A student complained about me.....

Well, we're not actually sure if it was a complaint, actually....

Nova students are known for their complaining. Now, I don't see anything wrong with it--they are paying a heck of a lot of money to have some strange white person speak their native language to them for 40 minutes--it's just amusing how it comes out on our end. It's often hard to drag yourself into the next lesson when the bell rings, so often you linger. It's such a hard issue....hmmm. We don't feel appreciated enough by Nova, so we don't run to the room. Sometimes we may have a difficult student, it may be our "monday", or it may be our last lesson of the day. I truely enjoy the company of several students, though, and want to spend time with them. They're paying so much, too, for you to waste any of their 40 minutes. This is their most frequent complaint, I'm told. However, it's probably just some anal-retentiveness of one of the managers coming out...as there are some who go to their lessons a full 8 minutes before the lesson begins.

Lots of students say nice things about us. The staff have come to me several times telling me that this or that student had such a nice thing to say about me. By the way, the students who do say these things often are sooo sweet and sincere....they're great people. Lots of times it's just about your voice, or smile, or appearance in general. Other times, they tell you that you're their favorite teacher. Oh, my favorite is, a student once told me, "I'm crazy about you!" I had to explain exactly what he had said to him....heehee it was funny. He had just read it somewhere just before the lesson.

We lowly non-managerial teachers don't usually share all these things students say personally, with our managers. They're so--well, I believe I've told you all about them--two of my three are just poo (yes, that's the best way to describe them). Also, the managers rarely find out if anyone said anything good about you, 'cause they treat the staff so poorly, the staff wants to spend as little time with them as possible--even if it would help a teacher. Whenever I do hear something from a student, I always try to pass it on to the teacher it was about--I also try to have a manager present when I say it.

Well, my manager sat me down today for the second time (time that is reserved to talk about my probation observation--an observation by him of me teaching! it's nice not to have to teach a lesson that period, but I hardly enjoyed my company) to talk about my observation, and told me--whoops, I forgot the observation form, so we'll have to reserve another period some other time. Whatever....anyway, the funny thing is, he began by telling me, "there's obviously going to be no problem with you getting off probabtion with high marks, students seem to really enjoy your lessons. I think they mostly enjoy your manner. There have been many students who have praised you. There was one comment, though, that we're not sure about.... It's sort of crypted--we weren't sure if it was a complaint, a compliment, comment, or just the staff's mistaken translation." Then after he'd prefaced it all with his mile long perception of the statement, he said, "a student said you were, 'scary'. Now, I don't know if they were just intimidated because you're tall or...blahblahblah." Heehee....so, later when I was relaying this story to one of my friends, she was like, "there is no student, the 'student' is him! he has a problem with your height, and made himself believe that it was the student that mentioned something."

Whatever the cause or meaning of this, it's still really funny. I totally cracked up when he told me that....I think maybe he expected a more professional or maybe even disheartened response....and laughed even more when my friend and I were discussing it later.

Well, that's it for now....talk to y'all kids later....

Nothing special...

So.....ask the students what they're doing this weekend ('cause somehow, that's when I seem to be in the best mood--playing with the student's minds and making fun of the non-American accents of the other teachers--and they'll say, "nothing special". That's so they don't have to elaborate, of course. If they're not doing anything, then, they don't have to tell the teacher about it and they may not say something wrong. Sheez... Hey, did you know that we don't pronounce our "t's", by the way? Our Aussie (pronounced "Auzzie", by the way) roommate informed me of this one day. He said that they don't pronounce their "r's". The name "Peter" is a perfect example. Heehee....."turtle"..... "matter" :)

The point of this posting, by the way is to update y'all on our current life. We moved into our new place April 1. It's a 2DKL, and we live in L. Of course, we didn't find this out until we were getting our internet hooked up. It's in a sort of odd place for a living room, to me, considering it's the first bedroom on your right, but hey--Japan is strange. We'll post pictures, soon.

At work, we're settling into the routine. We've both been trained to teach kids--something we'll both have to do soon. I will start going on Saturdays to a kids school in a place called Kitamachi. I wasn't able to google it on a map, but I got a map from work. I actually have to take three trains, then either a bus or walk less than a mile to the school! It's going to be quite a adventure.

We've been going to Costco from time to time, so we're stocking up on food to cook for the week. I make tortillas every week (sometimes twice a week) since the bread is pretty expensive and way too thick--they're like one inch in thickness. You can get your groceries delivered for 500 yen to your apartment, so it's really convenient.

We've gone to a couple restraunts which I'll try to show pictures on the photo blog later. The food is very strange--everything has mayonaise in it! My students laugh at me when I describe some of our foods. It's really funny.

Anyhow, I'll try to write soon again.....it's taken me a couple tries to get this blog out as we have many episodes of 24, Rome, and Sex and the City to watch.

Japan is....hmm...

Recently, I was talking with my roommate, Mike. We talked about how when we talk to our friends back home, (surprisingly) they always want to know about Japan. "What's it like?" We decided that to sum it up--or even if you weren't to sum it up for that matter, if you were to try to describe it in as many words as necessary--we would only be able to say, "well......Japan is.....hmm....strange.....?." I hope I can illustrate this for you in the next few months.

We started going to Gold's Gym just less than one month ago. It's been wonderful. In fact, we both feel that if we had no other experience in Japan besides the gym, we would absolutely love this country. The people are so friendly; always smiling and--here's your first indication of the odditiy indeed--they have employees who walk around the gym just looking to spot you (if you need help lifting or re-racking weights), and more importantly, to say "Good Job!!" The first time I heard it, I was be myself. I told Paul as soon as I could. It was just hilarious. I tried not to laugh--and succeeded--but Paul often made fun of them in the beginning. There are about eight employees, all of whom went out of their way when we first started, to introduce themselves and others who were interested in new english speaking members (second odditiy, by the way). In our student files at Nova, we have a biographical profile the student. Often, they're quite amusing since the staff who write them have limited English ability, themselves. I have a student, one of those who are interested in new members, whose file under hobbies says, "I like to go to Gold's gym to talk to foreigners." When I had this student, I asked what he did for fun, just to see how it came out of his mouth.....it was just as funny as seeing it on paper.

Alright, so we learned pretty quickly, that the country is quite keen on pleasent musical sounds. The cross walks have a distinct sound (for the blind), each train station has it's own jingle (which--ugh, I'd have gotten so sick of if I'd had to continue taking the train everyday), the stores have several noises--from the repetitive "irasshaimasu" (welcome) shrieks, to the stores with their own upbeat theme song, the streets (some streets) with speakers in their light posts with American 70s-90s music, and the shopping "arcades" (covered shopping strips, which, by the way are great for when you're walking home at night or in the rain) with their funky Japanese lyriced American songs. The sound, though, that gives me this calm, nostalgic, and absolute giddy and very confused feeling--just so completely reinforcing the "Japan is strange" statement (ok, I've built it up way too much---I'm so sorry that you're going to be totally let down)--is the closing song at most stores, Auld Lang Syne--the New Year's Eve song. It gives me the same feeling at New Year's--the delirious ('cause you've been up all night), romantic feeling......

Ah...(<--grr, that's a Japan saying) so there is going to be another blog for pictures @ kobeislovelyphotos.blogspot.com authored by me, but it's not great--we're not doing so well on finding incredibly picturesque sights--but we will.....

And it does continue...

Well, things got better... Paul and I weighed the choices and have decided to stay at Nova. We have places to travel and after openly telling people at work the issues we were dealing with and the feelings we had about everything, they expressed common problems. Some, who had acted like they loved Nova, previously, now admitted that they'd stayed for the same reasons that we do. We must just treat our jobs as amusement factors of our lives, a means to do what we want. It works well this way. I do enjoy the company of many students.

Today, I had my first experience with allergies. At first, being the novel event that it was, I was actually excited and amused. I know that it's strange...it's just, I've have so many people around me suffering from this horrible ailment for my entire life. I always felt sympathetic, I just never knew how they felt--or the extent of the feelings anyhow.

I'm not going to describe them....as, at this point in my day, they are no longer a fun thing to say "hmmm" about...rather they are REALLY REALLY EXTREMELY annoying!

The straw that.....

Alright, we're coming clean.....we absolutely hate Nova!! We knew we would before we came, but now....we know we hate it...

We knew, and y'all knew...we told you, that Nova is a bad place to work. Any company that hires anyone who can 1) breathe, and 2) speak their native language at least poorly, is a bad company.... (of course, there is that one guy that we met that didn't get a job--he's a JET--which may explain a little--he probably told them he was using them for a visa) There was blog upon blog that I read that outlined reasons to hate Nova. We'd decided that we wanted to come to Japan (ok, to see other Asia countries), and this was an easy way to come. In my defense, I thought for a couple of weeks about applying for JET, but...the simple essay....paperwork.... Anyhow, we just came and decided to deal with it once we were here.

We didn't know much about visas, nor contracts, nor the psuedo health insurance Nova provides....

Since we began, things have happened (like, we had to go to orientation, unpaid, in Osaka--a 960 yen ticket, eg), and we just let them slide, one or both of us just had an optimistic thought, or we just felt something great about that day overall...

The other thing that gets you is that there are so many people working there...
The thing I didn't really think about until I started forming a third hump (ha... ha... ha) was that these people that remain are a) married to Japanese people, b) wanting to renew for a three-year visa (if you want a 3-yr renewal, it's best not to switch jobs...), or c) you just have nothing going for you elsewhere. If you subtract these people...there is a huge shortage of workers, and a bunch of really new people working at scattered schools, so that you may just be able to imagine that there are so many schools, they must have as many employees as mine, it's just my branch that doesn't run well, nobody else is feeling this way, quit your whining!! Hope you caught the point in that run-on...

The Straw: Paul and I moved into our new place April 1st. We're really happy with it...really happy with our roommates. It's really small and we pay a ton more than we would ever pay in Albuquerque, though somehow neither of us ever complain about this... I honestly believe that subconsiously, we knew from the start that Nova was screwing us and that we had to get out, though our intial justification for wanting to move was that it was loud where we lived and we'd heard that we can pay less elsewhere. Anyhow, we had to give a 30 day notice to our Nova accomadation....though the assholes did tell us that "if we are able to move someone into your place after you move out and before 30 days, you won't have to pay", but of course, they didn't try--why would they. You see, they have to keep the illusion for us naive-folk that they actually care. We got a notice saying that someone would be moving in the day after 30 days! Well, so we have to pay double rent for awhile. It's well worth it. We didn't want to lose this new place, as it is a month to month with no deposit....there's no guarentee for either party.

Things in Japan were going.....well, going. Nova annoyances kept happening, they circulate sob stories about cash in the company being low, about the staff (Japanese staff who make numerous mistakes costing the teachers lots of stress) getting paid so poorly, and about how they're so short on workers--for the 1st time. They ask you to do overtime 1 lesson here, 3 here, and then 8 another time(now, I say ask, because the intial words are in fact, "will you...?", but I do mean this in the lightest sense of the word, you see, you must, if you are asked, do overtime...especially if you are on probation as Paul and I are, otherwise, you will stay on probation--a pay less than minimum wage in Japan--otherwise known as "illegal"), the managers sooo incredibly creepishly walk in on your class or VOICE and just stand there....making sure you slip up, so they can write it on your probation file, the managers write down word-for-word how you responded to their petty complaint about your appearance, punctuality, or whatever...

Yesterday, however, took the cake: Yesterday was payday!! Our first--yes, a month and a half into our employment. We have direct deposit, so once you set up your account, you must fax the pages of your "passbook" to foreign personnel. Well, we did this well over a month ago. Yesterday, I received a paystub--yes, as in a receipt of getting paid--but no cash was deposited in my account. I don't know what happened, but somehow, my staff or foreign personnel messed up... I called to be told, "ok, well, just fax it again, and we'll pay you in 2 weeks". Did I mention that we're paying two rents? You may also have assumed, correctly, that rent is due before two weeks from now... They offered that I could request a pay advance, so I asked that they give me a pay advance of exactly my pay check, and that they just don't pay me once they are able to deposit that money into my account for my past paycheck---but....somehow, they can't do that...??

Bottom line is, our landlord is great, she understands completly and will allow us to pay late; Paul did get paid, so we have some money for everything else; we're learning how bad Nova is everyday--how the government hates them, how they con us into one thing or another.... you can't trust anyone, either. It's a horrible position to be in...the managers or others who have been around for awhile may repeat what you say or report you to someone, so you sit there making small talk all day. I've heard today, that occassionly, the Japanese have anti-foreigner protests.... Yeah, so....we are seeing what already know about ourselves...we don't want to live in an overprivileged country hepling the rich housewives learn English for fun..... We do, however, want to see the underprivileged countries around here--it's what we came to do---we wish we could be helping. Nova is huge, allowing us to work overtime when we want extra cash, get two consecutive days off together, and allowing us to be able to swap shifts with others for more vacation days..... We have some thinking to do.... Sooo...until the next saga....

Introduction

So, I started publishing my blog on friendster, but I didn't like it. I couldn't figure out how to allow people who weren't friendster-ites to view my photos. Anyhow, here's the website address for the first few posts.... here on out, you must come here to read my blog.....

http://kobeislovely.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/