Number one: cosplay
Only joking- I mean of course that the status of English teachers is not so obviously low that when I met the love of my life and asked her to marry me she actually agreed!
You won’t hear a lot about it on the TEFL forums, but there are actually a lot of other advantages to choosing Japan to teach in: (more…)
… was called Ranald MacDonald (no relation to the most famous American clown in Japan*, I believe) and was also the first English teacher to discover that Japan can be both an adventure and safe and pleasant, being at least as useful to the Japanese for sending positive reports back home as he was for telling them about the rest of the world and “internationalizing” them. Sounds just like the average JET teaching assistant.
Other interesting similarities and differences include:
The fuss about long term foreigners having to join the foreigners’ queue at immigration (?) and have their fingerprints taken and pose for a photo…
…seems to be dying down. Almost ignored in Japan is the fact that the British government is about to not only do something much worse to foreigners, but has managed to choose something that could piss off a whole bunch of TEFL teachers too.
Japanese women start off thinking the fact that their foreign boyfriends treat them like gentlemen means they will be even more weak than their seemingly gruff fathers who end up letting their wives make all the decisions.
Foreign guys start off thinking their Japanese girlfriends are more meek and submissive than their more obviously combatative and straightforward Western mothers.
Leave to stew for a few weeks, months or years, and let battle commence…
As this is a family site (meaning only my family ever look at it), will not be including any ATPR* language learning videos. I have, though, found a classic TPRA* video that we can all enjoy in our various ways:
The best bit for me is the old random gaijin* at the end. Where did they find him- in the grave???
I laughed until I nearly cried, and then I stopped and thought- it’s a crazy idea, but it might just work! Would certainly get the attention of the notoriously tough salaryman market, anyway.
In the interests of complete fairness I should also say that crazy (genuis?) programmes like this do not come up on Japanese TV as often as you might think from watching exerpts abroad (you should see their favourite clips from British, Australian and American TV!). From the haircuts and air of slightly pervy innocence, this one almost certainly comes from the 80’s.
*ATPR (Adult Total Physical Response)- termed derived from the Japanese English expression AV- “Adult” videos, knudge knudge, wink wink, know what I mean?). An attempt at using the ultimate motivation to improve language learning through movement
TPR- Total physical response- Beginning students learn the language by responding only physically to verbal prompts until they feel ready to begin speaking themselves. Said to be similar to how a baby learns L1.
*TPRA (Total Physical Response for Adults)- using activities like the song “YMCA” with actions with classes such as Business English. This ultimate proof of English teaching technique is often used near the end of a TEFL career.
*Random gaijin- a foreign person who is only included in the advertisement/ party/ company roster etc. because during one meeting the boss said “We could use a gaijin”, and because no more details were given they just chose one at random
