the other groups. I would really have liked to hear about Senegal or Romania or China or ANYWHERE. It was such an interesting group and I missed out to a degree.

The bright side of it was that I kind of felt like I knew most of the foreigners my age or at least had heard stories about them. With the exception of Alex(British), I had not met/seen/heard of any of the others. I really liked the group too. I hope to see them again.

The strange thing I realized though is that I am not really sure why I am proud to be an American. As a person that values history, I longed to be any of my peers, hailing from a country of a long interesting history. I was jealous of all of them for having, at least in my mind, something more interesting to say. I was also jealous of their high levels of Japanese, but I guess if I worked hard like they have that I could get there…I just can’t force myself to do it for reasons I can’t really explain.

Even with my lack of enthusiasm about America in comparison with the other countries, it seems that America is such a hit here. It is SO cool to the Japanese students. I don’t know why we are so “cool,” but I would have much rather sat in on any other group.

Adam