This weekend, typhoon no.14 AKA Nanmadol, the super-typhoon made its way to the shores of Japan. A lot of people decided to brace for the impact and stayed inside, though not before raiding the convenience stores for supplies, leaving me to choose between a cucumber sandwich, a half-sized seafood Cup Noodle (the worst flavour) and a mini naan bread for dinner. I chose all three.
However, some bold Worldies decided to tempt fate and brave the storm to attend Chatterbox Language Exchange on Sunday afternoon! And the risk paid off! Although the storm led to the evacuation of nine million people and widespread destruction in Kyushu, not a whole lot happened where we’re based in Honshu. Bit windy. Some rain. But in return they got the opportunity to practice their English or Japanese in creative ways, meet some new people and enjoy the ambience in Shooters.
This month we tried out some new activities: Two Truths and a Lie (which is apparently something that doesn’t exist in Japan) and Commercial Comparisons.
Two Truths and a Lie
A player draws a topic card from the stack on the table, and creates two true statements and one lie based on that topic. The other team members must ask them questions to determine which is the lie. The player must try to conceal this lie by making up stories to cover it up, and of course, a convoluted web of lies soon develops. After five minutes, the truth is revealed! Did you guess correctly?
Commercial Comparisons
We played three ads from the West and three ads from Japan. We spent a lot of time looking for ads that were pretty weird or funny! Teams were given questions to answer based on these ads, but really… we just wanted you to talk about how weird they were! I think it went down pretty well 😉
We also included the first part of the legendary Sakeru Gumi “Long Long Man” ad, which everyone loved! For those of you who have never seen this before, you can watch the full, unabridged six-minute version here:
I’m thinking about shaking this event up next month to give you guys a little more freedom and some more opportunities for you to meet different people. This event seems to be pretty popular, with around 40 attendees each month, with about 50% of those being newcomers. I’d really like to perfect Chatterbox so that it becomes the best language exchange in the city. If you’ve got any ideas on how to make this event even better, please let me know in the comments section.
As always, thank you for your support and I look forward to seeing you all at the next event on October 16!
– Matthew
