My first foray into conversational Japanese, and I DID NOT FAIL.

On Saturday, we had a second Japan orientation, this one run by JET alums.

Side note: Go the the official orientation. I am so glad I went. Meeting people who've actually done it and seeing everyone else who's in the same boat as you really makes it feel less daunting. Also, they talk about important things, like squatter toilets :

we seriously broke Ita-san, the consul, by one of the alums giving us a detailed instruction/demonstration on the proper way to use them, and she dissolved into giggle fits for a good ten minutes

 ...and banking and mail.

Anyway, this one took place at the Showa Institute in Boston, which is an awesome resource. They have sister campuses and send students back and forth for language learning. The campus is beautiful. I hate to admit, it's more than a little surreal being in a classroom geared toward teaching English, but I saw some familiar faces and a lot of my nervousness dissipated.

The first half of the day was spent on learning different techniques for listening and comprehension exercises, which was nice, but the real thing I was looking forward to/dreading was lunch and what came after: meeting the Showa students.

We went into the sun room for pizza, and met about a dozen very shy (well, most of them) Japanese college girls, and were told "socialize!" When they let us loose, the girls had the most terrified looks on their faces.

oh shi- I just forgot all of my english

Then we descended like hawks in a field of baby rabbits, pulling some to each of our tables and encouraging them to speak English as we put together our terrible pidgin Japanese. They opened up a lot more as time went on, especially when they saw that while some of us had a few years of Japanese under our belts, others had varying levels of "none."

BUT I COULD HOLD ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS. I did! I managed to find out their names, where they were from, what year they were in, when they arrived, and a whole host of other things. Turns out, they were all 19-year-old sophomores, fresh off the plane 3 weeks ago. So as nerve-wracking as it was for us to talk to native Japanese speakers, at least we had home court advantage.

I was super nervous at first. I rehearsed things in my head before saying them, often missing my window to actually say it out loud. It was frustrating, and I quickly realized that this was Not Going to Work. Thus, my "Say Stuff and Correct as You Go" system was born. And it was awesome.

In less than an hour, I was speaking confidently and quickly, although I might not have made a whole lot of sense. But the girls were all over that. (It probably also helped that one of the teachers earlier in the day had given us a quick vocal coaching.) We got used to laughing at each other.

A lot.

The rest of the day was a lot of fun, as we rotated in little pairs and groups of english and Japanese speakers to do self-introductions and skits and whatnot. By the end of the day, the girls were a lot more social and friendly, asking to take A BAZILLION PICTURES (seriously, there are about fifty pictures of me on Facebook with a variety of Japanese schoolgirls) and asking for our facebook information.

HP commented that I was like a rockstar in the number of girls who flocked to me, further chirping that he was right about just loosening up and being a chatty, friendly person in order to win over everyone ever and make ALL THE FRIENDS.

He might be right this one time. Might be.