A few interesting ones I've encountered in educational settings:When opening my lessons, I now ask my students to do the greeting in Japanese on the advice of another veteran educator here. She said that, though many schools encourage children to call out "Stand up, attention, bow" it feels curiously different from the standard Japanese greeting. For a while now, I've asked my students to do the whole greeting in Japanese and properly bow. The lesson is conducted primarily in English. They are so much more focused.
In a martial arts dojo, I tried so hard to mind the traditional manners, greeting people with a bow and "Konnichi wa" or "Konban wa" on entering and people ignored me. I persisted, and at the first new year opening of the dojo training, I was regaled with greetings and could return the kindness. The attitude was that I'd gone the distance and was now a fixture. It was a surprising experience of becoming part of the in-group.
I do one-to-one lessons and I always start by standard greetings (hello, how are you?, it's hot today) in English then ask them about their weekends (what did you last weekend?) as a warm-up before some grammar or other lesson of the day, or as a starting point if the student just wanna practice oral. I'm pretty sure I'd do things differently if I had to teach to a group.
A few interesting ones I've encountered in educational settings: When opening my lessons, I now ask my students to do the greeting in Japanese on the advice of another veteran educator here. She said that, though many schools encourage children to call out "Stand up, attention, bow" it feels curiously different from the standard Japanese greeting. For a while now, I've asked my students to do the whole greeting in Japanese and properly bow. The lesson is conducted primarily in English. They are so much more focused.
In a martial arts dojo, I tried so hard to mind the traditional manners, greeting people with a bow and "Konnichi wa" or "Konban wa" on entering and people ignored me. I persisted, and at the first new year opening of the dojo training, I was regaled with greetings and could return the kindness. The attitude was that I'd gone the distance and was now a fixture. It was a surprising experience of becoming part of the in-group.