Gaba Initial Certification and Starting Work

Initial Certification at GABA

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.

From Koenji to Okubo & GABA Contracting [Picture Heavy]

So after a series of humongous hiccups, I am now pretty much settled in Tokyo.

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！