Sorry for the wait!

ごめんね!~~~ 

(Sorry!)   

   Sooo...... I'm here guys! I have officially started this blog "in time." I left on November the 16th EST and I told myself that I would start a blog within a month. It is currently December the 15th JST so I am WAAY ahead of schedule! XD Right?

Before I jump headlong into my Japan stories, here's a bit about just how I got here.

    Most of you had probably talked to me while I was entertaining the idea of, or in actuality, searching for employment in Japan. Once I had everything together to start applying.... (it took way longer than it should have... let my perfectionist side go overboard a bit.. <<;) I started applying to mostly small kid centric schools. The idea of teaching adults was..... either boring or terrifying. I figured adult classes= lots of grammar and hard work, while children classes= singing silly songs and dancing around. I liked the idea of a small school because I like actually having work relationships and an offish corporate atmosphere would be a downer on my job satisfaction.

   I had sent out several applications and got a some hits, which then turned into a few 3am Skype interviews but they were several weeks later! Every school I was in contact with was agonizingly slow in any kind of progress. Every application I was sending had a custom cover letter based on what I learned about them from their own website--- except for the few "job interest form" schools. I didn't waste anytime researching schools that used a stock form to deduce if they liked me or not.... So I had inadvertently applied to a very large chain school.

   When they wrote me to get my resume and to set up an interview and I figured out that they were a chain school.... (yeah, that whole distant corporate culture thing I had been avoiding) I was tempted to just say no, but I figured it couldn't hurt. Thus began the whirlwind of paperwork and progress that took me by surprise and had me saying "I do" to a chain school that works mainly with adults. o.0;

   Nova is an ex-super-chain eikawa (conversation) school. It went bankrupt about a decade ago and has gone through several transformations since. I didn't recognize the fact that I was applying to a job for Nova b/c it's now a franchise and each company/owner does their own hiring under their own name. They were suuuper fast in hiring me and putting me through the whole process which normally takes 6 months, in under 3 months. Why? The Nova franchise bought out another eikawa school: Geos.

From speaking with a Geos teacher that I was covering for, (as he had quit rather abruptly) I ascertained that a lot of Geos teachers quit when they heard of the buyout. The reasons behind which seem to be:

1) It's as good of an excuse as any to quit.
   I have made a few interesting observations on corporate culture in Japan so far, one being the corporate guilt trip. Say you feel that your time as a teacher has been good, but it's time to move on to something else. Wrong. The company will plead, guilt, and in the end bad mouth you for your decision to move on. It's a mix of "corporate loyalty" issues along with "professional identity." Basically that you should be loyal to your company and that you are seen as your profession, and that shouldn't change-- no matter what opportunity you have for improvement.

2) Nova refusing to change Geos contracts (Nova contracts are apparently better than Geos ones)
   The overall idea being that, if they paid you peanuts to do that job, your work must be worth peanuts. A lesson learned the hard way by many: raises just don't happen.

   So basically I came into the company at a fairly turbulent time. I'm not sure if I'll want to stay on with them for the full contract length or not (1 year), but for now I'm trying to enjoy the ride. It's definitely interesting if nothing else! XD

I'm getting bored of writing... I think I might make some curry or something... ttyl!