English Teaching

What a day!

I got up at 8.30 to meet a Japanese woman for a demo lesson in Hiro-o (about 25 minutes on the subway from me) in a coffee shop. This was arranged through the Foreign Instructor Centre which I found through Gaijinpot.com.

I got there half an hour early (my map came in handy!) and then realised that I'd spent all my cash on the big shop yesterday, so I went to the nearby Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ Bank and used my new cash card for the first time. And to my surprise, it worked fine! The ATM had an 'English' button and it was all very simple. You don't even need a cash card, you can press the front page of your bank book that they give you when you open an account onto the machine and you can withdraw cash that way!

I'd read that ATMs were not very common in Japan, but I have found this to be very untrue. There is one in almost every konbini (convenience store) like ampm or 7-11, which are open for as long as the shop is (these accept foreign cards and have English instructions but charge Y210 (£1)) and almost all bank branches have an ATM Corner, which are open slightly longer than the actual bank, but are not 24-hour.

Just as a little aside here, I opened a Nationwide (a British bank) account before I left because their current account (FlexAccount) doesn't charge for card use overseas! You can withdraw cash from any cash machine with the Cirrus symbol and they don't charge you! The cash machine might though. You have to have an account with them for 7 months before you can get a debit card though, probably so people don't just open an account for a holiday! Not like me at all... Lots of ATMs have the Cirrus symbol, I was worried it would be a Europe-only thing but the one in the 7-11 over the road from me has it!

Anyway, for those of you more interested in teaching than money, the lesson! She rang me to say she was there and we got our coffees and went up onto the little roof terrace where it was lovely and sunny.

She said she wanted conversation practice so we chatted about ourselves for a little while. It was quite fun, and she was very good at English.

I had made a lesson plan beforehand. I had bought a multi-coloured pen and a pad of paper from a convenience store (they came to about Y450 or so) so I was prepared!

We ended with a little game where I had written a series of nouns, verbs and adjectives down and I asked her to make sentences using first one, and then, two, and finally, three of the words.

She seemed to enjoy it as she made arrangements for a regular weekly lesson! Which I thought was great, a private student!

Then I walked (following my tourist map very closely) from Hiro-o to Omotesando and had lunch at Subway.

Then I spent a couple of hours in Omotesando Hills, which was verrry nice. It's like a mixture of Birmingham's Bull Ring and Mailbox. Quite compact, but on three floors and very posh-looking. To quote Homer: "This place looks expensive. I feel like I'm wasting a fortune just standing here!" Yeah, that Homer.

The toilets were very fancy. They had a hand-dryer shaped like a trouser press attached to the wall, and you put your hands into the slot and jets of air pummel them until they're dry! But they didn't compare to the Bull Ring's toilets, it's worth going to Birmingham just for them! They won an award.

I walked around the whole place, and found it funny that there were guards stationed around, seemingly just to warn you that there were a couple of steps up or down.

There was a Billabong, a North Face and fancy shops and restaurants. The interesting thing was that the shops all had loads of space, but there was hardly anything in them. Most shops in Tokyo cram as much into their tiny space as possible but here it's like they're saying "We're rich enough to be selling one item in our entire store".

After exhausting that place, I headed off to Gaba for my introduction to the school. I arrived at 14.30 and left at 19.30. In that five hours, I went through different aspects of the job in more detail, had a look at some textbooks we didn't cover in the first three days of training and made my schedule for February.

I start work there on Saturday. I thought that might give students enough time to find me and book a couple of my lessons. No guarantee of lessons here!

The overall impression I got was that they expect us to do a lot of work, for minimal pay. I think Gaba pay the lowest rates in the Japanese English-teaching industry. Correct me if I'm wrong but I've heard that. But they gave me a job! So I shouldn't sniff at it.

I got home at 8 and made myself a chicken and vegetable curry. I'm keeping a record of all my spendings (and soon, earnings) so I'm going to see whether it's cheaper to buy ready meals every day, or shop in supermarkets and cook for myself. It will be interesting to see...

Things are falling into place! And I know it seems weird, but I've actually started thinking about how I'll miss Tokyo when I move to Kyoto. But, it's the people that make a place, and the people I know in Tokyo are great. They keep me going!