Shimbokukai

I am famous.

Tuesday 29th December 2020, 2pm London time, 11pm Japan time:
Please be an internationally known person The other participants will ask you who you are – all questions must have a Yes/No answer. If your chosen person hasn’t been discovered within 10 minutes you can reveal who it is. Please let me know who you plan to be so that nobody doubles up.
「私は有名人です。」をタイトルに日本語ゲームをします。日時は１２月２９日（火曜日）、日本時間午後１１時（ロンドン午後２時）で、１時間半ぐらい。参加者各自がだれか有名人になり、それを他の参加者が日本語の「はい、いいえ」で答えられる質問だけで、その有名人をあたるというゲームです。持ち時間は一人１０分前後。「誰」になるかを事前にお知らせください。他の生徒とのダブりがなければ、そのままで結構です。（最初は、１分程度の簡単な自己紹介ーお名前、現在の参加場所ーから始めます。

What is your photo?

In advance I am going to send each of you a photo I have taken in Japan. Then the other students will ask the person who has the photo questions to try and work out what the photo shows. If no one has guessed in ten minutes we will go on to the next photo. However, we will start the meeting with everybody introducing themselves so please prepare a short description about yourself. For the photo task please note the following:

1. Make sure that you speak only in Japanese.
2. Control your grammar within these ranges.
3. No WH-questions are allowed to ask. Where/what/who/when or どこ、なに、だれ、いつ-related questions are not allowed. Questions have to be Yes/No. For example, 女の人（おんなのひと）がいますか。それをたべますか？which means “Are there any women? Do you eat this?” respectively.
4. Questions/answers should be kept as simple as possible so that all the participants would understand what is said. This means you need to make sure that vocab/speed/grammar are all not beyond Marugoto Book 2 level.
5. All the photos will be shown at the end.

After Shimbokukai

After an event, such as a Shimbokukai, Japanese people often exchange short emails with the key phrase such as 「お疲れ様（おつかれさま）でした。」, which literally means “Thank you very much. Mr/Mrs/Ms Tired!”. None of the participants apart from Motoihro san did. I realise I don’t think I have ever explained this to my students but it would be a good cultural thing to do.