I will present both the positive and negative. Ask questions! I tend to gloss over some details while going too far into others.

Another thing I get asked about a lot, and people who want to teach in Japan need to know, is about your living space. This would otherwise be known as “The Apartment.”

It could probably be regarded as a common fact that the average Japanese apartment is smaller than the average American apartment. The lesser known extension of this fact is that the average apartment for a teacher is smaller than the average American closet.

Ok, it is not quite not that bad… but it is very different from what most people are used to. Instead of going into great detail, I’ll throw out some pictures first.

This served as my bedroom, office, living room, and cooking prep room (not that I cooked much). The shot is from the door to my deck where I dried laundry and had breakfast when the weather was good.

This is the kitchen, it was also the only sink I had. Just to the left of that was my clothes washer, it really isn’t worth a separate picture though.

Yeah, it was small. Very very small. When first coming to my apartment my manager was actually worried I might not fit on the bed. Luckily the bed was not a problem, it was small, but it was adequate for sleeping. I can say truthfully that I almost had a panic attack upon first seeing my apartment. I can also confirm that you get mostly used to it very quickly.

It’s not all bad though, having a tiny place encourages you to get out and see things. Also, Japanese culture is largely based around the fact that you don’t host any activities at your apartment, you tend to take people out. This is a big reason why karaoke clubs with private rooms are such a big thing.

I don’t have much to say on the apartment topic. It was small, but it served as it needed to.

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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.

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I will present both the positive and negative. Ask questions! I tend to gloss over some details while going too far into others.

When you tell people “I taught English in Japan,” they tend to make certain assumptions. Like the assumption that you actually are a teacher or went to school for education.

Well I can testify that not I nor a single person I taught with at my school had planned on going into education when we received our college degrees. Personally I have a degree in Psychology and a minor in Philosophy. I’m great at generating random bullshit for hours on end with little to no prompting. However, I was not a teacher, which any teacher can tell you, is a much different set of skills.

The general requirements for teaching in Japan are as follows: a college degree, 12 years of education in English, and a passport or ability to get a passport. Yep, that’s it. What they are looking for is not some specific background, what they look for is the right kind of personality. If you’re nice, energetic, and adaptable you can teach abroad.

So yes, I was a teacher, and no, I am not a teacher.

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Ask questions! I tend to gloss over some details while going too far into others.

Take a look at the images below. They’re both from Despair.com from their Demotivational Posters. The two words sacrifice & conformity really do typify what most people think of Japan. I would disagree some with that… However, when you’re the guy who is clearly not Asian wandering around the streets, you tend to stand out like the pawn in the first picture and like a fire truck would in the second.

Most people spend their high school years whining about how no one understands them and how they want to be unique. Don’t worry, you can admit it, that’s what I did. Sometimes you get exactly what you ask for.

Japan is a very homogenous culture. They are not a melting pot. Let me repeat: in Japan people are Japanese. Not being Japanese makes you stand out. Not a bad thing, but you have to be prepared for it.

Generally standing out in Japan is a good thing. I got approached by a few people because I looked different and they got bragging rights for being “that guy with the gaijin friend.” You can also get free stuff, like one time I got free coffee by looking wet, cold, and lost. All of those things were true, but if I looked that way in America I would get kicked out like a homeless bum, not given free coffee at Starbucks.

Also, being foreign and not Asian can be beneficial. Some people from the US who are Japanese or half-Japanese get a hard time because the locals tend to assume they are on the same team. When you’re the big white guy, everyone knows you’re not a cultural insider. So, you get a great deal of leeway in just about everything you do.

Other times being the different one is a pain in the ass. Around my apartment mothers would cross the street with their children to avoid me. The first time it was cool to be the big gaijin of terror… After that it just pissed me off. I was walking to get coffee, not to mug every person shorter than me and then eat their children, but sometimes it felt that way.

Also, if people want to look tough, you are going to be on the receiving end. After all, who better to pick a fight with than the child eating monster who stands several stories higher than most other people on the sidewalk? This doesn’t happen often, but it happens often enough that I felt the need to mention it specifically.

Good, bad, or indifferent when you go to Japan you are gaijin.

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Ask questions! I tend to gloss over some details while going too far into others.

The other big question I frequently get is “Where did I go in Japan?“

I lived and worked in Nagoya, the fourth largest city in Japan. If you pull out a map and a ruler, it is close to the halfway point between Tokyo and Osaka. It is also one of those places that very few people have heard of.

I honestly don’t know why more people do not know about Nagoya. It is home of one of the three largest temples (Atsuta Shrine), is a busy port, has one of the newer international airports (and a very nice one at that), and is the home of many of Japan’s major auto manufacturers. As an example Toyota City is about 6 miles outside of Nagoya. Well, maybe I know why it is not so well known…

Nagoya is not a technology or gadget center. It is also not famous for having trains so crowded that they require pushers to close the doors. In fact, Nagoya is most similar to Los Angeles, except with much better mass transportation.

But enough general description and back to specifics of where I was. My training and first two weeks of life in Nagoya were based near Nagoya station. After that I lived in Rokuban-cho a little suburban sort of area that was in the general direction of the port. I worked in the Sakae district, also known as the fashion district. If you went to Nagoya and wanted to shop all day until it was time to party all night, this is where you would go. I’ll write much more about Sakae later though, it deserves more time.

So, that is where I was. It’s short, but it gives the general idea, and much more will come out in other bits.

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Ask questions! I tend to gloss over some details while going too far into others.

One question I always get when I tell people I taught English in Japan is: “Why did you go to Japan?”

So, why did I go?

In the 6th grade I took a Japanese language and culture course. It lasted one term. And that was all it took, I was hooked. Both the way the course was conducted and the information presented was so different than what I was used to that I had to know more.

So no, I am not one of those odd Japanophiles who can cite the past 30 years of anime. I have watched a good bit of anime, but my primary interest in Japan was that the culture is so very different from my own. let me let you know right now, that is by far the most masochistic reason possible to like a country. Regardless, that was the main part of my reasoning for going.

Other than my infatuation with Japan, I went for lack of other things to do. I had made a half-hearted attempt to go into a Ph.D. program, failed, and was having a hard time finding work as a soon to be college graduate. So a thought occurred to me. “I’ve always wanted to travel… I have no cash… I wonder if someone would pay me to travel!?” Being that I wanted to go to Japan I put “Work in Japan” in The Google and all results pointed to “be a teacher.”

So I applied to the top four companies. I scheduled three interviews, and before I made it to the third I had two job offers.

Being that my failure to get a job in the US was at a close to 100% fail rate and I was now batting 1.000 for jobs in Japan, the choice seemed obvious. I accepted the offer from AEON and began looking for a job to fill the time from late Summer to late Winter when I would leave.

So there you have it. I went to Japan because of a 6th Grade class and Google.

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The reason you lack this basic survival instinct is simple. You have not yet watched enough videos of what entertains Japanese people. You might have heard strange things about tentacles, but fewer people mention that the Japanese are extraordinary pranksters. And by extraordinary I mean terrifying.

Just take a look at the video below for how you next cab ride might turn out.

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So, for this post I will talk a bit about Shirotori Garden along with some of my favorite pictures of it.

First off, the garden is in Nagoya a short walk from Atsuta Shrine (one of the ‘Big Three’ which I will post on later). It is also right next to Shirotori Park and the government center.

Overall the area of Shirotori Garden is small. If you looked at it on the map you would probably skip it… Don’t! Once you get through the gates it is anything but small and full of beauty. It is also in a rather suburban district, so despite occasionally being able to see the city over the walls it is very quiet.

Now… The picture on the left. They have koi at the garden. These are not your average koi, most were easily the length of my forearm and a good number were bigger than that. They actually snap at the ducks that land on the water, and I feel even more sorry for the turtles that get to live with them. It was amazing to watch them swarm near people tossing in food pellets.

The trees were also amazing bright shades of green. It probably helped that these pictures were taken mid-spring, so everything was in full bloom.

The number of flowers everywhere was also incredible. If I remember correctly, there were about 5 areas to the garden and each had a careful picked assortment of flowering plants and trees and tastefully matched colors. Leave it to the Japanese to tell an story and create a painting with a garden. I was lucky enough to catch the flowers to the right while they were still there. If I had gone a week or so later I probably would have missed them. These particular trees were also probably some of the few that had not filled out with leaves yet.

But all of these trees and fish were really just the very beginning of the garden.

The majority of the Shirotori is based around the stream that goes through it.

The stream is definitely man-made, but with the amount of shore growth they added and the attention to detail with winding it around the garden made it feel very natural. At times it was right next to the path, at others it flowed rather far away. They also made the two cross at a few points to put in pretty little bridges. I’m sure during the original design of the park there was one guy on the board who really loved bridges and made sure he got at least a few thrown in.

Many of the sections of the garden are also dived vertically. So there were a few very pretty little waterfalls. It also added to the natural feeling of the whole place as it mimicked the mountainous terrain of japan without actually forcing you to hike.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little adventure through one of the gardens I loved! I know I haven’t written nearly enough about the sites I saw while in Japan, so look forward to a number of posts that will give you my photos along with a little writing about what I saw.

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So if you suddenly check on the entries and wonder why things look just a bit different, that would be why.

On a related note, go teach in Japan! Or anywhere abroad. I think living and working in another country is a truly life changing experience that will force you to confront many of those “taken for granted” assumptions we have.

I know the experience was positive for me. Not to say it wasn’t hard. It was one of the most challenging experiences in my life. But that is what made the experience worthwhile. It was not easy, and the beginning of it was not fun. But almost every experience that nearly destroyed me is now one I treasure. The old saying No pain, No gain is true. Learning can be hard, becoming more flexible or stronger can hurt, and learning to read and speak all over and trying to work while being abroad for the first time in your life is a trial in endurance. But if you’re up for the challenge you will never regret taking it!

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Well in Part One, I basically discussed what happens before a class, but I didn’t get into actual teaching. So this entry is dedicated to Why becoming a teacher in a single week has pitfalls.

So how does one teach after five days of training and three days of observing and teaching only seven lessons between these two times? Poorly.

Now I was certainly not a bad teacher. I had the all the parts the lessons needed, they were on time and ran the right length of time, they were probably even interesting to watch. The reason I was doing poorly was because I was in near panic mode while teaching. Luckily students are pretty well prepared to deal with this.

No one is clueless about the fact that their teacher is “fresh off the boat.” So you have a lot of leeway with your quality of lesson for the first couple of weeks. So let me share with you a couple of more humorous mistakes.

First off, the mistake that nearly broke me. I was teaching an intermediate to high-intermediate level class (Encounter for other AEON teachers). I had everything prepared for the lesson. I made it through the warm up, and was doing the introductory exercises for the lesson when an interesting question came up.

“What lesson are we on?”

Hah! I had caught a student who hadn’t prepared for class. I knew the answer, it was 36. However, I did remember I was dealing with Japanese students… you know, the kind of students that tend to be very prepared, and if they are not prepared, the kind that stay very quiet. Before my victory though I decided to take a quick look around the room. Unfortunately everyone else seemed to be in general agreement with the question. I gave my answer much more meekly than originally planned. The hilarious thing was, it was the correct number. We were on that lesson number. However there are two books A & B. I had the wrong book prepared.

It was at that moment I learned the both the feeling of terror and that I was a great teacher. I fled the room in panic, ran to the back room (with confused looks from Manager) and grabbed the right book and CD as fast as possible. I then ran back to my room and declared that everyone had passed the test of knowing we were on the wrong lesson!

We all knew it wasn’t actually a test, but it broke the tension in the room. Better still I managed to teach the correct lesson with only minimal problems. Later that day while talking to Hideki (the Sakae head-teacher) learned that he had done the same thing several times. I was more than a little relieved I had made a common mistake.

The other problem as a new teacher was remembering student names. Nothing is worse than going to pair up students for an activity and drawing multiple blanks. I’ll talk about solutions for that problem in a later post. That is something even seasoned teachers have to deal with. My problem was much worse. I just plain couldn’t get one students name right.

Satomi was not only one of my students, but I had also met her at one of the training lessons at the home school. Now looking at her name, it looks easy to pronounce. It is, very easy. My problem was getting the order right. I drew a complete blank on her name once in class, and then called her Samito later in the same lesson. I blame the fact that this was my first lesson in a different teacher’s room and that that threw me off my game (like I had a game at that point). Had the room I was in had a window I may very well have jumped from it to clear the shame I had generated. You better believe I never got her name wrong again. Luckily that did not cause any problems. She was actually one of the students I was most close to and talked with most often.

So there are two great example of rookie mistakes in my first true week of teaching. I’m sure I’ll be writing about many more and solutions to them.

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