Daidogei World Cup

Sorry I haven't been able to post in a few weeks. However, I would like to tell you about the Daidogei World Cup in Shizuoka city. It is an event held in Shizuoka every year to promote performance art and street performers. There are many crazy things happening over the four days that the event is held. I attended only one day but I got to see a lot.

This first act I watched was this French couple who were doing acrobatics on roller-skates. It actually made me nervous watching them because I thought she would fall, but it all went well. They were probably one of my favourite acts.

Then I watched this guy in the crazy costume walk on a tight rope while doing tricks. His partner also did tricks lots of hula hoops and one giant hoop but unfortunately there is a problem uploading her video.

The last event I watched was these two brothers who I enjoyed a lot. They were very playful with the audience and had a lot of charisma. Most of their tricks were balancing one another and acrobatics, but they also had a storyline to their act. They played the rolls of bank robbers who'd fallen out after their robbery. Apparently they won last year.

Congratulations to Speech Contest Contestants

Last weekend was the second round of the Shizuoka English Speech Contest. As you will know from my earlier post, Kanako Aoyama got through to this round. She has been working tirelessly on improving her intonation and pronunciation. However, she didn't go through to the next round. I was very sad for her but extremely proud of her and her speech, 'Life after Mental Illness'. It was a difficult and personal subject but she presented it brilliantly. Working with her for the past few months has been delightful and I hope that by practicing for the contest her confidence in using English has increased. 

All the students speeches were interesting and well spoken. The competition was very high and I believe that the scores were all extremely close. Congratulations goes to Keiko Yamashita from Hamamatsu Kita whose speech, 'Why can't we talk face-to-face?', was excellently presented. Good luck in Tokyo.