< Magazine Index > < Index for this Edition > < Subscribe >

I went to Japan with no definite plan on leaving. It was a post-grad school adventure, and a time to be without a plan.  Right after graduation with a master’s degree in social work that I wasn’t keen on using right away, the interim goal was to find a job teaching English abroad, most likely in Asia somewhere. An ad in the Boston Globe lead me to Nova Group – what turned out to be a corporate-run extensive network of English language schools all over Japan.  They were looking for candidates in possession of a B.A in English to teach in the Kanto (Tokyo, Yokohama) and Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe) regions of the country.  After a perfunctory interview during which my credentials were verified, I was hired pending further visa application.  This was the beginning of my odyssey. 

A few months later in September of 1994, I was flying an Asiana Airlines widebody to Tokyo Narita airport.  Aboard the plane, I ran into teachers bound for other cities in Japan, Osaka and Tokyo being the most predominant.  Initially, I had requested placement in the Kansai region; Osaka had held my interest more than Tokyo for its friendlier people and slower pace.  But I was placed instead in a school in a prefect of Yokohama called Kamioka.  Nova Group or Nova Intercultural Institute, as its known in Japan, gives its teachers the option of choosing the kind of housing accommodation they would prefer.  I had chosen an apartment of my own. 

First Impressions
My first taste of Japan was the Shinjuku section of Tokyo where Nova’s corporate headquarters were located.  Shinjuku is a bustling city center at the heart of which is the labyrinthine train station. I had spent that summer working in midtown Manhattan but still felt somewhat unprepared for the density of this city’s hustle. Here there were KFCs next to McDonald’s next to Morinaga Love Burgers, inundated by motorists, foot traffic and bicycles in an organized crescendo of mayhem.

We boarded a train at the Shinjuku station for our respective housing along with Yoko, the real estate agent hired by Nova.  It should be noted that signs are almost uniformly in the hiragana, katakana and kanji characters of the Japanese language.  Not speaking the language and trying to navigate the train system in Japan is a quick lesson in humility.  While most people were shuttled off to gaijin or foreigner’s pensions, I was taken to a prefabricated nondescript structure in Tsuruma, about a half-hour commute by train to my job. My building resembled a two-story motel although my apartment, I quickly realized, was far smaller than your average single American motel room. It was, in the most basic sense, a one-room studio with a tiny kitchen space and even more microscopic bathroom.  For the moment, I was home.

Networking Still Works
While still adjusting to my new “efficiency” space, I decided to scout around for other possibilities in housing.  I contacted Yoko who was able to place me in a residence for foreigners called Sankoma House outside of Kawasaki.  Had I known then what a good networking opportunity it is to live in a gaijin house, especially when first arriving in Japan, I would have signed up immediately.  The house itself, really more of a pension, was peopled with all sorts of expats, mostly from the United Kingdom and Australia. A highly sociable group of  twenty-somethings, they were quite welcoming to me, the only American in their midst.  The house itself was rather damp, smelled of rice in the rice cooker (ubiquitous in Japan) and pots of English Breakfast tea. My room was a small traditional affair, lined on the floor with tatami mats that held in the moldy fragrance of straw. 

My gaijin house networking enabled me to meet up with a fellow teacher who came to be my roommate in my third and final residence while in Japan. Together, we found another realtor who had a house that belonged to the Japanese consul to New Zealand. The house would be empty for two years while the consul was on assignment in New Zealand, and for a moderate rent we would be the lessors.

Expats Love Those Japanese Appliances
Located just a few train stops from Kamioka in a suburb of Yokohama called Isogo, the house proved to be a fully furnished treasure-trove for foreigners accustomed to the less posh surroundings of the gaijin house. There was a TV and VCR, a huge refrigerator by Japanese standards and a washer/dryer. By all accounts, we had precipitously arrived in appliance heaven.  Having roughed it for a while in Sankoma House with its one shared washer and outdoor clothesline for a dryer, the easy access to laundry facilities made us well up a bit at our good fortune. Having friends over from the gaijin house did cause some amount of envy.  However diminutive our washer/dryer was compared to its American counterpart, it imbued our dizzying expat experience with a grounded stability.  I began to contemplate settling down for the time being.

Mistaking Bean Paste for Chocolate in Japanese Suburbia
Now that the laundry situation was sorted, I could begin to take in my suburban existence.  Isogo was somewhat sleepier than Kamioka, where my Nova school was situated.  Being one of the few Westerners in our new hometown, I was often met with curious stares from passersby. Of course, Japan had since emerged from the isolationist policies that had dominated its politics and worldview post-World War II.  But its fascination and sometimes aversion to difference still lingered.  Once while buying what I thought was a chocolate-filled pastry but turned out to be a cake filled with sweet bean paste, the baker grimaced at me and made a gesture in front of his nose with his finger. I came to realize later he was commenting on my nose, how it was different, larger, and most certainly a Western nose. I’m still not sure what was more traumatic: confusing bean paste for chocolate or enduring a bit of morning ridicule at the hands of the neighborhood baker. 

Provincial vs. International:  Yokohama and Tokyo
Even in the suburbs of a major city like Yokohama, space is at a premium and buildings are built one next to the other with hardly a backyard between them. Yet living so close to Yokohama, I had the chance to explore the city and compare it to Tokyo, where I usually ventured on my days off. 

The capital city of Tokyo is by far the older of the two cities, the former Edo is a maze of  streets and temples, gardens and parks.  After being demolished almost entirely in the earthquake of 1923, it rose again to become the cultural and economic center of Japan. And its cultural offerings far outweigh the port city of Yokohama. From the outdoor market of Take-Shita, to the European-styled boutiques lining the boulevard of Omotosando, Tokyo is the most cosmopolitan of Japanese cities, boasting more foreigners than any other city in Japan. 

Yokohama is the Boston to Tokyo’s New York City.  It’s far more provincial in its look and feel.  Although both cities definitely shun the “city never sleeps” mentality, Tokyo contains pockets of town that electrify at night and dance into the ungodly morning hours.  Roppongi, the most happening expat section of the city, sees its share of late night party goers, most of whom miss the last midnight hour train in favor of bouncing from pub to pub and bleary-eyed, taking the first train back in the morning.  In this part of Tokyo, gaijin of every nation abound, and English is the stylish language of clubbing.  In this international confluence, expat English teachers mingled with military boys from army bases in Yokosuka. The parties rage on into the night outside the closed izikayas (traditional Japanese pubs) and neon-lit Yoshinoya Beef Bowl restaurants.

In contrast, Yokohama has at its center an elaborate mall and series of department stores and is a port city to the core.  Here I was exposed to the phenomenon of Western-styled department stores (Maru-I, Maru-I and Lumine among them) with a distinctly Japanese feel.  In other words, if you think it’s chocolate in the window of a posh mini-mall bakery, most likely it’s still bean paste.

The Life of an English Teacher
Outside of city exploration, work life quickly settled into the five days on, two days off schedule of the Nova English teacher.  The difference here from the American workweek is that the weekend did not usually fall on Saturday and Sunday for most new teachers. My scheduled days off were mid-week and fell on Wednesday and Thursday for the duration. Within the eight-hour workday, teachers were assigned three to four students per class and would meet in small partitioned office space designated as classrooms. The classes were closely spaced one right next to the other.  Often if a group was particularly lively, the noise level was quite high. This was among the many challenges of working for Nova. 

The curriculum relied upon the Quest series of texts, published by Nova and Oxford University Press.  Set up much like a language mill, classes were 50 minutes in length.  Teachers then have a 10-minute window in between classes to write up their notes on the previous class and plan for the next lesson. Lesson plans were not really encouraged, and teachers would use the provided Quest texts to infinitely reproduce the same lessons with minor variations.  Although Nova purports to encourage creativity and spontaneity in its teachers, the structure of back-to-back classes, lack of adequate on-the-job training and less than inspiring texts conspire to make the job challenging.

The Nova system divided students up according to their level of speaking and reading ability. But the system did not focus on a firm grounding in grammar or pronunciation.  Since most Japanese students practiced these types of drills at school, the Nova system focused on keeping classes focused on practical application of idioms and grammatical structures through role playing and conversation exercises.  Classes were filled on a first come, first served basis with no more than four students to one teacher.  I would often find myself surrounded by a junior high school aged student, a salary man (business man or salary man as they’re called) and an “office lady.” 

Quite often, the most challenging aspect of teaching the Japanese was getting them to speak. As a group, they are quite reticent to express an opinion that would cause them to stand out in any way and consider making a mistake akin to losing face. Class participation became easier in time once I developed a rapport with students and began to have repeat customers. The daily informal conversation class called “Voice” also helped to break the ice.  It wasn’t long before students felt comfortable enough to comment “teacher looks like she’s gaining weight.” Teaching about social etiquette in Western culture turned out to be by far the most daunting task.

The “What If” Gauntlet
Sometimes I put myself through the gauntlet of 'what ifs' regarding my time spent in Japan. What if I was to do it again? How would I research it differently? I’ve come to realize that my time there had the steepest learning curves of a roller coaster with just as many twists, turns and minor upheavals. I realized too that there were English teachers in Japan getting paid more (although Nova’s salaries were fairly competitive) and teaching from a more structured methodology.  Other corporate programs that come to mind are Aeon and Geos while the JET Program is geared to working in the Japanese public school system. Most of these companies including Nova require that candidates have at least a bachelor’s degree and 13 years of formal education taught in English.  I certainly would have researched other companies and English-teaching opportunities more thoroughly before taking the first job offer. But that said, Nova did offer an easy way to make decent money and soak up Japanese culture.  It’s just a question of either accepting the limitations of the corporate structure or researching opportunities that are less for-profit and potentially more academic.

Outside Looking In
My most vivid memory of being a gaijin in Japan is how edifying it was to be a member of a minority group of Westerners in a truly homogeneous culture.  How quickly such an experience adjusts one’s perspective.  For me, it meant enduring the feeling of being an outsider who can never truly assimilate. Granted, learning the Japanese language is a solid first step towards assimilation but even after attaining that, the cultural gaps between East and West often feel like more of a chasm.  The Japanese don’t fully believe that Westerners can truly learn their language due to its perceived level of difficulty.  I had heard stories of Japanese people professing not to understand their own language as spoken by foreigners.  I never did have a chance to learn the language apart from a few choice phrases during my brief stay in Japan – mostly shouted in angry response to chikan (a word most closely resembling “pervert”) on the crowded subway trains. But there were a number of teachers I knew who did speak fluently and seemed to get by quite well. 

Ultimately, I was able to appreciate the differences between Japanese and Western culture.    The differences were really something to celebrate.  In no other country would you be able to lose your wallet and your passport and have it returned to you intact within the same week. As long as you’re informed that tradition dictates you send an appropriately worded thank you letter but nothing more, you’re home free.  I am grateful for the many open and generous Japanese friends I encountered along the way. And the life of the gaijin in Japan, much like anywhere else in the world, is tremendously ennobled by authentic connection.

Susan Knecht
Email: simplyudon@yahoo.com