Just a bunch of work shit

I have been having a hell of a time at work lately. (Also, I never get a chance to cuss in real life, people just don't get it and I don't want to explain what "shit" means)

Not that I have been overly busy. In fact, my workload has eased considerably. The way classes at the school work, there are X and Y classes. So if you take Sprint 6, you take Sprint 6X or Sprint 6Y, and then 23 weeks (or 6 months) later you switch to the other half. Therefore, if you were taking 6X, you are then taking 6Y. For me, this means, after working at Geos for six months, my lesson planning is coming around to classes I have already prepped. This is AWESOME! I can re-use most of the props I have already prepared (because I save everything, which is why my room looks messy and crowded) and I have already taught the lesson, so I can plan the new lesson accordingly, taking into account what worked and what didn't work last time. So this has saved me a ton of time in my prepping. I used to prep through Friday, now I am usually done prepping by 3 on Thursday. Lots of time to either study my Japanese (which is going really well. Maybe) or make props and organize my room further.

However, there has been a ton of stuff going on business-wise at the school.

As you may or may not know(I can't remember what I wrote on here and am too lazy to go back and check), we haven't had a manager at the school since early December. The manager is the person who takes care of the business side of the school. Talking to students about contracts, scheduling, paying bills, etc. They take care of all of that stuff. And it turns out, we had a great manager at Tsuruga. She took care of EVERYTHING and especially took care of me. I had no idea how much she was doing until she was gone and suddenly I had to do stuff I had NEVER done before. And therefore had no idea how to do. And no one there to teach me how to do it.

We recently got a new Japanese English Teacher (JET) who is amazing. She is a very good teacher and is also very accommodating to me and all my stupid questions and helping me with Japanese things; paperwork, reading my mail, etc. But, she is also new and never was made aware of everything that is going on. So we spend most of our time sending emails and calling people to ask questions whenever a student asks us a question. It is frustrating to say the least. Both for us, and for students. Add to all of this that it is schedule adjustment time. Once a year, in April, Geos adjusts the schedule to accomodate new classes, move students to different classes (especially kid students, since Japanese schools end in March and the new year begins in April, we move kids up to new levels and have to change around the times a lot each year apparently), and basically adjusts everything for the next year. This happens in March, and the manager usually acts as a liason between the teacher and the students, trying to accomodate both parties to the best of their ability. BUT, since we don't have a manager at the moment, the schedule adjustment has been nothing less than a cluster-fuck. I have never had more angry or confused students than in the past month...

For instance:

The old manager made "deals" or worked things out with students and didn't tell me what was going on at all. All I have available to me is the paperwork, the contracts the students had signed and the records of how many times they have attended class. When students sign up they sign up for a set number of classes, and then once they finish those classes they have to sign a new contract and pay more money to keep coming. Well, one thing that the old manager did was make deals with people to extend or modify their contracts without letting me know.

I had a student whose contract ran out at the end of January and who I knew was moving out of the country at the end of February. So, I said, "Nice to meet ya. Good luck. See ya round!" and sent him on his way.....and he came back the next week.

"Uhm, nice to see ya, but....uhm...your contract is up. Do you want to sign up for another year? Aren't you moving out of Japan in a month?"

"[Confused look. Something in Japanese that I didn't understand]"

"Let me get the JET"

So, after getting the JET to talk to the student, emailing our boss, emailing the old manager, having the boss email the old manager, talk on the phone, basically run around like a chicken with it's head cut off for an hour, find out that the previous manager made a deal with the student to extend his contract for the month until he was moving. Unfortunately, I WAS NOT MADE AWARE OF THIS! and therefore the student felt slighted (and rightly so I think). In fact, the student was upset enough to formally complain to Geos head office. Which, of course, looks great on me. So after all of that, got a nasty email from head office about taking care of student's needs.

Strangest part. The student. Super nice guy. And after everything that went wrong, knowing how much I like rock music, still gave me a souvenir pin he obtained from Hard Rock cafe in Thailand. That was really nice of him, and really, makes me feel even worse that he was upset with the end of his time at Geos. Ugh...shoganai I guess.

One of my kid students was trying to take an English exam. This country makes you take exams to prove your worth for everything. At ski areas you can only go on certain slopes if you have passed a skiing test to prove you can handle it. I guess that is a good thing, but...it is just so, I don't know, bureaucratic. Anyway, this student wanted to take an English exam, possibly to get into a better high school in the future, I don't know why. But the former manager said she would help her out with the work to prepare for it, since the work is actually a bit above the student's current level of learning. Well, the manager left, and the student still wants to take the test, or, rather, the student's mother wants her to take the test, and I am left trying to explain stuff to her in English. Yeah, that is going about as well as you would think. And I know the mom is angry.

One of my teen students just quit. Why? you ask. Because a second student moved into his class and he didn't like it. And I am, of course, getting heat because another student quit. What exactly am I supposed to do in a situation like that? I said, "hey, want a private lesson, pay for it." but nobody liked hearing that. I don't think I have enough tact for this country sometimes. Yeah, so he quit and that doesn't look good for me. I am gearing up to try to stay here a bit longer, they might not let me at the rate I am going.


And to top it all off, since it is schedule adjustment time and the other English teacher who comes on Fridays is leaving, they are trying to work out the schedule where I take over all of his classes. Trying to fold his classes into mine and add a couple of classes. Right now my biggest kids class is three, and that is enough in my tiny room. The potential new schedule has two classes with six kids, and I was asked if I can take seven kids. I have one table in my room. The most chairs that can fit around it are six, including my own. If I had seven kids in that room, or hell, even six, they would have to sit on each others' laps. Or I would have to do the big family dinner table thing and just get damned benches.


Make em sit four deep.

And they want to add five classes to my schedule. So I would be teaching 8 classes Thursday, 9 (!) on Friday and 8 on Saturday. Yeah, I would end up getting a little overtime pay. But will that cover the bill at the psych ward when I snap?


Yeah, that is quick and dirty. Please do yourself a favor and don't click to the full size of the pic. I am ashamed of the shitty seam.

Yeah, more classes. More kid's classes. Less time to prepare for the classes. Full days with no break. Angry parents. Angry students. And people wonder why I drink so much.

WHEW! I feel better now.

The difference between working white collar and blue collar. Blue collar you just deal with a shitty job. Hard work. Hard hours. Hard times. White collar you have to deal with other shit. Easy work (easy physically I mean). Regular hours (relatively, 12-10 is still a long time. You know I am only supposed to work 29.5 hours a week. That is what I get paid for. I work closer to 50, or almost twice what I am getting paid. Hmmmm.) But still hard times. Just differently hard.

(And... (couldn't resist.)

There are, however much I complain, some good things going on for me right now:

Some of my kids are so darned cute. We sing the "Hokey Pokey" in one of my classes, and the kids call it the "Pokey Pokey" and at the end of the song I just run around and try to poke them in the sides and they all run and hide under the table and laugh and scream. They LOVE that! (And frankly I get a kick out of it too).

When we learn new words in the kids classes, a lot of times I get really strange pronunciations. They either get the word mixed up with a word they aleady know, or simply try to sound it out phonetically in a Japanese way, and that rarely works. Sometimes it is something kind of easy to understand, "dog" and "duck" sound quite similar when some of the kids say them. And sometimes...well, sometimes I get "shit shop."

Who knew there was an actual "Shit" store. In Norway apparently.

The target vocabulary word was "gift shop" just in case you were wondering.


Like I said, some of my classes are circling back around, so I don't have to prep like a maniac every day. Just most days.

I think I have learned more Japanese in the last month then the entire time I have been here up til then. I can actually pick out words that people say and get the jist of a conversation (sometimes) and the flow of the language isn't so "foreign" (for lack of a better word) to me anymore. I can pick out individual words instead of just hearing a constant flow of sound that I understand nothing of. Even if I don't understand the words I can identify them at this point, and I think that is a good thing.

I bought a sledgehammer, the heaviest they had, which, granted is only 8 lbs, and use it for a light workout in the mornings. I am amazed at what 8 tiny pounds held three feet away from the body feels like. I bought the hammer on the other side of Tsuruga and walked home carrying it over my shoulder. I thought I got looks BEFORE I was carrying a giant hammer walking down the road. I wish I could have captured the look on the counter people's faces when I walked into KFC and stood the hammer up as I ordered. I think they thought I was going to kill them.

Yeah, trying to get at least in a little shape. I have lost some weight. And I feel better than I have in years (Fuck you very much BWI airport for the chronic back pain I have felt for the past four years. It is amazing what not lifting and throwing heavy bags in a completely debilitating manner will do for your overall quality of life/lack of pain.) and I want to try to keep that up a bit so I have been doing a bit of working out. Nothing too big. I mean, I am still lazy as all hell and would rather sleep and watch TV than actually go out and do something, but I can take 14 minutes in the morning and swing a sledgehammer around. It is fun and makes me feel like a "real man."


Granted, these were loose jeans before, but now I can't even wear them they are so damned baggy. I am also getting too skinny for my belts. My suit pants are hanging low. Thank goodness for the jacket or I might be showing Japan a plumber's crack.


And the best thing of all. I am in F'ING JAPAN! How many people can say that? (128,000,000 apparently)

Update.....finally

It has been forever since I posted anything because, really, nothing has been going on. I simply go to work and hang out at home. I haven't been anywhere recently, haven't done anything interesting, and feel completely lame because of it.

The only thing interesting that has happened is that I went to training in Nagoya last week. And since Nagoya is at least a two hour train ride (if I catch the express train, three hours by local) Geos was nice enough to put me up in a hotel for the night. I was roomed with a fellow teacher who comes from England. And he asks me, "Do you like giant slabs of meat? I know of this Australian steak house." I was like, "Well, I have never had Australian steak, but I do like giant slabs of meat." and he goes, "yeah, it is called Outback." Seriously, you never realize what the rest of the world knows until you have somebody tell you about an Australian restaraunt and it is an American chain. Oh, and if you think I didn't go eat a giant slab of meat and a huge plate of nachos....well, you just don't know me.

AND this morning I felt my first earthquake!



It was scary and cool at the same time. It was about 7 am and I was woken up by a large shaking. As if someone had grabbed my shoulder and started to shake me awake, but the entire building was shaking like that, and it lasted at about that strength for almost ten seconds and then tapered off for another ten seconds or so. Pretty exciting stuff. At least for me, pretty routine for the Japanese I am sure, I heard cars rolling by and everything. Oh, and it is also snowing and cold again after being nice and warm for the last week.