Well, for the third time in my life, I am attempting to keep a blog. "What is the reason this time, Sarah?" you may ask. And so I might reply, "because I am moving to Japan." That's right, I am packing a few of my belongings and my partner and moving to Japan, or Nihon, for those in the know. David and I have completed our respective adventures here in Portland, ME (I have completed my internship at Portland Stage and he has written some fantastic prose and plays while smoking a pipe next to the ocean) and we are ready to continue our gypsy like existence in another country all together! In an attempt to chronicle this exciting time in our lives, I am starting a blog and hope to post on it at least weekly and keep anyone interested informed about my life in Japan. So begins my blog!
So, how did all this begin? Ironically enough, the idea to move to Japan came about on our drive here, by which I refer to Portland, Maine. As we were driving across the United States, I believe it was somewhere in Ohio, I got on my walkee-talkee and said to David, "I was thinking, do you want to do something exciting next year?" While I might have been referring to our current plan of going to graduate school after the year in Portland, ME, David knew I was actually concocting a new plan. What followed was a conversation about experiencing, engaging and simply living life. David and I were in agreement, this is the only time in our lives that we can pick up our entire life and move to a foreign country. After graduate school, which both David and I are still planning on attending, life is bound to take hold in a real way. Bills, a house, pets, people depending on us and all the other things a stable and settled couple come to enjoy are creeping increasingly closer. So, with little to hold us here, and world of opportunity ahead of us, we planned to secure a job in Japan, where we could live, learn and experience in a challenging and meaningful way.
Our plan was to teach English, something we have apparently been preparing for all of our lives by simply speaking in our native tongue. The process of finding a job, both in this crappy global economy and as recent graduates with degrees in theatre (and anthropology for me), was trying to say the least. We started almost a year ago, researching and applying, resume and cover letter writing. We first applied to JET (a Japanese government run organization that facilitates English speaking assistant teachers in the public schools). The process was more time consuming than applying for college, and far less entertaining. We were told, in gracious and very bureaucratic language as is the Japanese way, that we were not the applicants they were looking for. So, we moved on to applying to eikaiwa, or commercial conversation schools. Essentially, Japanese housewives and school children pay for English conversation lessons in their spare time, and native-English-speaking foreigners are their teacher all or part of the time. We applied to about 20 different schools and heard back from about 10 of them. Most of the schools were looking for applicants already living in Japan, but a few were interested in interviewing us. David and I both have experience teaching children's theatre, and this proved to be very useful in terms of gaining employment, however, neither of us had teaching certification. Our first step forward was a interview with ECC - a large school the equivalent of Walmart in the eikaiwa world. After a trip to Toronto for an in person interview, they let us know that they were not interested in us teaching for them. This was probably for the best, as the school is rumored to mistreat employees and was run as a business first and foremost and a school second. We did, however, get a great trip to Toronto, at our expense, out of the experience. Some pictures from the trip below... Now it rained the ENTIRE trip, so be aware that neither David nor I look particularly great. Now when I say it rained - I mean Noah's Arc rain. I mean torrential downpour that soaks you to the bone. Of course, neither David nor myself brought an umbrella or appropriate apparel. I think the rain was both pathetic fallacy and foreshadowing- we didn't enjoy our interview and eventually didn't get the job. We did manage to enjoy Toronto, however!
Me with my new Doc Martens I bought on the trip. The reason I bought them was because my feet were soaking wet. The rain had seeped through my less schnazy shoes.
Wet David and a Toronto Trolley.
Wet Sarah and the CN Tower.
David judging some really bad coffee we drank while trying to dry off inside.
Me judging our craptastic hotel room. We were told it was a hotel - but it was actually a hostel. It was fine, but a bit of a shock when we showed up.
So after the ECC ordeal, we had a few more phone interviews and emailing conversations with smaller schools. Then came the best call we had gotten all year - Donna St. John from Peppy Kids Club! Yes, the school is named Peppy Kids Club. Although it has a very silly name - it is actually the largest provider of English education to children in Japan and has a great reputation. Be warned, if you simply Google PKC, you will get a host of scary and inappropriate websites all created by the same ex-PKC teacher after he was rightfully fired. So if you want to check them out go to the real website located here. They are a school which teaches Japanese children age 2-17 English. This was the biggest selling point for David and I. We are mostly interested in teaching children, partly because we really only have experience teaching children and because teaching kids involves playing games, singing songs and dancing dances - which sounds amazing to two adult children like David and myself. Our interview over the phone went smashingly well and Donna sent our application to Japanese headquarters and we started planning our trip to North American HR headquarters for our in-person interviews. As fate would have it - this was in...guess where...Toronto! Apparently all Japanese English schools have HR headquarters in Toronto. We decided to make the 10 hour drive this time rather than fly. And this time, the sun was shining the whole trip...
A much happier Sarah at the strip of city built at Niagara Falls.
David is skeptical of the headless Mounty...
Sarah seeing Niagara Falls for the first time. This is the only part of the trip we took pictures of... whoops...
Ahhh... the beauty of man-made natural wonders...
I might have forced David to do this... I got my comeuppance by have a triple chin in the picture. That teaches me. Now, David doesn't know it yet, but he is about to become much grumpier as we wait to cross the border into the States... for 2 hours. We almost had a customs catastrophe... never buy strawberries to snack on in Canada...United States Customs has buckled down...hard.
I hope it is apparent both by our happy pictures and the nice weather, that we got the job and accepted it! Soon, August 2nd in fact, David and I will begin training in Nagoya, Japan. We will get our year long placement 2 weeks before we leave, all part of the adventure. We are thrilled to be given an opportunity to live in Japan, teach the younger generation and gain exciting life experience. More on the job, learning Japanese, and preparing for a global move are to come!
P.S. If you are a devotee of Arrested Development, you will understand both the blog's title and this post's title. Otherwise you are left to your own devices to find the humor in it. Kinda makes you wish you watched Arrested Development...
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