So, on my travels around Tokyo do I notice being stared at? Not anymore. Speaking of travels, here’s some stuff I’ve seen

Pagoda at Asakusa

Sky Tree from Asakusa

Kitty Bus at Shinjuku Station

Shinjuku (I work here!)

This makes me laugh every time (it's really a Pachinko parlour)

Tokyo Tower from Roppongi Hills

Work is still going well, I’m really enjoying myself at GABA! The best part of course are the students I teach. Due to client data protection I can’t really talk about the kind of people I teach, but I have the opportunity to meet some really interesting people. Over the past few weeks I’ve taught some lessons where I thought afterwards “I can’t believe I just got paid for 40 minutes of awesome conversation!”. Examples of fun lessons I’ve taught are: creating a list of the top 5 videogames of all time, dating differences between the UK and Japan, and the stereotypes between the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish. Of course, the caveat here is that you can forget you’re actually an English teacher. No matter how fun the conversation is, you need to make sure that you correct the student’s use of English and teach them new words and phrases that are relevant to their goals.

Apart from work, I’ve been spending my time chilling out in Tokyo, seeing my friends and furnishing my flat! Montage time.

I'm too loud for my neighbours

Spotted this beauty in Shinjuku

'British Trad Mix' is apparently in this Winter

Awesome band stickers

Standard.

Over the past week or so the following video has been gaining popularity on facebook – it’s a video message from the Tohoku region. You should definitely check it out. There are a lot of tourism campaigns for the Tohoku region in Japan, I’m happy to say I’ll be visiting in Spring of next year!

Finally I want to say a biiiiiiig thank you to my friends and family who have been sending me cards and presents from the UK. In Japan Christmas is a dating holiday – you usually go for a date on Christmas Eve and then everyone goes to KFC on Christmas Day. Seriously. The little reminders of home have been really sweet and I have been good and haven’t opened any of the presents yet! It’s very much appreciated. My Christmas plans are taking shape and I’m looking forward to my first Christmas living abroad, even if I will miss my family millions. Merry Christmas everyone!

I start my lessons with a 5 minute warm up. How are you? How was your day? How was your weekend? Usually when I ask my clients what they did on the weekend or what they are doing after GABA on the weekend the answer is “work”. When I retort with: “Really? You’re working this weekend? It should be your break, right?”, I often get the reply “I overwork every weekend”. I correct them to the more natural “I work overtime every weekend” before giving my sympathy… even though I’m working all weekend too.

So far, I think my most taught phrases have been:

1. ”I feel sorry for you”
2. “To persevere”
3. ”Are you a strong drinker?”. Which leads me to the second most common thing I hear from my clients. “It’s ok, after working overtime I will go drinking with my coworkers”.

Of course, this is all old rope and the stereotypes are something I’ve heard before. But in my position as an Instructor I now get to see the human faces behind the Japanese salarymen. In my booth for 40 minutes they talk to me about their families, their dreams, and what they wanted to be when they were younger. When the bell chimes they straighten their tie, pick up their briefcase and go back to overtime or the compulsory drinking with their coworkers.

It’s times like this that I’m glad I work for GABA. I can limit my working hours and leave my work behind when I say my ‘otsukare-samas’ and bow goodbye. A lot of people have been asking about my experience working for GABA… this is something I’ll blog about in a few weeks when I have a little more experience!

Now I’m working full time it’s more difficult to get out and about for the ‘play hard’ part of my Japanese life. Last week I went back to Keio University. I hadn’t been there for three years, and the last time I had, I was with Rodger. It was a really strange feeling.

Calamus Gladio Fortior

My old friend, Tokyo Tower

Om nom nom

I also managed to pull my first ‘all naito’ since 2008, catching the first train home at around 6:45am. Although Tokyo doesn’t sleep, the trains do! If you stay out past about 00:30, unless you can walk home, you’re out all night in Tokyo. We found a great karaoke place in Shinjuku that had nomihoudai for 1000Y an hour, that amused us for a good while!

Karaoke Booth

Alcohol in a Konbini

Team Shinjooks

My free time in Japan hasn’t been all about nomihoudai karaoke, but I’ll write about my cultural adventures in my next blog. My parents are coming to Tokyo tomorrow so I’m pretty busy with preparation! I saw this final picture on the website Life after the B.O.E – written by a JET alumnus. This guy made a few comics that I think will ring true to anyone who’s ever worked or trained as an ALT.

Life After the B.O.E

In my first ‘real’ week of work, I spent 3 days on the initial certification training at GABA, called ‘bootcamp’ by the instructors. The training was a mixture of learning GABA policy, proficiency levels, learning materials, lesson flows etc and what everyone dreads: observed lessons. Each day was 9 hours long and it was really tough, there were 12 of us altogether in my group.

Everyone was super friendly and the certifier did his best to keep things lighthearted and to keep us awake through those long days. In the last two days we taught 4 full observed lessons, with a few other shorter ‘test lessons’ dotted throughout the course.

Although it was 3 days, overall I felt pretty confident with the training, and then spent my 4th day at my home LS of Shinjuku.

Starting Work

On my first day of induction in my LS I decided to open up 3 lessons in the evening – all of which booked up. Perhaps a little pressure by my ISL (instructor support leader) had something to do with it. I then taught 6 lessons on Saturday and 7 on Sunday. So far my lessons have been rated as 5 out of 5 (that’s good!) by my students so I’m happy with how things are going. Here’s a picture of me in my booth, I teach students one-to-one in these.

Jennie sensei

Yesterday after work (at 11pm!) I messed around with my friend Jamie from Initial Cert, we were lucky to have someone else from our LS in our training sessions.

Jamie and I after teaching until 10:40pm

We had to be quick to take these! Not sure if it was really allowed…

Gaba Posterchild

Living in Okubo is still great fun, as long as I can keep booking lessons I’ll be able to stay here a while. I live around 4 minutes from Shin-Okubo station. It would probably take 2 minutes usually, but Okubo is so crowded that you can never walk at your own pace. I live on a turning off this main road.

Okubo

Other than work, what else have I been doing? On one of my first nights in Tokyo I met up with an old friend from the UK, Aleister. Although it’s probably a little shallow, karaoke is possibly one of my favourite things about Japan. Here’s how it usually goes down after selecting your karaoke venue.

1. Get on the booze phone

2. Enjoy some tequila shotto

3. Take photos while waiting for the last train home

On this fateful sauza-filled night, we discussed ‘losing the magic’ in Tokyo. After a while living as a gaikokujin in Tokyo, it’s very easy to become complacent and live your life as normal. This is great and may work for some people, but being a foreigner in Tokyo can open you up to come wonderful spontaneous events. Taking Aleister’s advice after my tough first week in Japan, I went to find the magic.

First I went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. I found my magic stepping out onto the 45th floor.

I love this city

On a clear day you can see Mt. Fuji behind the skyscrapers. This building is located in Shinjuku and it’s free to go up to the observation towers on the 45th floor – a great cheap alternative to going up Tokyo Tower. The large green area in the centre is Meiji Jingu and its grounds. I went there next.

Meiji Jingu

At most shrines in Japan, you can buy an ‘ema’ – a votive tablet upon which you write prayers. They are then offered to the deities of the shrine at ‘mikasei’, the morning ceremony held every day. I decided to write my own.

My Ema

My ema joined the many others that had been written that day. There are hundreds written in many different languages.

Ema

I’ll write about this in my next blog, but yesterday I went to Ueno and saw an ema that I really liked. While we’re on the subject, I’ll leave you with it.

First hiccup: apartment.
I’m now living in a nicer room in Okubo, less than 5 minute walk from Shin-Okubo station on the Yamanote line. My room is much nicer and much bigger! It’s located in a Korean neighbourhood with lots of love hotels… but I’m down with that. There is loads of useful stuff around here and the location is great.

Shin-Okubo Station

Main Room of my Flat

Genkan

Kitchen

Ladder going to the loft (where I sleep!)

When I was apartment hunting in Japan, I couldn’t find any reviews of Fontana anywhere. As they come pretty much recommended by GABA (as GABA instructors get a discount) here is my honest opinion.

Fontana simultaneously make life very easy and very difficult. My genuine advice is do NOT pick one of the cheaper rooms such as Pier I or II, Pier Koenji or Doma, for example. Even the estate agents joke about how terrible these rooms are and say they wouldn’t let a dog live in there.

I haven’t looked around any other mid-range rooms such as mine (85,000Y) but they’re actually not bad. Mine is  a new building recently added to the books, and all of the rooms are reserved already. They do come furnished, but for some essentials such as a washing machine, gas and internet or garbage room entry you will need to continuously be on their case! As long as you have a lot of patience and a phone they’re not too bad to deal with. The agents themselves are all English speaking and a good laugh – the guy looking after me is Canadian.

Second hiccup: being a foreigner.
When you’re not under the protective wing of a Japanese University with Japanese RA’s to help, getting all the ‘official stuff’ done in Japan is really hard! Quite often some places will make up the rules just to avoid dealing with a foreigner. But ‘that’s Japan’.

I have now applied for my Alien Card and have a bank account with Shinsei – I highly recommend the Roppongi branch for anyone thinking of opening an account here. Although I did everything in Japanese, I heard all of the other staff speaking great English to the many other gaikokujin who came in. It’s on the 6F of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower. They even let you choose the colour of your ATM card.

Shinsei ATM card colours

I needed the help of a Japanese adult to get a mobile phone – anyone who knows me personally, ask me on Facebook for the details! The best thing about my phone so far is that it has Disney tunes as present ringtones

Finally, I sorted my Suica. You pay a large amount at the beginning and then get discounted ‘free’ travel between your two stations of choice. Mine goes from Shin-Okubo to Shibuya, so I get free travel inbetween those two stations. This includes my work station of Shinjuku and Harajuku.

Suica

As I type, NTT are here putting in my ‘proper’ internet. He then asks the two words I dread. “Nihongo daijoubu?”. Which means “I’m about to say loads of technical stuff but you’d better say yes because I don’t speak English.” I answered that it was daijoubu and now we have the awkward first conversation “Where are you from? How do you speak Japanese so well?” out of the way.

GABA Contracting

Today I made the journey to Yoyogi-hachiman for my initial contracting appointment with GABA. Of the 12 of us there, I was the only girl. There were quite a few Brits which was nice to see, and it was nice to have a little socialisation!

We had our photos taken (we had to go in suits) and then had a 15 second video introduction recorded for our profile – this is how our students will choose us. Tonight I have to fill out a form such as ‘country, hobbies, motto, skills’ etc that will help students to choose me as their teacher. Yosh!

I also got to meet my recruiter – who basically does the same job I did in WBS. Was weird to be on the receiving end of ‘I’ve been looking after you for x months but now you belong to someone else

Now begins three intensive days of training, 10am – 7pm each day. 頑張ります！

To cut a long boring part of the story short, I sat next to a complete muppet on the flight, so the Steward gave me a bottle of Moet! Will be saving that for when I go out and reunite with friends on Thursday and Friday.

Then came the accommodation issues. I get to Fontana to find out that despite making an appointment with my agent to move in, he’s gone out to show someone a flat. After an hour of waiting someone else drives me there but informs me that I have no gas, no hot water and no internet, despite having booked the room over a month ago.

The room was something else. It was grubby and tiny – they were very clever with the photos online! The balcony doors were held closed with duct tape, and they do not lock. The rest of the room was grubby, the one storange unit was broken, it’s full of spiders and smelled like someone had died in there. After 10 minutes I got back on the trains to Fontana and staged a sit in waiting for my agent, saying I wanted to swap.

Tiny tiny room, this was all of the floor space

This space was taken up entirely by my futon when rolled out!

The tiny tiny grubby kitchen

It was a public holiday today so I couldn’t do any of the useful stuff I had planned like getting my Alien Card, mobile and bank account. So I revisited the old favourites on the Yamanote line. Tomorrow, all of the above. Yosh!

I’ve spent over a year in my first ‘proper job’ and have to admit I’m sad to leave just when I felt like I actually knew what I was talking about…

The team gave me a lovely card and some Yennies – my task is to find something that will remind me of the MBA team and brighten up my little apartment! When I’ve bought something I’ll post it on here for everyone to see.

Bye Bye WBS

So now it’s the final countdown. I’m spending the last few days doing important and grown up stuff. I have my shiny new visa, the third Japanese visa in the same passport and it’s so pretty!

Working Holiday Visa

My Yennies were delivered yesterday, and I’ve just booked myself a cushy extra legroom seat (I can use ‘cushy’ for Virgin Atlantic’s economy class!). But in my Yennies I had a little surprise… who is THIS guy?

2000 Yen Note

I have only ever seen 2000 Yen notes in the UK. In my whole year living in Japan other than the first few I’d gotten rid of, I never ever had one. I wonder why this is…?

My last few days will be spent trying to fit my whole life into 23kgs, and having some fun with my family, friends and boyfriend. See you all on the flipside!

I made a cup of tea and got into bed to watch South Park. When I figured the tea was a safe temperature I went to drink it… and mister moth had decided to commit suicide in my tea. How rude. I had to get out of my comfortable bed to make a new cup and the moth was dead anyway.

This means war, moths. You guys started it. Don’t mess with a British girl’s cup of tea.

I paid a deposit on a flat in Koenji through a company called Fontana - you can reserve around two months in advance as long as you pay a deposit – I paid by paypal so it was really easy. I was assigned my own agent who was great in recommending rooms and when a room became available he notified me straight away with first refusal.

I’ll be living 4 minutes away from Koenji station, here is my little home!

My Entire Apartment

I completed the original application through Gaijinpot and 6 days later I was contacted by a GABA Recruiter to send in some further information. This was my CV, a covering letter, and a recent photograph.

Around a week later I was contacting with an interview appointment – to be held through Skype. Although they asked me to confirm that I had a webcam, I wasn’t expected to be on video. (I had dressed up in a suit anyway!). The first interview went over my reasons for applying to GABA, my preparations for living in Japan, why I’m thinking of going into teaching etc. It was held with the recruiter who had so far been looking at my application, and lasted around 20 minutes.

After completing the interview, later the same day I was e-mailed with a ‘Pre-Interview Task’, to be completed before they could consider me for a second interview. I had around 5 working days to complete this. It was around 8 pages of story-telling, grammatical tests and checking cultural awarness and knowledge on Japan. After submitting this, a few days later I was invited for a second Skype interview.

The second interview lasted just over an hour and was much tougher – it was with one of the recruiters. They asked about aspects of my personality such as creativity and spontaneity, and about my plans for coming to Japan and where I might be living. Really the second interview just went into more detail about the pre interview task, my career history and motivations. I was asked to prepare a role play to teach the difference between ‘look, see and watch’, which wasn’t too bad. But then, afterwards I was asked on the spot to teach the difference between ‘to think’ and ‘to know’. I messed up as little here but managed to turn it around. My main feedback was that I needed to ensure more STT (student talking time) and to involve the student more on a personal level. I tried to use this in my second role play.

About a week after the final interview I was offered the job. All correspondence except the interviews came through e-mail and with the deadlines it’s best to keep an eye out for GABA contact. I understand that they do call people in the US, however. Hope this has helped!

I have been offered a job with GABA as an English Instructor in Tokyo, beginning in October 2011.

I’ll be flying out to Japan on October 8th using my airmiles (thank you Virgin!) and landing on October 9th.

More to follow…