Archive for September, 2007

NOVA is the biggest chain of English teaching school in Japan, or at least it still is as of today. All the data and rumourss seem to be suggesting, though, that they could well shortly be living up to the Spanish translation of their name- “no go”. There is rumoured to be a big meeting on Tues to decide their fate, so I have my suspicions they won’t get round the answering the list of allegations I have just sent them for confirmtion or denial:

1. Substantial branch closures are planned (approx 200 of the present 900 branches)
2. Up to 3000 of the 7000 teachers have been paid late this month
3. Native speaker management members (school managers etc) will be paid even later
4. Japanese members of staff were paid late in August
5. Approx 50 Nova teachers protested in central Osaka over said late payment of wages
6. Nova has not being paying the rents of some teacher accommodation to the landlords of those properties
7. Some suppliers of stationary etc. to Nova are no longer supplying Nova due to bills not being paid
8. There have been recent attempts at finding a business partner for Nova, but these have not been agreed.
9. Some recently recruited teachers have been phoned shortly before leaving for Japan with the choice of postponing or cancelling their arrival
10. The Nova estimate for student numbers in September is 19.2% less than those of a year earlier

Most have been in the press already one place or another, some others are just gossip. The thing they all have in common is that they don’t look good…

Other news stories, gossip, speculation or strange dreams about pink bunnies? Please share them here:

You might have some idea, as most people in England do, that the pay in Japan is quite good. Even so, you might be surprised to hear that I recently moved into a mansion- until you realise that ‘manshon’ in Japanese (or Japanese English) doesn’t mean a stately home with extensive grounds, but just an apartment building made out of concrete. I know, I laughed at this use of the word mansion too, until I slowly began to realise all the implications of living in part of a simple wooden two-storey ‘apaato’ (often known by teachers as ‘portacabins’ or ‘trailer homes’). So, here’s the low-down for those that want it about accommodation in Japan…

So, why all the fuss about the building material of my new place and the ridiculously fancy name? Well, I don’t know about log cabins in the Rockies, but having concrete in Tokyo means you don’t have to put up with any of the following complaints about typical suburban teacher’s wooden apaato:
-Being able to hear everything your neighbours do (from snoring and pulling the toilet chain, to simply sighing or stacking their dishes in the cupboard)
-Having your building shake not just from the earthquakes (that happens everywhere), but from passing trucks, trains, cars warming their engines up downstairs, people walking too heavily along the walkway etc. etc.
-Having a flat that is colder than outside in winter and hotter than outside in summer. If you don’t want to spend a fortune on electricity (and my monthly bills were the same as a family of four in the UK), in the winter you have to live under your duvet- often with several jumpers, a hat and gloves on underneath, and in the summer you have to put your work shirt on outside your front door, so it doesn’t instantly get covered in sweat.
-Having to sort my rubbish into 5 different bags- burnable, unburnable, plastic packaging, paper and ‘dangerous’
-Cockroaches (I didn’t have any of this typical problem, but I got smelly drains that had to be drained every two weeks or so)
-Death by earthquake. Obviously, I didn’t suffer from this one either, but in the most recent biggish ones near Niigata all the new buildings stayed up, and most of the owners of old buildings are still living in tents as the snows approach

Instead of all that, now that I’ve found a ‘mansion’ of my own (actually, now that my Japanese girlfriend has found us a place of our own) I’m saved all that and finally feel like I’m living in the first world country that I see around me. The flat only costs about a quarter of an average teacher’s wages, and it comes with lots of totally unnecessary electronic nonsense, such as a radio with 800 channels and a remote control for the lights- so now I really feel like I live in the land of gadgets. You’ll be overjoyed to hear that my life is just perfect, and want to come rushing out to teach and live in Kawasaki too, but there are just two small problems- one, that my flat is very very small indeed and two, they probably wouldn’t rent it to you anyway…

I really don’t mind the size of this flat, but then, I’m only five foot eight and like a simple life. And, luckily, Japanese life is completely designed for this kind of living- everything you can buy for your tiny flat is tiny too. Shops are full of miniature washing machines (upright like a 1970s one in the UK, so it can hide in a tiny closet), towels, bottles of washing up liquid, ironing boards, baths, bath mats, hi-fis, walkmans (often mini-disc), some cans of beer, baths, condoms, futons, pillows, backpacks, rolls of sellotape, DVD boxes … The only exception is the huge dispensers of shampoo, ‘rinse’ (conditioner) and ‘body shampoo’ (shower gel), but that just helps them balance on the edge of the bath better- which is the only place you are likely to find to put them. After a while, it all seems to make sense. In fact, the Japanese love of reducing things in size is pure practicality given the limited amount of space they get in their homes and on the train coming home. In fact that, and their quest for convenience, explains the design of just about every successful Japanese product- the latest one being a VAIO desktop computer with a fold up keyboard. That would certainly save me bashing my head every time I get out of ‘bed’! Anyway, injuries aside I love all this little stuff, but you might want to think twice about coming to Japan if you are rugby-player-size. If not, you should be okay, if…

… they will actually rent a flat to you in the first place. Not only do landlords take up to 7 months rent off you when you move in, up to half of which is non-refundable ‘key-money’ (the Japanese term translates as ‘thank you money’, cheeky gits), they also demand that you have a guarantor or two. Sounds like some kind of hangover from feudalism to me- although there isn’t, as far as I know, the need to let the landlord sleep with each new bride or to send your children to work in their fields. Luckily, you might never have to worry about that anyway, because like the majority of Japanese ryokan and minshuku (bed and breakfasts), Japanese onsen (hot spring baths), Japanese hotels (at home and abroad) and Japanese hostess bars, most Japanese apartments have an unspoken ‘no foreigners’ rule- so you’ll be needing to look for a ‘foreigner friendly’ place to stay. How is such racism (or at least nationalism) possible in the modern world? No idea, but actually experiencing discrimination for the first time in my life as a white, middle-class male has been a very educational experience- as has my whole time in Japan so far (4 years). And despite the very small towels, I must say I still find every day interesting, always different, and instructive in what endless possibilities there are in life- and that is all I ask for…
Postscript- This is actually a recycled email I sent when I moved into my last “mansion”, but I still reckon most of it is true and I’ve mainly just changed the dates. Sorry about all the recycled stuff recently (if you’ve noticed), but been very busy writing not one but two stories for the EL Gazette, of which you will get an exclusive preview here even before the article is published there. Coming soon to a TEFLtastic blog near you…

As someone who did the ”total immersion” thing when I was in Spain and almost died from the boredom of an all ham diet, Spanish ska and Cine del Barrio on Sunday afternoons, I have learnt the art of balance in my old age and am now not embarrassed to supplement my sushi with some Sainsbury’s baked beans (although not in the same meal yet). So here are my tips for those, like me, who have a chemical dependancy on builder’s tea and Marmite

Marmite

You can get it in Meidi-ya (sometimes spelt Meiji-ya, and always pronounced that way), very posh international supermarket in Ginza etc. Very small jars, however. I usually just for Vegemite instead (does that mean I have to give up my passport??), which is available at the discount (and therefore my favourite) import food chain Yamaya, e.g. in Shinjuku going towards opera city.

A Nice Cuppa Tea

PG Tips available at Seijo Ishii, a slightly posh chain of small international supermarkets, e.g. just outside Shinagawa station. 500 yen for 50 tea bags, which seems a lot compared to Asda until you realise it works out less than those revolting Daily Club or Lipton thing-bags (I won’t call them tea). You can also get Waitrose tea in some Daimaru Peacock supermarkets, e.g. Shibaura near Tamachi or Mita stations- along with some other random Waitrose products, I’d love to know what the connection is if any.

Out and about, the closest thing you can find to a cup of Tetley is Assam tea in Excelsior. Bring your walkman if you don’t want to hear the Girl from Ipanema every day of your life, though- I’m not exaggerating!

For you classier types, there’s a tiny Fortnum and Mason’s tea shop near the bottom of that tall tower in Yokohama whose name is so bland I can never remember it.

Fish and chips, pie and chips, haggis and chips, chips and chips

Most of the non-chain pubs do half decent British food. I’ve heard very good things about the Sunday roast at the Tavern in Yokohama (great pub, but be careful where you sit when the Marines are in). My personal favourites, though, are the haggis pizza and Raj Chicken at the Warrior Celt in Ueno, a pub with real character and real characters. Also very good happy hour, with Spitfire on tap (but have a feeling they don’t get through the barrels as quickly as they should as the beer is variable- stick to Guinness or one of the many bottled beers if you need to achieve anything the next day).

A decent pint

My very local local off licence has bottles of Theakston’s Old Peculiar, one of my all time favourite British beers. And yet somehow I have never indulged. What with the great selection of beers from the smaller Japanese breweries and a good selection of Belgian and German pubs, there’s not really any need to pay 1000 yen for something that will taste better at home. Popeyes in Ueno recommended for all these. I do have a pint of happy hour Spitfire down the Warrior Celt sometimes though.

The Sunday Times

Not a Times reader myself, but just seemed the most typical one to pick. I’ve seen it once, and seeing as it is thick as a brick it not surprisingly cost more than a book. Some of the local papers do highlights from the Times and Observer at the weekend, and then there’s always the internet…

The shipping forecast

…which is usually the best way to listen to BBC radio as well, of course. The other option is to get BBC World Service or Virgin Radio on the USEN piped music system when you move into a new flat or if you want to ruin the mood in a love hotel.

Porridge

Meaning with Ronnie Barker, of course, as the oats you can fairly easily get, e.g at Hanamasa in various obscure corners of Tokyo. Apart from Youtube, my local Tsutaya video shop in Kawasaki has Bergerac, Life on Earth, League of Gentlemen, Miss Marple, The Office and whatever that newer comedy about the two geeks and one girl in an office. Only Fools and Horse doesn’t seem to travel very well though… If you want to venture out slightly more, the number of videos with 英語字幕　（えいごじまく- eigo jimaku） written on the back are so limited that it is well worth just choosing two or three from that and giving them a go- I have since found that 3 or 4 of the ones I chose that way are all time classics that I really should have chosen for more discerning reasons…

Marks and Sparks undies

Nearest Marks and Spencers is in Hong Kong, which is where I got mine.

Chocolate flavoured vegetable fat bars

The EU never did get round to relabelling English chocolate as such, but this is another example where you are better sticking with the Belgians when you are in Japan- Godiva stalls everywhere. However, you can get Kit Kats, Marathon bars and Mac Vities biscuits fairly widely. Be warned, however- things in convenience stores can come and go very quickly, so if you are an addict stock up while they are still available. The ground coffee shops Kaldi (e.g. in Kurihama and Shinagawa) also do Cadburys and Fisherman’s Friends.

A decent curry

The curries in the more expensive shops in Japan (e.g. the Sri Lankan place in Shinjuku) are just too damn authentically Indian and nothing like a good Brummy Chicken Balti. Sorry. Ditto with kebabs (e.g. Roppongi), real Turkish ones that are better sober than drunk. What to do, what to do??

A fry up

I have tried to do an English breakfast. Yamaya does baked beans, but be warned that most sausages turn out to be frankfurters and in Japanese “bacon” means it is already cooked when you buy it. You’ll be better off getting some spicy South American sausages from a Peruvian or Brazilian shop (e.g. in Gotanda) and adding some Japanese tomatoes and mushrooms instead.

White cliffs, drizzle and grey seas

For some reason the Japanese have never come up with a British theme park with these magic ingredients to compete with the Windmills of the Dutch themed park etc. The Japan sea can be quite grey and choppy in the winter..

Graffitti, barbed wire and shopping trolleys in canals

Not even Kawasaki can supply me with these!

Couple of other nice little game based worksheets (though I say so myself) to liven up your accountants:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-common-business-english-verbs-present-simple-present-continuous/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-politeness-competition-game-requests-indirect-language/

And if you can see an accountant smile once a week you know you have made the world a better place….

… you stop noticing all the little (odd) details of Japanese life. One day, though, it hits you that the oddest thing is you yourself, and how much Japan has changed you- partly turning Japanese, partly sinking in the stereotype of the foreigner in Japan and partly finding your own ways to adapt and live with your own life. And so starts the obsession with the signs of whether you’ve been in Japan too long, hence the huge number of such lists on the net. Funnily enough, making such lists is a sure sign that you’ve been here too long! So long that you should go home, or too long to be able to go home? That’s the big question…

Well, here goes with my list, whatever it may mean. Some of them are inevitably insider jokes that you need to have been here for too long to understand, and some probably only I can understand, so to keep the rest of you happy I’ve started with some good old English toilet humour…

“You’ve been in Japan too long when… 
… you can’t piss without the sound of waterfalls or bird song, but having a woman mopping around your feet doesn’t put you off at all.
… you make your own rushing water ‘shhh’ and birdsong whistles with your mouth when you go to toilet in your own home.
… you clean your own bathroom while your partner’s still using the toilet.
… you spend more on your new toilet seat than your sofa.
   or
… you chisel out your toilet bowl to leave a nice convenient hole in the floor.

And a few others

You’ve been in Japan too long when…
… you are making peace signs in all your wedding photos.
.… your three major food groups are ‘raw’, ‘slippery’ and ‘things with suckers’.
… you are never ever excited by flashing lights in the distance because you know it’s always pachinko
… you’ve paid more than 5 pounds (8 dollars) for a single piece of fruit.
… you wonder what’s wrong if no one stares at you.
… some idiot nearly gets hit by a car by following a jaywalking gaijin across the street without looking first, and that idiot is you.
… using a white handled clear plastic umbrella, having cartoon characters painted on your car, having hair removal at the beauty salon and riding a grandmother’s mama chari bike with baskets all seem non-gender-specific.
Many many more to come…

The last of the zannshou (lingering heat) has sapped me of blog entry ideas today, but I have continued with the endless task of updating my list of publications. The latest to go up is an article from the now defunct teflfarm.com that I have managed to drag up from the depths of my hard disk and I now offer to those who weren’t around in the stone ages of TEFL websites… It’s on how to use graded readers (easy readers) to liven up your classes and how using graded readers in class can persuade students to use them at home too

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/article-bringing-graded-readers-into-the-classroom/

Somewhere along the way I also wrote a game-based lesson plan on the same subject

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=58136&docid=145128

And if you haven’t got any graded readers to try these with, there are plenty of reviews on

www.tefl.net/reviews

I’ll believe in technology in the classroom when…

… interactive whiteboards tell the students to stop misbehaving when your back is turned

Though summer is officially over, it’s still painfully hot and sweaty, and so some Japanese women it’s still the days of Jane Austen. Yes, the elegant ladies of Tokyo are walking round with parasols (though they often look like normal umbrellas) and gloves so long they almost reach their armpits. All to preserve the whiteness of their skin.

At the same time though, the not so elegant gyaru (gals) of Shibuya are walking round almost black from Enoshima beach, tanning salons and fake tan (if you told them they looked black they’d be delighted- they all want to be Beyonce). Add using marker pens for make up and they look like some kind of post-apocalyptic tribe (although their only weapons are their piercing, screeching laughs).

Is it only Japan you can go into the past and into the future in just one day?

We’ve had our first Japan Explained questions from a reader, which is nice as it was always my intention for it to go this way. I’ll deal with them bit by bit as I have time. Here are the first bunch from Louise:

“Why do so many women in Japan have sex with their 15/16 year old sons?
Why is there a restaurant in Tokyo where you can order a plate of shit at £1000 per head?
Why is it considered OK to buy the used underwear of a schoolgirl?”

Or, to attempt a summary:

Why do some many weird stories about Japan get into Western newspapers?

There are two possible answers, of course- it could be because there is more weird stuff going on or it could just be the way the coverage is biased. And, as usual, both are somewhat true.

There are of course plenty of weird people doing all kinds of weird stuff in every big city in the world, and Tokyo is still one of the biggest. The first big difference in Japan is how much people are willing to commercialise and exploit those little foibles. The way a Japanese businessman came up with the classic 80s story of non-pan shabu shabu (a restaurant where the waitresses wore no pants) is, believe it or not, intimately connected to how Toyota and its ilk became worldwide successes.

The Japanese innovate by making lots of small changes rather than leaps of imagination. This can often lead to a new car that is almost as dull as the last one, but could also lead to a linking together of ideas that would make no sense if you did a “big picture “design, for example giving customers chopsticks, strips of meat, a bowl of stock and a mirror for looking up the skirts of the serving staff. It makes no sense at all until you trace back the small increments that got you there.

The other big difference is the reaction these commercial exploits get. There is no Japanese Mary Whitehouse filling the pages of the midbrow newspapers with moral outrage, and the coverage in the gutter press is pure titillation without the pretense that even the Sun and Mirror in the UK make to be covering these things as a way of protecting us against them. And so we get onto the press coverage part of the equation…

The vast majority of “crazy Japan” stories in foreign newspapers are simple translations of stories from the Japanese weekly magazines. The reason the tabloid press-equivalents have so many pages of such stories is, bizarrely, that stories on mothers who give their sons blow jobs as a reward for studying hard are the least controvertial stories they print. The controvertial ones are the ones that question the state of Japanese politics and society and the position of the ruling classes. These stories do get in the trash mags, where they can be ignored, but are never covered by the serious press, which just prints endless government pronouncements on North Korean hostages. Hence, foreign journalists learn never to read the Asahi Shimbun and get all their stories from Flash, Friday etc. etc. And hence the picture foreigners get of Japan. And as everyone likes their stereotypes reinforced, the market for those “nutty Nippon” stories grows and so the cycle goes on….

Everything else you wanted to know about Japan but were afraid to ask answered here.

While I’ve been busy working on other TEFLtastic projects (which you will hear about shortly I promise) my cunning plan to get guest writers has been really bearing fruit… More writers gratefully accepted, on any teaching or living abroad topic at all.

The latest piece is from a regular TEFL.net book reviewer who is, it seems, trying to outdo me with ‘doing the Med’. I’ve always had a certain exotic fantasy about North Africa that I have chosen to keep that way by never going there and spoiling it,whereas our intrepid writer took the plunge:

Troubled in Tunisia 

I’m just sitting here feeling bored with myself.
Bored? Bored? Bored??? How can you possibly be bored when you change countries every year or two???
Good question – the answer is that it’s been just too damned hot here to go out and do anything for the last four months! And now it’s Ramadan as well! Please excuse my singular lack of cultural awareness. It’s just that the agreeableness of a whole lifetime of enjoying a drink whilst chatting to friends is hard to forget.

Anyway, here I am, Troubled of Tunisia, decided to alleviate my boredom by browsing (no pun intended) through the tefl.net website – so the cost of living in Tokyo is nearly as high as in London? Wow! I have long since been barred (there’s nothing quite like embarrassing grown up offspring for entertainment) from going to the bar to order drinks when in the UK, because of my appalling habit of squreamking (a hybrid of squeaking & screaming) in agonised tones “OW MUUUCHH!?!?!” horrifically followed by peering myopically into the bottom of the glass and demanding “WHERRRE IZIT?” – Clearly a legacy of far too much time misspent on the Iberian Peninsula.

The taxi doors open automatically!?!?? We think ourselves lucky if we get in a taxi and the doors actually function!

I recently spent a fortnight in the UK which was marked by such entertaining features as
· Buying myself a fleece the day I arrived in the middle of summer
· Teaching my adorable little grand daughter to say “It’s raining cats and dogs” – why do all students always remember this particular idiocy?
· Seeing my barely one year old grand daughter having a sandwich stolen out of her hand by a greedy seagull – is this normal behaviour for seagulls worldwide?
· Trying to understand the rail network – does it network?
· The realisation, in Sainsburys, with my fifteen year old seriously teenage niece and slightly the worse for wear 85 year old mother that I was the responsible adult in the party – and it wasn’t a party!
· My sister-in-law placing her hands on her hips, fixing me with a piercing glare and stating loud and clear “You’ve become a foreigner!”

Fled thankfully back to a country where I neither expect to be understood or to understand - language or culture.

When I was a child, growing up in south east London I went to swimming lessons. There I learnt to swim, and did survival and life saving lessons too. One of the things I was taught was that if I was in trouble in open water I should divest myself of some of my clothes in order to avoid becoming waterlogged and furthering the risk of drowning. This summer I watched women going in the sea and swimming in full burkha/hajib (or whatever is the correct name for these garments – please forgive my ignorance) and mentally questioned the wisdom of this – are my preconceptions about water safety merely cultural?

Interestingly, the longer I stay away from Britain, the more British I feel.

Troubled in Tunisia
(Aka Kaithe Greene)

Thanks Kaithe.

Keep them coming guys! If anyone else would like to do a guest writer spot, just write “Yes please” or something in the comment box below and I will email you back.