Had my speech at school, no big problems there actually. During the ceremony, an old lady who lived through the war gave a speech. I couldn't understand it entirely, but from what I could gather she didn't appreciate having to send off her friends to die (and remember, as bad as the fighting was for the Allies, the Japanese casualty rates were much, much higher). If you come to Japan, it's easy to tell who lived through the war, because they are so tiny. It's not hard to imagine what several years of starving and malnutrition will do to a person's body.
Afterwards, around school, I've been meeting some of the kids. Most of them so far are really great (of course, we'll see how it goes once class starts). They are really friendly and enthusiastic, although unfortunately their english level is just about zero. I was hoping for a little bit better comprehension to start with, but outside of "my name is" and "I like..." there's not a whole lot going on. I'm having to try pretty hard even in just basic conversion to convey words and ideas in english. Hopefully there will be some improvement over time, but we'll see.
Anyways, I've started on my first assignment, an introduction poster about the United States. If you had to break down US culture, history, and geography into one neat poster, what would you choose? So far, I've got a lot of famous landmarks, some notes about the US flag, etc. The political scientist in me wants to break down the US Constituion, Separations of powers, etc. but at the same time I don't want to put the kids to sleep. So I'll try to keep it somewhat interesting.