charlie's journal

The interview with an AEON recruiter is two days long. On the first day there is a group informational meeting. On this day you also present a 5 minute sample lesson. AEON focuses on conversation, so make sure you focus on conversing as well. The company is bussiness formal, so dress really nice (If you get the job you'll be dressing bussiness formal everyday). Be sure to be very well prepared. You are also expected to be very well prepared for actual lessons if you are offered a position.

What will make you stand out is not the content but the way you present it. There are evidently some elementary concepts of ESL teaching (like repition and recognition) that would be useful to include also. Be sure to showcase that you are confident, enthusastic, inclusive, helpful, etc.

If you do well you will be asked back on the second day.

The second day is a personal interview. They don't tell you, but there is an impromptu lesson. You get a prepared worksheet, a white board, and a topic. In ten minutes you have to prepare and teach a lesson that should be at least 10 min long. The recruiter then comes back into the room acting like a typical Japanese student. Be sure to showcase all your skills again.

I don't have a teaching background, and keeping track of everything and talking (along with being nervous about getting a Visa sponsership and corresponding job) so I didn't do great. I was focusing on the material alot, and I was told that I was "not energetic enough".

On the flip side, AEON seems like a great company. They work hard and play hard. You'll never work more than 30 hours a week (including scheduled work prep time), but you work schedules opposite your customers' schedules which means evenings until 10 pm at the latest and Saturdays. You do pay your own rent and plane ticket, but other than that they seem really professional.

This post was edited by charlie on Jan 27, 2006.

So, after an evening of celebrating the winter solistic with an NAO friend and a whole bunch of new ones, I've come to realize that you have to do what you love. No matter if that means driving a Volvo or a cardboard box.

So here comes the hard question: What do I love?

I never know my own interests. I've coped with this by observing things I tend to do often, and calling those my interests.

I love taking photos, but I'm not that good yet. I love Japan; I like the language, but more importantly, I love the people. I love writing things other people can read and enjoy - unlike most of my posts here :). I love traveling, even if that's only a two hour drive to the next largest town or natural wonder.

Honestly, I love developing code. But the truth is that I suck at teaching myself, and I'm finding that's a very necessary skill in coding. I love the freedom of the internet, of showing "useful" information to an infinate audience.

I've been "teaching myself" regular XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS as well as basic Linux box admin now for two months. I like it, but I've got to admit, I learn slow, and it gets boring.

Sometimes I think I should have quit tech before I finished my BA, spend sometime finding what I really want to do. What really bothered me about my development job was that I had nearly no human interaction all day. I tell myself that would be different if I was in web design.

And feel like such a posser. Not really into tech, not really into Japan, not really into creative writing. I just kind of dabble in everything and drive myself nuts.

NO conclusion!

So I went to my neighborhood dark, anti-yuppie coffee shop to do some reading.

A month ago, a friend of mine from college had told me that my ex-girlfriend (whom I never want to see again) had moved to the same city I am living in. This particular friend loves to watch me squirm. So I laughed it off in a very "yeah right" sort of way.

So tonight I was going to my neighborhood anti-yuppie coffes shop. I walked up to open the door, and there she was. I stopped with my hand on the handle.

Same sweater, same jeans, same hair, same mannerisms. I let go of the door, nearly shit my pants, and quietly turned around. And walked away.

I spent the night reading at Starbucks.

I woke up the next morning at 4 am with a bad case of "can't get back to bed cause I'm in the wrong time zone". So I sat around, read, had some cup noodles, and went back to bed a few hours later.

I woke up again at 8 am and showered. Then I stared at the ceiling. At about 9 am, A-chan got up and made nato and tea for breakfast.

A-chan had to go to class that morning too (at a completely different school). We left for the station at about noon. We only took one bike.

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Just ride on the back thingy."

"Will that be okay?"

"J-kun and I do it all the time."

This worked fine on the residential streets where we could weave into the street without hitting any cars. But when we got on the main road, we rode on a sidewalk the size of my desk at college. With plenty of zooming cars an arm's length away. And there was both pedestrian traffic and opposing bicycle traffic on this sidewalk.

After nearly weaving into three innocent bystanders, we stopped.

"Okay, new plan. You run, I'll ride. Then we switch."

"Okay."

Moments later.

"A-chan," *gasps* "it looks like I'm chasing you."

"If you were chasing me, I'd be going faster. Watch." A-chan says as she pedals away.

Gasping and sweating, we enter the bike parking lot and locked the bike. A-chan takes out some oil absorbing face pads, and gives me one too. We wipe our foreheads and cheeks, hurrying into the station without a word.

"We might miss the express train."

"I need to stop and buy a ticket."

We ran down the stairs and jumped onto the already packed express train.

A-chan gets off at the station for her school.

"Your stop is K-eki. Four stops from here."

"Got it."

"Bye bye." she smiles.

An important part of riding the express train is getting near the door that will open before getting to the station. Some times the trains are so packed it is hard to move even three feet. This morning the train is so tight, even if the train derailed, I don't think I would move.

"ima wa K-eki desu. ima wa K-eki desu." the polite recorded voice says.

'K-eki? Is this K-eki already?"

Glance out the window. Sure enough, the sign says K-eki.

"Damn."

Immediately the passengers look at me. I guess "Damn" is one of those internationally known English words. Right up there with "fuck".

"Excuse me. Excuse me," I say over the happy exit music as I push into the cracks between people.

When I exit the ticket wicket, H-chan and Ka-chan are already standing there waiting.

H-chan looks at her watch.

"I need some tea," I pant.

"Well, you're in luck. There are some vending machines on the way to school." H-chan says.

This is a pretty sarcastic remark, because there are vending machines on nearly every city block in Tokyo.

H-chan turns, and we follow her towards her school. We wind through cruvy streets and a mixed mess of taxis, delivery trucks, motorcycles, mopeds and pedestrians. We pass bunches little grocery stores, convienice stores, and of course about a dozen vending machines.

There is plenty of conversation during the walk, but I abstain. My parched throught is unwilling to speak at the moment. Cold green tea from a vending machine may be one of the greatest things about Japan.

We arrive at the security gate. H-chan said she works at a small suburban school in Tokyo. This building is like four of my high schools, stacked on top of each other.

I volunteered at the ESL class today. The students had computer time today. They all went into a lab full of old Gateways with Celeron processors that were still running ME. The students go to a website called www.funbrain.com. And basically they just get to play around.

It's full of interesting flash games that are also educational. But it loads so slow. I don't know any of the details of the school's network, by the site defintly loaded slow. I checked my gmail, and it loaded at a decent pace.

With the slow loading the kids got impatient and clicked on the ads (the ads loaded quickly, and most of the links with in the ad went pretty fast too). They ended up going all kinds of interesting places.

It's really bizarre to see kids who can barely speak English trying to punch the monkey and win a free ipod. ...They really liked that "game".

What sort of web designer thinks an elementary school is going to have a fast internet speed and high end computers? Or maybe they just weren't thinking. Anyway, a less processor intense version could have saved us a lot of hassle in the classroom.

I haven't gotten to this part in the Japan Travelogue yet, but *spoiler* I interviewed for a position at my friend's school while I was there. And I think my chances of getting in are pretty good.

This school is in Tokyo. Lots of hustle and bustle. Easy access to the American Embassy, the Foreign English Teacher's Union, and an international airport. And all my friends live in Tokyo.

A year ago I applied to this middleman/head-hunter type organization, and they told me they should have 20 - 40 positions open in the spring. This summer they told me they have approximately four positions. So I started looking into other positions as well.

So this week, the organization tells me they have a position open in Sendai (two hours north of Tokyo by bullet train). My Japanese friends taught me a rule of thumb. As you get further away from an international airport, people speak less English. This is even true going from one side of Tokyo to the other. And in theory I'm okay with that. My last trip proved I can at least bumble my way around in Japanese.

Sendai is a more "rural" city. As "rural" as any city can be on an island the size of California whose population is over 7 million people. It'll probably still be larger than any city I've lived in here in the Midwest.

And I really only want a city, because I want a chance at making a friend who can actually understand who I am and what I think. And as optimistic as I am about my language skills. I think a truly good friend of mine will have to know at least passing English. That's it. I need a city because I need a friend who speaks English.

I've told myself I am interested in Japan because of the culture and because I want to have an experience where I am defiantly a foreigner. And my Japanese friends are inseparably related to that dream. But as I look at Sendai, it seems really far from Tokyo (but it could be a lot further away). So what? I think the real reason I am holding back is because:

My desire to go to Japan is motivated more by my friends than I previously thought.

Which isn't a bad thing, I just wasn't expecting it. I was thinking to myself, "I can go anywhere in Japan and do well (and I can). I want to go anywhere in Japan. It doesn't matter where. I have no attachments (I may have been lying to myself here, and I didn't realize that until today)."

The truth of the matter is. If I want to have a real experience as a foreigner, I need to get off the crutch of using my friend's native Japanese skills and fend for myself. But if I want to go to Japan to hang out with my friends, I should look into more jobs in the Tokyo area.

Then again, my friends aren't really going anywhere. And I can find a job in Tokyo after I build up some experience.

Hmm. Well this has been an interesting time of figuring myself out. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.