I awoke on Wednesday morning feeling like myself again. The extra day to adjust to everything really helped. It was a good thing because my schedule started getting pretty intense with interviews and other visits around Kumamoto City. My very fist thing Wednesday was a visit at one of the local High Schools. I would have 30 minutes to present which ended up being 15 minutes because of the translation. I had prepared a 15 minute speech before I left Bozeman to send on to my interpreter, Myuki. The speech was a very simple overview of rodeo, how it was started and what is involved in a rodeo. Most Japanese have never seen a horse much less seen a rodeo so to remain simple was key. I arrived at the school and the first thing I was not prepared for was to take off my boots! Good thing I am always very particular about making sure my socks match with no holes! As soon as I entered the room where the 100+ students were waiting I was greeted with cameras, video cameras, and newspaper reporters. I felt like the President!
My speech went well although by the middle of it the principal stopped me because he and the rest of the class just wanted to look at the pictures I had brought. I was relieved because giving a 15 minute speech sounded pretty boring, even to me. The students loved the pictures of me riding in rodeos, and of the different events of rodeo. At the end of my presentation they opened the room to questions. As a culture, the Japanese are pretty shy so no one really wanted to ask questions. I can say that Japanese High School boys respond the same to a pretty girl as American High School boys, I had a f
ew requests for boyfriends that morning! The class presented a huge bouquet of beautiful Japanese flowers for me. This was just one gesture that showed just how gracious they were for having me in their school.
Later that day I had 2 newspaper interviews and one radio interview. The interviews are conducted in much the same way as in the US but of course I had a translator with me at all times! The most frequent question I got asked was what do I think of Japan. My response was always, everything is so much smaller here! During my interviews I always tried to learn a new word or phrase in Japanese which they always really liked. The one newspaper article showed up the next day on the front page of the newspaper I got at my hotel! Although, I didn’t realize it was the front page because
they fold their papers backwards, so instead of opening the newspaper to the left you open it to the right.
Wednesday I also got to visit Kumamoto castle. It is this enormous castle right in the center of Kumamoto City where a Japanese Lord used to live. Unfortunately, because of time, I didn’t get to have a real tour of the castle so I didn’t completely understand the history but it was pretty cool to visit anyway. I also found a Starbuck’s coffee, I was very excited to see something familiar to me. We ate at a Japanese style Chinese restaurant which isn’t quite the same as American Chinese food but it had fried rice and shrimp so I didn’t starve during that meal!
Thursday was another busy day but it didn’t start until later in the morning so I could catch up on some needed sleep. Although I was getting used to the language barrier and not being able to communicate, it was still hard sometimes. For instance, I was in the elevator going to the lobby to meet my translator and there was a nice Japanese lady in there with me. She was instantly distracted by my Miss Rodeo Montana outfit and wanted to talk to me and of course she didn’t speak English. She was talking 90 miles a minute in Japanese and gesturing, I really had no idea what she was saying so I just smiled. I finally figured out that she wanted a picture with me and we met her husband in the lobby. We took 6 or 7 pictures all in different locations in the
hotel with them talking Japanese the whole way like I could understand every word. I have no explanation as to why we had to keep moving other than they wanted a different background for each picture. You can just imagine me with a smile plastered on my face being tugged around the hotel lobby by a Japanese couple so excited to meet Miss Rodeo Montana. After that, I told my translator maybe she should walk me all the way to my door!
My speech went well although by the middle of it the principal stopped me because he and the rest of the class just wanted to look at the pictures I had brought. I was relieved because giving a 15 minute speech sounded pretty boring, even to me. The students loved the pictures of me riding in rodeos, and of the different events of rodeo. At the end of my presentation they opened the room to questions. As a culture, the Japanese are pretty shy so no one really wanted to ask questions. I can say that Japanese High School boys respond the same to a pretty girl as American High School boys, I had a f
ew requests for boyfriends that morning! The class presented a huge bouquet of beautiful Japanese flowers for me. This was just one gesture that showed just how gracious they were for having me in their school.Later that day I had 2 newspaper interviews and one radio interview. The interviews are conducted in much the same way as in the US but of course I had a translator with me at all times! The most frequent question I got asked was what do I think of Japan. My response was always, everything is so much smaller here! During my interviews I always tried to learn a new word or phrase in Japanese which they always really liked. The one newspaper article showed up the next day on the front page of the newspaper I got at my hotel! Although, I didn’t realize it was the front page because
they fold their papers backwards, so instead of opening the newspaper to the left you open it to the right.Wednesday I also got to visit Kumamoto castle. It is this enormous castle right in the center of Kumamoto City where a Japanese Lord used to live. Unfortunately, because of time, I didn’t get to have a real tour of the castle so I didn’t completely understand the history but it was pretty cool to visit anyway. I also found a Starbuck’s coffee, I was very excited to see something familiar to me. We ate at a Japanese style Chinese restaurant which isn’t quite the same as American Chinese food but it had fried rice and shrimp so I didn’t starve during that meal!
Thursday was another busy day but it didn’t start until later in the morning so I could catch up on some needed sleep. Although I was getting used to the language barrier and not being able to communicate, it was still hard sometimes. For instance, I was in the elevator going to the lobby to meet my translator and there was a nice Japanese lady in there with me. She was instantly distracted by my Miss Rodeo Montana outfit and wanted to talk to me and of course she didn’t speak English. She was talking 90 miles a minute in Japanese and gesturing, I really had no idea what she was saying so I just smiled. I finally figured out that she wanted a picture with me and we met her husband in the lobby. We took 6 or 7 pictures all in different locations in the
hotel with them talking Japanese the whole way like I could understand every word. I have no explanation as to why we had to keep moving other than they wanted a different background for each picture. You can just imagine me with a smile plastered on my face being tugged around the hotel lobby by a Japanese couple so excited to meet Miss Rodeo Montana. After that, I told my translator maybe she should walk me all the way to my door! 
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