CIR positions for Singaporeans

i just heard yesterday that CIR positions for singaporeans are available only if a current singaporean CIR is leaving the programme -  apparently there’s a tendency to hire the people from the same country for the exact same position?

i have no idea, though that would explain why some years there are openings for CIR positions, whereas in other years – like mine – there arent.

if anyone knows anything about this, please let me know!

 

meanwhile i think the deadline for this year’s JET application is approaching – if anyone out here has any questions, i’m at your service :)

good luck!

a week in the life of an ALT

i think i’ve broken my personal record this week by having only just ONE day of school.

to be fair, i work at the BOE every monday and tomorrow is our mid-year seminar, but still. my teacher for today’s school informed me late last night that classes have been cancelled because of swine flu*. friday is sports day for the senior high kids and excursion to nara for the junior high students, so it’s back at the BOE again.

i was checking through the journal forms of the other ALTs today, where we note down the classes we teach and other things we do for the school, like english club, lesson preparation, marking, etc. not surprisingly, the 4 of us at my main school are the least worked ALTs of all.

 

*: swine flu, by the way, is spreading again due to the colder weather. just last week the 2nd year junior high students had their classes cancelled because of it, and so many kids are wearing masks.

living costs in osaka

i just realised that i’ve always intended to blog about this, but never got down to doing it.

i remember worrying before i came over, whether my pay would be enough to cover living costs and so on, and looking back now, it seems so ridiculous because the pay that JETs receive is incredible.

i get about 285,000yen a month after taxes and so on are deducted. a quarter of that goes to rent, at a bit more than 61,000yen. i think this is the most that any JET would ever pay, unless you’re living in the city in an apartment that’s larger than 6 tatami mats with a kitchen and bathroom (the other osaka JETs in the bigger 2-bedroom apartment pay around 80,000yen).

utilities – gas, water and electricity – average to less than 6000yen a month. it increases a bit in winter when i turn on the electric heater and in summer when the aircon is on, but i think my expenditure is fairly low because i dont leave my heating or aircon on the entire night, whereas i know many people who do.

food-wise, it depends entirely how much i go out that month. a dinner out will often be around 2000yen, lunches 1000yen. drinks are in general about 500yen or 700yen, depending on where you go. i definitely dont scrimp on eating out or grocery shopping, and i’ve spent between 31,000yen and 50,000yen a month. i bring bento to school most times though, so i eat lunch out only about once on weekdays. dinner on weekdays would perhaps be once to a max of 3 times – it’s usually once – and on weekends, anything goes. i think i go out a lot, but that’s the price of having company and socialisation. no choice.

internet – i share that, but it’s 4000yen for KDDI’s wonderful fibre-optic service. not all apartment buildings have fibre-optic, installed, but broadband should be around that price, unless you get a package deal. usually when you first sign up they’ll give you a really good discount – for us it was 2000yen for the first 6 months, but JETs who came this year got a far better deal.

mobile phone – all depends on how much internet you use on your phone. in japan, you can only send SMS to people who subscribe to the same company. to contact people with another phone company, you have to use email or call. calling is really expensive though, but the internet is very useful. i use it to check train times all the time, and sometimes the weather. but my bills are on average about 2600yen i think.

transport – is expensive! i already cycle to school most days of the week, but i think i easily spend almost 10,000yen a month. if i didnt cycle to school, i think i’d be spending maybe at least 15,000yen?

apart from those, there’s also expenditures on things like household items ( e.g. toilet paper), toiletries, clothes and shopping, etc. those all vary, and it’s difficult to give an estimate for stuff like holidays too. but i think it’s reasonable to say that a 7 day trip somewhere in japan would cost around 100,000yen, how much more or less would depend on how watchful you are of your wallet. i think that estimate is for a comfortable holiday, where you dont splurge but do spend some on enjoying yourself.

being yellow in japan

this not good especially if you’re trying to teach english or land a job as an english teacher.

the teachers in regular schools are okay enough, i dont ever feel like i’ve been discriminated against in my schools just because i dont fit the stereotype of an english speaker. in fact, i’m often complimented on my supposedly clear pronunciation and easily understood accent (of course, i dont speak in class the way i do with my singaporean friends).

however, things are different once you start talking about being a private language teacher. firstly, it helps to be male. in that way, the older men can relieve their youth by interacting with you, and the older women are happy to be speaking english with a young (and possibly not-bad-looking) male person.

if you’re female, you’re already disadvantaged, but that can be redeemed if you’re blonde and blue-eyed. apparently, someone knew someone else who could charge a steep hourly price for english conversation lessons because of her genes.

of course, no matter what, if you’re white things are going to be easier. there’s so much to be said about being a white person – especially if you’re male – in japan that i dont want to talk about it here again. but anyhow, even if you’re not white, it’s ok if you have a “white person’s accent” – that is, you sound either american, canadian, australian or british* (and maybe new zealander). that’s because it’s the accent the japanese want to learn too.

so basically a person like me is three-times disadvantaged in this business because i’m female, asian (seriously, i get mistaken for being japanese all the time) and have the wrong accent. awesome, isnt it?

 

*: the japanese are fairly pro-american when learning english – they use american spelling and terms, and in some rare cases teachers might even request ALTs to speak using an american accent rather than their native one. however, there are people around who prefer the Queen’s English, and those who do feel rather strongly about it. To the extent that i know of someone who, by virtue of being British, is getting paid 10000yen/hour for english conversation lessons. that, by the way, is a bit more than USD100 or SGD160.

summer camp 2009

so most of the last 2 weeks were spent at english summer camps for the english-intensive high schools, and im kinda glad they’re over!

the thing about camps – or perhaps just the ones that i was at – are that they just go on forever. imagine your day starting at 7.30 in the morning and ending at 9.30pm, with the student’s hour-long bath time around 5pm as your only proper break throughout the day. it doesnt really matter that the things you do arent actually that taxing – in fact, it’s precisely because it’s so untaxing and mind-numbing that it’s difficult to get through it – it’s just that the day drags on!

the first camp i had was in nara, and the students had to interview me and make a poster on me. they are excellent artists, and of course what’s written down there has to be taken with a pinch (or two, or several) of salt:

this is a really good likeness, isnt it?:

on the last day, the students had some time in nara, where they were meant to act as tour guides. but in this case, they didnt, and were more focused on enjoying themselves. in fact, i’ve been to nara more times than any of my students – only 1 out of 10 of them had ever been to nara!

i like the deer in nara

the deer eat paper – pamphlets, magazines, etc – too, so watch out!:

and once they latch on, they dont let go.

we found this one in a ditch beside the main road:

and another that has a very weird left antler which curves forwards and out, rather than straight up – just compare the right and left ones!

the second camp was in kyoto, and we stayed at the Honnoji Kaikan opposite the Kyoto City Hall (or was it the prefectural hall?). In any case, the hotel had amazing food and service! they gave us a kyoto sweet for every night that we stayed over, with a hot water flask and packets of sencha and houjicha. the futons were laid out for us at night too, and the rooms are spacious. and futons comfortable! i think they paid 8000yen for 1 night and 2 meals, which is very reasonable.

especially when your dinners look like that:

how sumptuous! sashimi, tofu, fish, tempura, some seaweed thing, chawamushi, soup and some yam thingy that was exquisitely prepared. this is the tempura – its batter was amazing:

breakfasts were simpler, but still appeared in that form. they always came with some form of egg (omelette or onsen tamago, which is delicious japanese-style soft boiled egg), fish, tofu – that will be heated in its pot using a solid fuel tablet, seaweed, soup, rice, pickles. yum yum.

dinner on the second day was sukiyaki, which was amazing:

the picture is blur cos of the steam, but man it was sooooo good. i love sukiyaki because the broth is tasty, and the egg that you dip the meat and vegetables in enhances the flavour. we had extra stuff to cook too, so i ate way too much. in fact, i ate too much throughout that camp!:

those were huge plates of stuff – to be shared between 4 pple, but in my case, it was shared between 3. and there was also some katsuo salad, with 5 pieces of katsuo. so yummy – that stuif wasnt cheap either!

at least the food at that camp was really good, because that, and hanging out with the guys chatting in their room over drinky drinks (ie alcohol) at night were the two things that made it endurable.

oh, and on the last day, the school hired other private ALTs so that the students could break into even smaller groups to act as tour guides of kyoto, and oh my. those private ALTs reminded me of how i was last year, and made me realise how jaded i’ve been!

last year, i was really excited, extremely happy-sounding, and really made the effort to appear energetic, positive and interested. i tried so hard to engage the students in conversation and was really into learning about the job and all that, whereas this year i was happy to sit and eat my food without talking too much to anyone while listening in on the student’s (japanese) conversation.

it’s interesting too, that few of the other JETs in the city find what we do unchallenging. im not sure if i’ve ever mentioned this here before, but to put things very simply, life as an ALT is, in my opinion, very unchallenging. i have very little actual hours of work, and basically my job is to do as i’m told by the JTE. of course there’s room for input and suggestions, but that doesnt take too much either.

in essence, it’s very easy work and doesnt require much of you. some of the rest find communication difficult as their JTEs do not have that good a command of english and they cant always communicate with the students, but i dont really have that problem. but even then, the fact that we all that sheer amount of free time at work is what really gets to me and is difficult to deal with. i suppose it doesnt help that i feel underutilised, and that im not really developing in any way professionally, nor is my potential being stretched at all..

oh well. ganbarimasu this next year, and in the mean time i’ll develop myself in other ways!

changes

so i just came back from a beautiful, relaxing, enjoyable week in okinawa last night, and went to the principals' meeting this morning.

its the first day of work in the new school year, and what happens at the principals' meeting is that all the osaka city JETs are given their school postings for the new term (and likely for the rest of the year; apparently there are few changes after this in the next 2 terms) and get to meet the teachers in charge at the schools they will be working in.

i dont think i've mentioned this before, but the JETs in the city are living in 3 different apartment complexes, and each apartment complex has a liason that 'looks after' the JETs in that complex. basically, those 3 liasons act as the go-between for the board of education and the JETs, help out with paperwork and admin duties at the BOE on mondays, chair the monday meeting and so on.

i've been elected liason for my apartment, which is nice because i get a variation in my responsibilities and job, but the unfortunate thing is that my schedule has changed! the brit is still at our school full-time, and i'm quite sure that it'd be the same if i werent liason. but since i'm liason, i'm only working there on tuesdays and thursdays, and have work at 2 different junior high schools on wednesdays and fridays each.

was quite disappointed when i found out about these changes actually. i really like working at my school and have developed a sort of relationship with the students i think, plus the fact that its so comfortable working there! our own private ALT room, being able to cycle to and fro from school, having nice teachers and being able to leave my stuff in school throughout the term, being able to wake up a bit later than the rest... one of the new schools i'm at is pretty far too! and i'm the only ALT at those 2 junior high schools, which means that while i had the brit to talk to in the past, now i have no one! it can be a wonderful opportunity to chat with the other teachers and get to know more japanese people, or can be an awful experience where i dont really talk to anyone in those 2 places at all.

sigh. i think i just dont handle change very well, and the cushy life i've had for the past 2 school terms didnt help i suppose. i think it means that this is the time i have to really put in effort at breaking out and interacting more with japanese people which is the aim of JET anyway and what almost every other JET has to deal with, rather than living in this little comfortable gaijin-bubble that being an osaka city JET has resulted in. at the moment i'm sort of afraid of what working in those 2 new schools would be. going to be teaching 3rd year junior high students in both schools; at least 3 classes in 1 school and 4 classes in the other. in fact, i'm really rather apprehensive of what's to come next week onwards!!!!!!!!!!!

:S :S :S

i need to be positive, and i need to be strong, and at the very worst i'll be whining A LOT. friends, beware!

working as an ALT

a large part of my life as an ALT here comprises sitting in the office and being bored. well, i borrowed a DS Lite off a friend with a kanji recognition tool and started trying to read japanese books - my electronic dictionary doenst have the kanji writing pad, which makes it a pain to find out the meaning of kanji i dont know - which has stopped me from feeling bored or reading newspapers on the internet too much. but the long and short of it is that i dont have enough lessons in school.

it's the final term of the school year, and teachers are focusing on revision and have no time to allow their students to play games with ALTs. this means that down from my already light load of 2 to 4 classes a day, i now have only 1 to 2 classes a day, which is A LOT of free time if you're at work from 8.15am to 4.15pm. all this free time sounds great if you're interested in mugging really hard for JLPT or something, but i've unfortunately completely and totally lost interest in studying all those grammar and impossible-to-remember-the-reading-of-them kanji. everyone says that i might as well try for level 1 since i've already come this far, but i'm really doubtful as to whether i'm up to it or not.. I barely passed 2, and that was based on luck and my ability to recognise and guess the meaning of kanji due to my chinese ability!

anyhow, it just makes me wonder why the teachers here dont give me more work to do. they know my schedule and i'm sure they know i'm really free, yet they're handling all these things on their own that they could easily pass on to me. like some of my students are preparing for the Eiken Test, which is the English equivalent of JLPT for japanese students. there's an interview round that they have to sit for too, and that teacher is training them for that component. she rushed in and out of my room to prepare for that session with the students, which made me wonder why couldnt she just have passed them on to me.

same thing with another teacher, which actually pissed me off yesterday. we team-teach a class, from which 1 student is taking the Eiken test. however, yesterday when the Brit and I were sitting at our desks, both equally absorbed in our own non-work activities, he approached the Brit and asked him to train that girl instead of me!

now, the Brit is indeed friendlier and bothers to chat with this teacher more often than i do, and it's understandable if he feels more comfortable asking the Brit for non-work related favours and so on. but this is work, and this girl is a student of mine and not the Brit's, and no matter how i look at it i cant say anything but that he ought to have asked me to do this and not the Brit. it wasnt even like they were chatting and he happened to bring this student up with the Brit; he walked into the room, called the Brit and started telling him about this girl whom he needs to coach.

i just cant help but feel like this teacher broke some rule that i didnt even knew existed till he broke it. asking the Brit to coach a student whom he has no relation to whatsoever when he could have easily asked me who was sitting just 30cm away? ZETTAI DAME. at first i thought that perhaps the Brit has something to offer that i dont - like a british accent, which some teachers think is better for recordings and stuff - but no. zilch. nothing at all. there's even the possibility that i can even do a better job than the Brit, cos i can explain things directly to the student in japanese rather than requring this teacher to translate my english so that she understands! (this teacher, by the way, has rather bad english, and sometimes doesnt even translate the brit's advice or explanations to the student accurately...)

it just pisses me off and makes me feel UNWILLING to help him or bother to try to chat with him. urgh. there's just NO REASON why he should have asked the Brit and the fact that i teach that girl should make me more or less the default person to ask if she needs help from a native english speaker!! urgh.

anyway, dunno lah. the government is spending so much money on hiring us JETs and not making full use of us. and i feel even more under-utilised at times, as i do know enough japanese to be able to help with translating not-too-complicated things from japanese into english, like student essays for speech contests and so on, and depending on the student's intelligence and english level (and the teacher whose job i'll be taking over) i can help them with whatever tests or questions that they might have. i just feel like they ought to make use of me more since i have this extra language skill that JET doesnt even require, and they can tap me for it while not having to pay me extra!

beh. i just wish they'll give me more things to do during school hours.

drawing the fine line between how much is too much Japanese..

considering that i've been hired under the JET programme to provide japanese students the opportunity to hear native english being spoken as well as to give them someone to communicate with in english, i've definitely been trying as far as possible to use as little japanese as i can. The Brit at school festival commented that it's interesting how while he always tries to speak to students in japanese (to practise his japanese), i speak english to them as far as i can. he says that he doesnt see the need to speak to them in english outside of the classroom - and he didnt know that all japanese students learn english in school - and so communicates in japanese on other occasions.

however, i feel that firstly english should defnitely NOT be confined to being a classroom subject, and that by speaking to them in english outside the classroom, it demonstrates that english is a living language that can be used on any occasion. moreover, i can practise my japanese with other people on other occasions, whereas the students wouldnt have much opportunity at all to use english or even hear english unless i speak and try to make them respond in english. added to the fact that i've been hired to speak english, english should definitely be what i speak to the students. in addition, that japanese ability isnt a requirement to work as an ALT further reinforces the idea, in my opinion, that english should be used and not japanese.

of course, that i'm writing the above at all means that i'm really having second thoughts about that (i'm not using 'beginning to have' because it's been there for sometime). already, i feel that sometimes i use too much japanese, because i have a choice whether to use japanese or not, which is more than what those ALTs who know no or less japanese than i do have.

however, i'm actually wondering whether i should even be increasing the amount of japanese i use, believe it or not.

at the orientation, some ALTs who were giving speeches said that they sort of try to hide their japanese ability from the students in a bid to make the kids use more english, but right from the second week i did away with that resolution because it's quite impossible to do so with the level of english among my kids. and i do feel that a moderate amount of japanese used does help because the students can communicate with me, even if it means me saying something in english, repeating it very slowly and translating it into japanese if necessary (as it is most of the time). moreover, it's very frustrating for them - and you can see it - when they want to say or ask something but cant express themselves in english. they end up giving up altogether because communicating just requires too much effort, and i think that them NOT using english to clarify something is better than them not asking at all.

but i wonder if i should be using more japanese, mainly because there's the possibility that speaking more japanese will lead to the students being more willing to talk to me and becoming more familiar with me, and when that familiarity and willingness to chat with me in general has been established, i could then perhaps try to make them use more english. the reason being that yesterday, i ended up talking to a class entirely in japanese - i dont know how it came to that, but it happened nonetheless - while the main teacher went to zap some notes for them, and wow the class was so hyper and lively when that happened, and i think the atmosphere in the classroom improved a fair bit after that brief episode!

and today, one of the teachers actually said that she hopes i can use as much japanese as possible for the writing class that we take together. i guess the rationale is that they're to be trained in writing (rather than listening or conversation), so japanese can be used to explain grammar and the usage of words, etc. i dont really know how that works, but she said that she was really happy to discover that my japanese is rather good (which it isnt, but well if she says so.... heh).

and this all makes me confused! i think there's a fine line between using enough japanese and using too much, yet i have no idea where that line is. i dont want to fall into the same trap that some Japanese teachers of english make by using too much japanese in class, yet i dont want to discourage the students from making full use of my presence here as a foreigner ALT in japan. i think it definitely helped somewhat, when i explained to yesterday's class  - in japanese - in response to their comment that my japanese is very good so why do i keep speaking to them in english that the reason why i'm here is because they dont have much chance to speak or hear english, hence i try to use as much english as possible. i think they sort of get the idea now, i hope. but whatever it is, english has to be the medium of teaching in english class, as that's how kids learn! so i dont know.

i'm really wondering about this, because i dont know how the rest who dont speak japanese get on in their classes. if it's just me who's having these dilemmas, something must be wrong perhaps? the rest of them get along with their students fine without using japanese i think. then again, it could just be the students in this school, because i dont see The Brit - and he's a white male, see here for the significance of that - having students clamouring to talk to him either.

わからへん！！

summer camp madness 1

well. i suppose i exaggerate when i say that it's been crazy, but it certainly has been tiring going for 2 camps almost back to back.

there're schools called intensive-english high schools in osaka city (and elsewhere in japan i'm sure), where the kids have more english classes than others, and these students are generally more motivated to learn english than their peers. all the ALTs have been assigned to either 1 of 2 schools' summer camps (most of us got 2), and mine were 3 days and 4 days each.

both camps were rather fun, though the standard of english and the attitudes of the students differed quite a bit. the programmes were roughly the same for both camps in that both comprised a short skit and a show and tell segment, while the 2nd camp included lessons as well. i certainly enjoyed the 2nd camp more as the students were more interested in learning, and they were really energetic and eager to talk to you. which is a great thing, because i didnt really feel like the students were interested in me in the first camp.

i'm sure it's partly due to my personality, that i'm not as much of a people person as some of the other ALTs, thus when i put in energy to be approachable and interesting and so on - all the stuff to make kids like you and be interested in you, which appears to be a very big thing when you're an in ALT, as the more interested they are in you, the more they'll be willing to talk to you and learn from you - i still fare less well than the others who're naturally more interesting people.

and i think where you come from definitely makes a difference. the most popular are the male caucasians, as so long as you're male and white, all the kids will love you, especially in english-intensive schools where they're just so many girls. there're quite a few girls around who want to many foreigners - by that they mean white men - which makes being white and male result in instant celebrity status.

then, looking different it helps too, so if you're black or a white female, the kids will be interested in you too. and i think the fact that i'm asian - and look just like the kids - plus not half as interesting as the rest just completely works against me in a camp setting where being interesting and so totally GENKI are very important aspects. i'm hoping that things will improve when i'm in my school where i can actually teach - hopefully - and try to make a difference somehow. the brit guy who's in the same school as i am was really popular at his camp too, apparently, but there're only 2 of us so hopefully i'll feel some love. haha.

my first camp was at this place called katano green village to the east of osaka city. the surroundings were nice and kinda rustic, and were really enjoyable when the weather got cooler at night:

view from the small porch outside my room

the steps up to my room. it's all the way up!

the river that we were next to

no cars on the road!

i love this view of the building:

one of the 2 main buildings we were in. the entire place is kinda like a camping area cum conference centre. there were quite a few families camping there when we were using the place too.

check out the huge gourd

lovely sunflower!

i'm apparently not meant to post pictures of students online due to privacy issues, so i'm afraid u all wont be able to see any... and regarding photos of food... i dont have that many to be honest.. when food comes i just eat! gomenasai..