Hello from Japan

Hi! My name is Karen.
I need some help, but first let me introduce myself.

I live in northern Japan, home of the Sapporo snow festival.
I've been interested in ASL for many years, learning from books, but never got very good at it. I did find it helpful in teaching English to Japanese kids. They don't realize it, but they learned some basic ASL along with their English.
Seeing visiting gospel choirs with ASL translators onstage, I joined the Japanese sign language class at my church - but it didn't get much further than signing a few songs.
I got involved with the local sign language translation team for the Billy Graham Festival of Hope, because they were translating even the English songs and interpreting instrumental music. Some of the artists wouldn't provide song lists or lyrics to the team, so they couldn't prepare. At the festival, I ended up standing behind the signer, listening to the English lyrics, and shouting the meaning in Japanese into her ear. 2-step translating. Whew.
So I finally joined a proper Japanese sign language class, and am learning alot.

My problem?
I am the only american in the class, and have been asked to give a talk to the local deaf community about life/living in the USA.
Gulp.
I need some help with the research.
I can do the part about explaining the basic differences in the languages, and have found a site on deaf history - it looks just like Japanese deaf history. They won't find that interesting unless I come up with something different.
YES, I am browsing through the forums here so you don't have to answer the same questions again. (I noticed you guys get sensitive about that.)
I am also going through Gallaudet's website.

What would you like to tell the deaf community in Japan about life in the USA?

hi Karen!
I am not an American citizen but I can tell something nice about using, for example, the homes of Americans are of wood, and that according to me should be made in small bricks like lego games, so the first hurricane rebuilds the house.

see here: www.lego.com/en-us/games

interesting sense of humor.
What country are you from?
Did you notice anything different from your country about the situation for deaf people in the USA?
For instance: better/worse education, more devices to help, availability of publicy funded translators, different attitudes, etc?
What differences took a lot of getting used to, (whether or not related to deafness)?

I live in Italy. regarding the forms of health and social care, there are many differences. in Italy there is a lot of assistance, in the form of technological and economic benefits, but very little social approach and still less on the floor working for deaf people. in the USA it's quite the opposite: a small part of economic assistance, much of the technology and there is a lot of integration and interface between the social (including hearing impaired) and working. From this point of view, the best ones are the Nordic countries: Sweden, Norway, Finland ....

:roll:

Lavender, sorry but do you refer to what I wrote? I have no problem to have an open confrontation

That's alrite. I should have read first b4 posting, but I learned something anyway that helps me to build up a better way to say than never.

I never notice people sentive about repeat on different threads..I sad billy graham singers no give you lyrics...welcome to site