Good Little ALT Post Script

Just another little project I've done recently (although receiving far less support from wanky useless teachers.) It revolved around the Eurovision Song Contest 2011. For those who don't know what it is, please Wikipedia it or something, because I have spent the last 3 weeks of my life trying to explain it in both Japanese and in English and I can't bring myself to type it. It's a very famous music competition that happens once every year and is broadcast around the whole of Europe is the bare bones of it. Anyway, I went around the classes and they pulled 3 countries flags out of a hat. Then, I gave them the flag and some information about the country to put up in their form rooms, like how to say hello in their language, where it was on a map etc. and they became the supporter of that country. It was great...quite a few classes really got behind it. I played clips of one of the songs each class was supporting after the lunch menu on the speaker system every day the week before the contest and announced the winner on the Monday after the event, with the winning class getting little presents that my Mum has kindly sent from the UK for me/them. Of course it was sod's law that this year's winner would be just about the least famous country in the whole competition, Azerbaijan! Quite the anti-climax...and it's barely in Europe, which was another explanation I was rather out of my euro-depth in. The Eurovision Song Contest is only well-known in Europe, of course (although I've heard that some Australians give a sneaky peek). Any road, as Peter Kay would say, Eurovision is naturally not known in Japan at all (I found online that a couple of Irish pubs or sports bars in Tokyo do screen it every year, not that I'm enough of a loser to be that desperate to watch it!). It was great to hear that some of the kids really liked some of the music, and could understand parts of the lyrics. Its that perfect cheesey pop with really simple cliche lyrics aimed at non-native speakers. Their favourites were Denmark and Norway, the same as me! Especially Norway's African-vibey "Haba Haba" went down really well! They were all running round saying "haba haba" (or things that sounded vaguely like it). Strange that it literally came right near the bottom even in the semi final when it was catchy enough to get my kids onto it after a 15-second clip. It was also nice to teach the kids about an event from abroad and for them to see just how many countries (many they'd never heard of before, quite understandably as there are a couple I know nothing more about than their Eurovision entry every year...Andorra anyone?), people and languages make up Europe. Foreign does not just equal English and it certainly does not just equal the United States of America. However, I don't think any of them will be booking a ticket to Azerbaijan, in fact, I doubt if any of them can remember how to say it in Japanese, let alone English!