Thoughts on... Teaching English

I've been teaching English in Hiroshima since October 2008. It's impressive, apparently, that I found the job after arriving in Japan (August 2008) and settling down in Yoshida. (Yoshida, Akitakata City, is roughly 45 kilometers from Hiroshima, close enough to commute but still far enough out to surprise anyone living in the city. As the number of languages in the link might indicate, no one is too surprised to see a foreigner here - no more than "hey, a new guy.") The commute is anywhere from 75 minutes (train + taxi) to 90 minutes (train + bus on an average day), but on Friday evenings it's 110 minutes (train or wait time + the 9:45 bus from the bus center 20 minutes from the office). The one thing I really don't like about the job is the commute. I gave serious thought to living in Hiroshima City (rather than Hiroshima prefecture), and there's a few apartments in Kabe that would do, but then I'd have to live apart from Rachel. So I live in Yoshida.

(Kabe is the suburb that serves as a halfway point between here and there - it's technically in Asakita Ward, but given that Kabe Station has a longer Wikipedia entry, I find it easier to just call it all "Kabe". Which is inaccurate, but oh well.)

I find the job itself difficult, with a ridiculous commute that only makes my frequent stomach problems worse. No, the work itself isn't hard, and I can count on one hand the times I've had actual problems with students (and even then, they're my fault). I enjoy working with my coworkers, and talking to people/students from different walks of life. But I have trouble adjusting to another person's pace - their likes/dislikes and interests, their rates of speech, their ways of thinking, etc. - and so my lessons tend to vary wildly in usefulness when there's more people. I can adjust fine to 1 person, up to 3-person groups, but any more and it gets difficult. Throw in a spread between the abilities of the highest and lowest students in a group (this is, very occasionally, a large gap, through no fault of the students), and I tend to start lecturing or speaking faster, to try to cram in as much lesson as possible in 40 minutes. Result: one of the main complaints against me is that I speak too quickly, and this is the main reason used to fire me...

(The full story behind February 14th being my last day is: My performance isn't as high as it needs to be, and while my circumstances include good reasons to keep me on board, after a year of plateaued improvement, it's easier to cut me than continue to employ me. ...which should come as no surprise to anyone I've talked to in the last year or so. I was originally going to be fired, and my last day was going to be Jan. 31st, but I tendered my resignation at the same time. I wanted to end on Feb. 28th, they wanted to fire me on the 31st - we compromised, and my last day is Feb. 14th. No surprise, no acrimony; it's my best "firing/quitting" yet.)

It also became a worry of mine that students weren't actually learning anything new in my lessons. About 6 months or so into the job, I started making an effort to make sure everyone learned something new. (Correcting pronunciation/sentence structure/etc. when possible, explaining the use of language in the textbooks rather than just teach it straight or through repetition, write and leave lesson notes with as much detail I can manage - the theory being that, even if I speak too quickly, someone can learn something from what I wrote... Whether or not the notes work isn't clear to me, but it's something no one's ever complained about - my handwriting notwithstanding.) People paid money to talk to me; I have to try and make sure I'm worth it.

Bearing in mind that I'm usually not very good at social things, I think I've done pretty well overall. The job has forced me to work with people, and I think I've grown considerably because of it. I look back fondly at the people I've met, and while I've always had trouble finding past successes (I can find my failures with ease, however), I at least know they're there. I have improved as an English Instructor in the time I've worked there, but I realize I don't have the innate talent to be a good teacher. I doubt if I'm a bad teacher, though.

It's actually started snowing as I write this. About what you'd expect for a town in the mountains (altitude: 120 meters?), but it's been unseasonably warm this past week. One more post coming up soon...

Heat and Humidity

10 months in Akitakata WHOOOOO! And now it's summer. Seattle isn't very humid, so we're having some trouble coping. I can take the heat by itself (Rachel can't).

Not much has happened. Strongly considering looking for a new job. Teaching English isn't easy for me, since I'm not good with people at all, but it's pretty lucrative. I lose 3 hours per workday to the commute, and the stress of the job itself... I worry too much about whether they're learning or not, and if something goes even slightly wrong I feel it.

Also, I've begun to have some sort of physical reaction (nausea) to the teaching floor, which is bad. So after lunch I'm going to the local Hello Work (job placement - can't quite tell if it's gov't funded or not) to see what's available. Probably nothing. ("Probably" = "Probly", which is a fun point to teach. Heh.) I don't really have any skills aside from 10-key, touch-typing, and English. Worst-case, I suck it up and keep teaching English until next spring or so.

I wonder why our school has so few students now? We've had days where I get 8 one-student/man-to-man lessons. Bad as I am, I can't possibly be solely responsible for this. (This is, incidentally, related to my tendency to react more strongly to small mistakes than large ones. Small mistakes, one person is usually to blame, and they can add up faster than they can be fixed. Large ones, it's usually more obvious at first glace how possible they are to fix, and if they're broken beyond all recognition you throw up your hands and start over.)

Listening to Senaka Goshi ni Sentimental now, sung by the mysterious Miyasato Kumi.

I have time to post. How 'bout that?

Here we go, the long-awaited post about my trip to Okayama, and subsequent first weekend at work. I've been very busy this past week or so, and it's only now that I can post this.

Monday the 6th started early for me. I got up at ...too early an hour to really remember. There's a site that'll calculate the fastest route by train between two locations, and because the company wasn't too thrilled to have to pay for a Shinkansen trip (at least 12,000 yen), I got to suffer 4 hours inside of the train system. Not a terrible fate, and food/restrooms are easy enough to find, but 4 hours in transit'll take something out of you, especially if it's 4 separate trains. I did eventually get to the Okayama station, and the hotel was close enough that I could leave my luggage there – except there are two Toyoko Inns near the station, and the staff had maps on hand for my benefit. I wasn't able to get into my room at the time, but they checked my luggage, so I got some lobby coffee – sorry, that should be “Lobby Coffee”, if you know the sort – and headed to the Okayama-station NOVA school. Whereas the Hiroshima-eki school had the impression of being stuffed into 2 floors, the Okayama branch felt a little more spacious (and if someone from work is reading this, I challenge you to contradict me), and actually felt like a school, albeit one with cubicles for classrooms. There were three others getting trained at the same time, two Canadians and an Aussie, the latter of which works at my branch. The first day was fairly uneventful until we tried practice lessons on actual students, and I don't think I've ever felt like I've let someone down as much as then. We got out at 9, and the hotel room turned out to be about the size of a large dorm room – the “single” picture on the website is remarkably misleading. Still, it had all the basic necessities, and I remain suitably impressed. Good Internet connection, pretty good breakfast (missing only the heavy protein I was expecting), hot water dispenser on the first floor and a boiler in the room. The bathroom was the same modular design as the one in the hotel we stayed at our first night in Japan (see below), but comfier when not sharing it with someone else.

The second day was more of the first, only with some free time in the morning. We started at 1:20, so that left me plenty of time to get some tea and eat hearty. Again, I crashed and burned during the student sessions, but felt a little better about it. Since the company picked up the hotel tab, I ended up with more money to spend than originally planned, so I had enough to eat out for each meal. I had to eat cheap, but 15~2000 yen a day isn't so bad. Got out at 9 again, went back to the room, surfed the net and went to bed.

Day three started early, at 10, so I had enough time to pack up and eat before training. It went better than the first couple of days, but not too well. I couldn't find my game with more than 2 students at a time. Still, I wasn't crashing and burning too badly, and the trainer assured me it would get easier. We got out at... 5:40 or so, and the first of my two trains back left at 6:09. The wait time between them was about 10 or 15 minutes, and I still got back at 10:00 or so. Rachel picked me up from the station (again, about 8 km from home – why?!) Went straight to bed and fell asleep.

My peculiar work schedule left me with a day off inbetween the training period and my actual work. During the interview, I let slip that my circumstances were such that, were I to be hired part-time, I would prefer working as few days as possible – full, 8-hour days, of course – in order to cut down on transportation costs. By bus, it's 960 yen one-way to/from Hiroshima, so even over the course of a 3-day work schedule this comes out to 5760 yen a week. Still cheaper than owning/renting a car, though. I can't take the train (840 yen one-way) because it transfers the costs to Rachel's gasoline budget, and because it's rough on her too. The primary advantage of the bus is that it basically leaves and arrives right in front of our apartment building, for which the cost is an acceptable tradeoff. Also, the bus pass system here (as far as I know) is such that, if you put up 1, 3, or 5000 yen, you get a 110% bus card – so 5000 yen gets me 5500 yen on the bus. Which means that it could actually cost me 5260 yen per week, compared to 5040 yen plus gasoline by train. BUT, back to what I was originally talking about, I have a Fri-Sat-Sun work schedule, and essentially get paid around what I got at Retail Lockbox. (1600 yen per lesson) x (max of 8 lessons per day) x (3 days per week) = 38,400 yen/weekend. Minus 5260, and that's 33,140 per week. We get paid monthly, and that works out to... enough for the two of us to live fairly comfortably, given the increased cost of living (this is something I'll talk about in the future).

Thursday, aside from some last-minute panic regarding my dress shirts, was uneventful – oh, and we got our Internet connection that morning. We worried about it at first, because it came with an instillation disk (my computer doesn't have a CD drive), but as it turned out, all we have to do is plug in, and we've got 100 mbps at our disposal. So yeah, things are better now.

I got to work on Friday at 1:20, left on time, and rolled into bed at around 11 PM. I still felt like my best game was in one-on-one (we call it “man-to-man”, something that doesn't quite make sense when 80~90% of our students seem to be female unless you know that “man” isn't as gender-specific in Japanese as it is in English – look up “Super Sentai” on Wikipedia and note how many of them use “-man” as a suffix), and was almost hopeless in 5-person groups. Still, I got through the day, and no one faulted me. Because I didn't have the time to do it myself, I had to ask Rachel to iron one of my shirts – she was nearly done with the second one when I got back. Actually, since I got to Hiroshima a good 3 hours early, I took my time eating an egg sandwich in a station Cafe – I've never quite had an egg sandwich like that, where the sandwich is 3 cm thick, half of which is egg. Had to scoop up more than I ate as a sandwich. Started a new story idea too, one that's been in mind for years, but until I looked up “Mobile Suit Human” on TVtropes I didn't think it was feasible – it apparently IS. W00T!

Saturday was more of the same, except I started earlier. This meant getting up earlier, but wasn't too big a deal. I talked Rachel into giving me a ride to the station – she's not a morning person like I am, so she made it very clear to me that I ought to be taking the bus – and made it to work early enough to prepare for lessons. I had to run to the station to make the early train back after work, but ended up missing it by 20 seconds or so – they'd just closed the doors when I got there, and the driver had already blown his whistle. Rachel was a little more annoyed picking me up, because it was so late, which lead me to...

...Take the bus Sunday morning to and from Hiroshima. It's bumpy and annoying and it makes it impossible to do anything other than look forward for most of it if I want to arrive not-carsick. That aside, work was a little better, and after a lesson with four higher-level students I'm finally starting to feel like I can do this job. (Because of my specific background, I'm fairly good to have around, both from a student and corporate standpoint, and I suspect that's partly why I'm even working for them now.) So I'm pretty confident, even looking forward to the job.

Also, we went to a little island off of the coast (10 minute ferry) colloquially called Miyajima (it's the right link, trust me) this past Monday the 13th. Deer walk around freely and eat paper, something one of Rachel's NZ coworkers rather amusingly confirmed – the official English site notes that “Deer may eat paper and cloth. Please be cautious of approaching deer. JR PASSES WILL NOT BE REPRINTED OR REPLACED.” We had an okay time. There's a park there, where the beach isn't a beach so much as an accumulation of broken shells and coral, and Rachel had a good time there. We took an uphill path back to the ferry dock, that felt a bit like a hike through the Olympic National Park, then made our way through a tourist-trapy souvenir village on our way to the gates – the “torii”, one of the more famous examples in Japan, as it's built on tide flats and thus has the appearance of “floating” on the water during high tide. We got our photos, waited for Rachel's coworker (he has a knack for either getting lost or somehow ending up where he isn't quite supposed to be, mostly due to his not knowing much Japanese – he's pretty good with Chinese, I understand, and can pick his way through Kanji though) then got back on the ferry and made our way home. No one at the ferry took our tickets, so we basically got a free ride back. On the island, I discovered a love for “Nikuman”, poofy steamed bread with beef in it, and learned at a mainland 7-Eleven that I was greatly overcharged for it. We had dinner at a restaurant in the Hiroshima station (Rachel's coworker couldn't join us, as he's a Vegan and can really only eat out at Buddhist/Indian restaurants, both of which are in short supply) and I made sure to get a glass Coke bottle this time. We had dessert before getting back on the train at a little station shop. My pudding came in a little glass cup, a bit larger than a shot glass and with a lid, which I kept. Rachel had cake.

I'm not a great cook, but I know how to use a stove and related appliances. We've had this “Shrimp Pilaf” more often than we probably should, but it's mild enough for Rachel to eat so we have it at least once a week. I can also make Corn Rice – eggs, corn, and rice, all fried together – and Miso-shiru/soup, so we're in no danger of starving. Sandwiches are daily fare for us now, especially when ham goes on sale, and I've been eating frozen vegetables as a snack (try it – it's pretty good, especially on a hot day). Our only problem is that, if we want something to keep, it's going to be cold the next time we eat it, since we don't have a microwave. The stove itself is the size of a largish briefcase, with a small oven intended for fish-frying, so it's the bare essentials we need. As I've said before, if you turn the gas on medium here, it's like turning an electric range to its highest and then frying a lit match in gasoline – it's freakin' powerful and the fan is adjusted accordingly.

It occurs to me that Japanese music is incredibly useful in learning how to speak it. Not so much in grammar or vocabulary, but in stress. For that, kid's music, the kind of Tokusatsu songs I listen to, is good – they can't have them learning the wrong stresses, can they? Plus, they sound good. I'm listening to Engine Sentai Go-Onger's OP far more than I should be now. I recommend it, if only for the guitar riff and horns at the beginning.

I wonder if it's possible to cancel a holiday?

No, seriously. I know I'm not the first person to think this about X'mas, but to me it seems to bring out the worst in everyone - more so than any other holiday.

I live in Seattle, right? Fairly tech-y city with a port, not that this means much. I live a stone's throw from a mall, also – apparently not that far from the Penny Arcade office, either, if their posts are true – and consequently I get to hear sirens practically every day. (This is not so bothering – I came from a smaller town, but I lived in the U-District for a couple of years – and they are almost always fire trucks or ambulances.)

But I also work in the mall (or 'worked', depending on how things turn out). Working in retail is always fun the three or four days before X'mas, but my place of employment attracted a higher breed than, say, Nordstrom or JC Penny – usually. I went back for a pay stub yesterday, and the first thing I see is an irate customer telling first the Head Cashier, then the Manager, that he wants his money back – the shoe apparently not fitting. (I obviously walked in on the tail end of a conversation, and it wouldn't surprise me if the HC exasperated the situation somewhat – it nearly happened before.) So, they can't refund his money – something that can only be done with credit purchases – and would he like a gift card or store credit in its place? But no. This guy insists on getting his money back. “You have my card number in your computer! Look it up!” “What am I supposed to do with a credit! He's already gone back to college!” (by this point, I'm guessing why 'he' left so soon after X'mas – wish we could send 'him' the video, it'd get a few laughs in a frat) He'd gotten so worked up, that as he leaves and passes me, he spits out that I shouldn't buy anything from them (I get a discount, as long as I work there...) and that he'll never shop there again.

Sigh. I can't quite put into words just how far 'gone' this guy went; I'm just not that good a writer, and my memory is foggy besides. But in retrospect, there are a few things seriously wrong with his reasoning. First, if we can look up his card number so easily, what's to keep us from committing massive credit fraud? Second, gift cards (ours, at least) work online – and we have many things amusing things online that, for space reasons, we can't put up in the store. (Not to mention that, in a smaller college town, it's often easier to buy online – and if he went as far away as to make gift sending difficult, say Pullman, it's preferable.) Finally, the guy was trying to return a pair of 'shoes' that were more expensive than a pair of surprisingly comfortable slippers we sell – no trade, no store credit, not a whole lot of thought for the recipient, just 'gimme gimme gimme'.

Is this typical? I don't act like this – if I can only find one thing in a store, I don't bother – and it confuses me why someone would. So now I wonder if the dude was a Christian – and if so, to what extent. Agnostic? Bible in the house? Bible in the bedstand? Church, per wedding/funeral? Per 'every now and then'? Per month? Per week? Per X'mas? Or not at all?

Yeah, I know I have no readers, so I'm just asking the empty air. Or God, or Jesus (“What Would Jesus Blog” – heh). Cyberspace Jesus, fresh from being Sweet Zombie Jesus or Robot Jesus – no, I'm not trying to mock the dude, and I think he might chuckle besides. (I keep wondering if this is the difference between Christianity and Islam – Jesus can be treated quite a bit more lightly than The Prophet...) But I digress.

This all reminds me of that old argument: “Guns don't kill people, bullets/people kill people.” Wonderful. This would crack Spock up – have we seen a Spock “LOL” meme yet? – with its bizarre logic. So a dude with a bullet doesn't need a gun? Great! Let's take away the guns, save some metal for more meaningful projects, and see what happens. (Knives – the use of which leave far more identifiable traits and material at a crime scene – might take over in violent crime, or blunt trauma. The medical fees might go up or down...) Same thing with X'mas, I think. It's so much an excuse to spend and show that it ought to be separated from the celebration of the birth of Christ. No, correction: NEEDS to be. Call it X'mas (or maybe just 'Love Day').

...Now that I think about it, given that so much emphasis is placed on the DEATH of Christ (specifically, how he died), why isn't it just represented as t'mas, or T'mas? There are enough crucifixes brandished about anyway – why not? I also have an idea for a story: The Three Wise men are actually aliens from other planets, and couldn't make it in time for the original birth – they arrive NOW (cue Bill Murray's “Only a Carpathian...” lines) and are greatly mystified/annoyed by the modern world's take on a single birth.

But yeah, back to my original point. We should ban Christmas, as it is commonly understood, from being a public holiday. I hold enough respect for Christianity to say this, as much as some Christians will hold for my opposing viewpoint (when they find out), and banish me to their private (ie: subjective – where do the masochists go?) hells.

...Wow. I was sipping English Breakfast tea near the beginning, and I was on message. By now, I've moved onto Slim-Fast (not a meal replacement, but as healthy as anything else I eat nowadays), and you can tell. Maybe I do have ADD...