Job Trouble

After a relatively successful start to the job hunt and teaching here over the past month, I've hit a rocky patch.

Last Tuesday, I had my first demo lesson with a student in Hiro-o. She then arranged to meet me every Tuesday at 11am at the same coffee shop. But she said that next week (i.e. this week) she was on holiday so would let me know if she could make Tuesday, but if not then she could do Thursday.

That was fine, but the week went by without me hearing from her so I sent an email last night asking if Tuesday was okay, or if the lesson should be on Thursday. I didn't get a reply and I couldn't get through by ringing her so I emailed again and went to sleep.

I woke up at 10 this morning and checked my emails, no reply. Then I got one from the Foreign Instructor Centre, who organises these private students for me, who said that she had requested that I not email her and I should wait until I have official confirmation from the Centre before contacting her again.

Which I thought was very weird! Why make arrangements with a teacher for a regular weekly lesson if you then avoid their contact trying to confirm the next one?

I assume that either she didn't like me and was too polite to say it to my face (but if that's the case, then you don't then make arrangements to meet again!) or found a teacher that she prefers in the last week, when she was on holiday.

I don't know if I'm bringing Western ideologies to Japanese culture and creating a clash of emotions but I think it's rude to leave someone hanging like that, when I've been building my Gaba schedule and other private students for the next few months around those lessons. She could have at least replied to my email rather than telling the Centre to email me, even if it just said 'I am thinking about whether you can be my teacher. Please let me think' or something like that.

I wonder if the Foreign Instructor Centre actually tells you if you don't have official permission to continue lessons, or if they only inform you if it's okay, like they did with the student I see three times a week in Shinagawa.

Well, whatever happens, I'm very interested to see how it resolves itself!

Then, this afternoon, I walked over the river in the rain to meet a different student for another demo lesson. I was sitting in the coffee shop for about 15 minutes when a woman entered and walked up to me, introducing herself as the person I was expecting.

Then she spoke to me in Japanese! She produced a folder and pulled out a piece of paper with Japanese scribbled (and I mean scribbled, I couldn't make anything out) on it and asked me a question.

I was very confused, and so was she when I said: Nihongo ga dekimasen (I don't speak Japanese).

She seemed to think I belonged to Shane or Geos English school, and was expecting an English lesson conducted in Japanese.

She rang someone who spoke a bit of English, and then passed the phone to me, and that woman said something like the student didn't speak English yet and she would ring my school. Exactly what school would that be? Neither of them seemed to have heard of the Foreign Instructor Centre.

Eventually, after many 'Sumimasens' and 'Gomen nasais' from both parties, she left. What a weird day for teaching!

She did buy me a coffee though, which was very nice of her.

What will happen next? I've gone from having 1 student, and 3 prospective students, to 1 student and 1 prospective.

I will have to make a budget plan and see how much work I have to do to keep myself going here.