Speaking, script reading, practice reports, and time management…
I’ve been working on a lot of things but,
the other day we had some free talk practice with “Introduce your colleagues”

On this day, announcer Kojima, our guest lecturer
was looking at our company newsletter
(that had introductions to all the new workers)
and called out people at random. The people called out
had to give an introduction about their fellow coworkers

Of course since it was impromptu, I naturally was at a loss for words…
but since I felt it was really important to express myself somehow,
well I’m just really glad my colleagues have such great personalities^^

A few days prior, I met up with my colleagues!
After practice, this year’s newcomers met up with next year’s potential employees
we came together from all our different positions

I was with Orimo-chan who was hard at work with her production ☆
She is an incredibly sharp girl with a great sense of humor
I’d love to work with her together on something one day ^^

But up til now, everyone has been so focused on work
it just seems like time has flown by so quickly.

I need to make the best use of my time left in my announcer training!
I’ll be working hard!

I highly respect the senpais of my announcer department.

Those senpais,
as a newcomer, I had a lot of things I was unsure about
but a few days ago, I consulted my senpais and was able to figure everything out

TV Tokyo’s announcer department
has a “trainer system” for newcomers

For training, we have a bunch of different senpais take turn giving lectures
but in addition to that, each newcomer is assigned to an announcer senpai as well.

My trainer is Oohashi Miho.

The other day at our “trainer meeting”…
we had the chance to grab a bite together

My colleague Ueda’s trainer was announcer Ooe,
and Ooe-san, Oohashi-san and us two newcomers
went out to have dinner together.

The place Oohashi made a reservation at
an underground family type place, a very relaxing and wonderful restaurant!

It was an organic restaurant so it’s very healthy

Here is a beef stew with veggies that were boiled for about 4-5 hours…

And a potato salad made without mayonnaise

There were so many healthy, yet still delicious items.

Since it’s May, there was a carp banner decoration made out of carrots…
Each item was so intricately made,
yet the menu was very family-style, so the taste was like mmmmm

Coupled with the “family style” atmosphere
Oohashi-san was like “I feel like spreading out a futon here and head off to sleep”

While we were eating, we discussed many things

Thinking about it, it’s been a little over a month since I’ve started training
and I’ve had to memorize a lot of speaking techniques
and find out my weaknesses

Every day I’m finding new things and learning

But there’s more than just noticing them
You have to put some thought into it as well

Since I feel like “I want to improve quickly!”
I was worried since I’m not really able to fix my problems

But when Ooe-san and Oohashi-san
were newcomers, they too had a lot of worries as well
and told me “Even now, there’s still a lot of things I get nervous about”

No matter how much you practice,
when the real thing comes, I guess you still can get nervous
I mean if even the senpais get nervous
then I guess it’s only natural for the newcomers to feel nervous too

As a newcomer, there’s a lot to worry about and be nervous about
So you feel like you have to practice everything over and over
because you have to learn so much

I may have a ton of things to work on
but I’ll be working hard one step at a time!

We covered so many things in our “trainer meeting”

Ooe-san, Oohashi-san,
Thank you so much for giving up your own time to give me this opportunity!

After training the other day,
we gathered around with our senpais for some ping pong!

As to why we did..

Well the story starts off with me in front of the cafeteria wondering what to do…

The newcomers have to manage the phones during lunch
(although I still haven’t gotten the hang of it…)
so you can either go out and buy something and eat it at your desk
or if you’re in a hurry, just grab something from the cafeteria

The menu for the cafeteria changes daily.

So I was thinking
“If they have soba today, I’m gonna go get some”
so I went to check the menu
when I heard senpai announcer Masuda’s voice behind me

“Hmm there’s a girl staring at the menu”
and when I thought about it, he meant me (lol)

Masuda-san also likes soba
So I said “It looks like there’s no soba on the menu today”
and he said “Well let’s go get some then!”…

So we went back to the announcer department
and with the OK from our chief
he took me to a delicious soba place near the office!

My colleague Ueda and I, along the way, happened to meet up with Aiuchi-san
on the first floor, so with Masuda-san, the 4 of us went.

The soba there was so good!

And also… Masuda-san treated us too.
Thank you so much!

Then, during lunch at the soba place
he was like…
“We’re all doing some ping pong afterwards, come with”

So I did!!

So, I like sports a lot
and aside from the horizontal bar,
other sports don’t really bother me

but ping pong is hard…

This may be obvious but, the ball is so small! (lol)
I mean I’ve only played sports like futsal and dodgeball
where the ball is big you know…?

But having watched the ping pong championship a few days before
and then trying it, it made me again realize how good the players are.

Senpai announcer Saito was apparently in the ping pong club before
and he went all out on his serves.

I mean everything was different, starting with his posture!
He had his knees bent and was leaning forward
And then you look at me, standing straight up…

I wasn’t really good at it, but it’s been a while since I worked out so it was fun!

After working up a sweat in ping pong, we all went out to dinner afterwards.

For dessert, I had chiffon cake which was great ^^

Since my training that day was
using my voice, sweating with some ping pong, and eating good food
I crashed to sleep quicker than normal that night

I hope I can improve in ping pong to the point
where I can match up with everyone in a game

But it seems like I have a long way to go… ^^;

Normally I do my training in the announcer department
inside a conference room within the company building

But recently we had outdoor training!

To practice giving a report.

As we went along the street of our company building

“Try giving a report on anything in this area”

is what we did,
so we frantically looked for anything to talk about.

I was reviewing how poorly I was able to describe the things I saw
in the previous outdoor training session
Like how big is this leaf, what shape is it, what color is it.
So I started off by inspecting these plants.

When I looked at it,
there was a stick coming out in between the leaves
with a sign that said “Yuzu (citrus) plant”

Could this be something to talk about?
You can’t really convey smells through a monitor
but if I talked about the Yuzu smell maybe…

So I began reporting

“If you look carefully in the middle, there is a sign with Yuzu written on it.
Now if I take a sniff of it…”

“The yuzu smells like… ”

It didn’t smell like anything

Eh?? ;;

I panicked a little inside. But obviously I wasn’t going to lie about it so
“Well it doesn’t smell like anything…” and I continued on ;;

After I was done I realized
that the Yuzu sign was referring to the tree behind the sign (> <) I was just sniffing leaves of plants in front of it. And of course, those did not have a smell to it. My colleague Ueda...

Even though it was really windy and slightly chilly,
she gave a report on “How pleasant the weather is…”

During that time, our lecturer Announcer Ishida
was constantly making witty retorts at us…

We’re trying to capture the correct information here so,
it’s very important to be careful ;;