Teaching Japan: Why Nagoya?
This is part of a series of articles about the experience of living abroad and teaching English for AEON. These represent only my viewpoint and are not sponsored in any way.
I will present both the positive and negative. Ask questions! I tend to gloss over some details while going too far into others.
I almost forgot the question that always comes after “Where were you in Japan?” and that is “Why did you pick Nagoya?“
Most people assume that I had some specific reason for going to Nagoya. I didn’t, and here is how I got to that city in particular:
Interviewer: Do you have a specific city you want to teach in? We can try, but it might delay our ability to place you or offer you a job.
Me: No, I don’t have a specific place I want to go.
Interviewer: Do you want to live in an Urban, Suburban, or Rural area?
Me: Suburban or Urban would be my choice.
Interviewer: Do you want to teach adults or children?
Me: Adults, kids scare me.
With those questions answered I ended up being offered the job in Nagoya. There was an opening, it matched my preferences, and bang, there I was.
If I had been given a list of cities and wiki entries about them, I actually may have picked Nagoya on its own merit. It has a good urban area, but the bulk of the city is “suburban.” I put that in quotes only because that has a very different meaning in Japan than in the United States.
You say suburban in the US and it means endless cookie cutter homes and a grocery store somewhere within a 10 minute drive. In Japan that means a fair density of apartments with a good deal of small commercial and industrial thrown in. If you need something the odds of it being within easy walking distance are quite high. I loved that about Rokuban-cho, the area my apartment was in. I had everything needed to survive in a 5 block radius, and most of the minor luxuries within 10 blocks. And if it wasn’t within walking distance I lived across the alley from the subway station.
No, I’m not kidding… Across the alley from the subway. I had a total walking time from door to subway of maybe two minutes. The walkways to the actual subway platform were a bit long.
It doesn’t hurt that the area I worked in was awesome. there was a Starbucks on the corner, an Outback Steakhouse downstairs from the Starbucks, and a CoCo Ichibanya across the street (there was also one 3-5 blocks from my apartment). There were also enough bars to make a night of “let’s hit every bar on this street!” into less of a cry for help and more into an actual suicide by alcohol poisoning. You could avoid killing yourself by stopping for a few songs at the ubiquitous karaoke joints between most of the bars.
If you’re not in to drinking, then you should check out my post The Beauty of Shirotori Garden. That is another reason Nagoya is a great place, it has some fantastic gardens and a number of excellent parks.
So I didn’t pick Nagoya, but I was always happy with the place AEON placed me.
That’s great that you enjoy where you are living. It does sound pretty good. And I know what you mean about not really choosing the place. I went to a meeting about teaching in the UK and it’s set up in a similar way. You tell them what kind of teaching job you are looking for and they set you up with what you asked. It sounds pretty awesome, except I don’t want to be that far away from everyone I know.
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Chris Schaffer Reply:
October 14th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Being across the world is indeed hard. The first months took their toll on me. But after that, things were pretty amazing, mostly just realizing how much I learned in such a short time.
If you get the chance I would say go for it.
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