It’s been 6 months since I came home from Japan. It’s probably safe now to announce the semi-obvious: yes, I worked for NOVA. I didn’t have a pleasant time. This wasn’t because of the students, I might add. I had a great time getting to know them and befriending them, and I still keep in contact with a group of them.

No, what gave me the irrits was the extremely corporate nature of NOVA. And yes, it’s a corporation, with an aim to make profit. But there is such a thing as ethical profiteering, as well as corporate social behaviour. NOVA is an example of why the stock exchange is evil. Before I even arrived in Japan, the share price for NOVA had been dropping. Then in May this year, it was announced that NOVA was expecting a net loss of 3 billion yen (about US$30,000,000) due to expanding the number of branches to the point where each school was fighting not to lose students to another NOVA branch. All this resulted in NOVA trying to save money and make money any way it could, just to make the shareholders happy.

It was simply stupid business management. NOVA had a number of “satellite” schools that were staffed by teachers and admin from the main school in the area. These satellite schools would have a very small number of students, be open only a few days a week and would cost more in rent and overheads than the income received from the students.

Did you ever hear that story about how McDonalds refuses to close any stores? At best, they will relocate them, but never close them down, because it looks “bad” to the general public. Well, NOVA seemed to have much the same policy, despite the obvious losses they were incurring.

The large number of schools meant that they were always understaffed, and would basically hire any monkey who had scrapped through a year of college. The teachers were often disgruntled, due to some of the illegal activities and bizarre policies that NOVA perpetuated, as well as the constant overtime pushed onto them, whatever personal gripes they had with Japan and finally the stress that radiated off the Japanese staff.

My gods, I felt sorry for the Japanese staff. They would sometimes receive the treatment that some students received and get heckled by some teachers. They were under a huge amount of stress to get the numbers of sales up, keep the teachers well informed and the student customers happy. I wouldn’t have wanted to trade places with them for the world.

At one point, NOVA announced it was cutting back on all expenses in branches except paper, cleaning products and light fixtures. It went one step further at my school, where the Japanese staff were desperate to get some savings on the books - they stopped providing plastic garbage bags for the bin lining. The teachers were asked to fork up 1000 yen of their own money, per month, to cover the things like garbage bags, pens, paper and whiteboard markers that NOVA would no longer supply.

We told them to go stuff themselves.

One of the Japanese staff ended up paying for it all out of her own pocket.

NOVA did not give a shit about it’s stakeholders: the staff, teachers and students - the people who actually made it operate and turn a dollar. Instead, NOVA milked them all dry to appease the shareholder. Even to the point of illegal activities that are now being fought by the General Workers Union.

Another well-known example is NOVA accomodation. Oh gods. If it wasn’t for the Accomodation section, I would’ve perhaps worked there for longer. Lies, lack of answers, refusal to answer calls, rudeness, avoiding all the issues that tenants may bring up. THEN overcharging them. If you ever choose to work for NOVA, fine. But don’t live in their apartments. It will save you untold amounts of stress and frustration.

I completely understand that NOVA exists only to make a profit, not to provide gaijin with a cheap holiday. But anyone with basic business knowledge can tell you that their methods of operation were on the extremely dodgy side. If you want students to buy more tickets, then make sure that they can use the ones they already have, at the times that they want. What’s that? Don’t have enough teachers to fill the demand of lessons? They all seem to be quitting? Well, maybe you should try and keep your teachers happy with their jobs, by giving them the basic tools and training that they need. Don’t throw them in the deep end. Don’t make life difficult for them back in their apartments. And don’t tell them that they lack company spirit and threaten them with degrading their reports when instead you could be listening to their gripes and trying to fix them.

I’m convinced that the shareholder-over-stockholder nature of NOVA was what caused the awful behaviour I witnessed in some teachers. I met a large number of assholes whilst working for NOVA. But I did also meet the loveliest people. Teachers and students. There are good guys in NOVA and you don’t always have to look hard for them. I’d say that they’re better people than me, because they have more patience and will take being raped anally repeatedly without any lubricant.

When I announed to the students that I was leaving Japan and heading home, they threw me a great farewell party. I was given gifts and told that I was the favourite teacher of many students in the branch.

Damn, that made me feel vindicated. For the last 10 months, NOVA had been telling me that I wasn’t doing enough and had to put up, shut up and get on with it. Keep complaining and they’ll have to downgrade my “company spirit” mark, as if I were still in freaking high school. But I was a good teacher. I knew I was a damn good teacher. That’s why all the people I keep in touch with from Japan are my old students, and none of my old work colleagues.

So, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, it’s time to say that I will no longer be writing for the Teach section of 3yen. There’s not a lot for me to write now that I’m home, and most of what I could write would be secondhand anyway. I’ll still be around on other sections of the site, so please keep reading. There’ll be a new blogger here before long, with all the latest news, gossip and advice for teaching in Japan, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I hope I was entertaining and informative for you.

Ja ne.

Oh, there’s a million-and-one of them. Some of my favourites:

“Americans are…. strong for… war and fighting!”

I think he wanted to say ‘keen’ but now I’m saying “strong for” at every opportunity.

Teacher: “What do you like to do in your free time?”
Student: “I play with my girlfriend”

Ooh la la.

It’s a bit unfair picking on the Japanese people though. I’ve heard of a few occassions where a gaijin has stuffed up, trying to speak Japanese. My favourite story is probably when upon hearing that the student’s mother had recently died, he wanted to say how sorry he was to hear it. And the first way you learn to say “I’m sorry” in Japanese is:

“Gomen nasai”

Problem with that is, it translates into “I’m sorry, I did it”. Funnier still, the woman to whom he just apologised for matricide was a manga-ka, a comic book artist, who promptly retold the episode in a later volume of her manga!

Anyway, if you know of any other funny Engrish quotes from your students, then please share in the comments section :)

One strange thing I’ve noticed about some students is that they take on accents when speaking English. The most common is American accents. It’s not that surprising, given that most of the English they encounter is American English - on television, in music, from their teachers or the many American (mainly military-based) people iving in Japan.

One girl I taught sounded just like a Californian “Valley Girl” - that certain drawl and using the word “like” at least three times per sentence. Her English was a high level, not perfect, but then again, probably most grammatically correct than your average native Valley Girl.

Another student I had sound British - pure Queen’s English. It was a delight to speak with him.

Then, sometimes, you get teachers that change accents. This has happened to me since before I was an English teacher (I’ll copy Irish or Canadian accents subconsciously when I hear them) but some other teachers have had it happen to them since they started teaching. And every time, it’ll change into an American accent. In a way, it helps the students because it’s an accent they’re familiar with, but on the other hand, students have told me that Australian/British accents are much better than American accents because they’re more similar to Japanese.

Take for example, the way that Americans say the word “can’t” compared to the way British-English speakers say it. The British-English way uses the syllable ‘ka’ which is one of the characters in Japan’s syllabary: か. It’s a sound much more recognisable to Japanese people.

Nothing is really good or bad when comparing accents, it’s just one of those oddities you notice as an English teacher in Japan.

A while ago, I wrote about how 80% of students came to learn English for fun. I wrote that after 5 months of teaching. Now after 8 months, I want to revise that slightly. There are students that go to an eikaiwa to learn English, there are students that come to eikaiwa to have fun and make friends (with both foreigners and other students). But there’s a third category that I didn’t mention last time. It’s a rather small minority but it can affect you and the way you teach. They are the students that have come to the eikaiwa because they have to.

Mostly, they are young, high school kids on orders from their parents. It’s another type of cram school for them. They may or may not act bored and uninterested in the lesson. Each person is different.

There are also adults that have been pressured into going to eikaiwa to learn English. Most are on orders from their employers - the lessons have been paid for them. Like the high schoolers, they may or may not be interested in the lesson. Other adults are being pestered by their families. I have at least two students that are considered “leeches” by their parents (as they are unmarried and still living at home) so they’ve been ordered to make something of themselves by learning English.

The last category is the most disturbing. These are students that have been told to come to eikaiwa by their doctors. Unfortunately, mental health in Japan is pretty poor. There are stories of shut-ins, suicides and mental health institutes that practise solitary confinement and restraining patients to their beds. There are the salarymen who cracked after being overworked and stressed out, particularly after the economy bubble burst.

These students are told to come to eikaiwa so they can practise being sociable and learn how to communicate with people again. It also gives them a hobby. Learning English is an added bonus, although in the majority of cases, these people are often poor students.

Eikaiwa often advertise to prospective employees that they will be teaching enthusiastic students that want to learn English. And while this is still true in the majority of cases, a professional attitude is required for the other types of students. Just try to remember that you are not their doctors, their counsellors or not even necessarily their friends (although it doesn’t have to stop you).

In an eikaiwa, you can’t pick your students.

Your students will ask you a lot of questions about you. They’ll also gossip with each other about you. So if you start talking about something in your life that just happens to be relevant to the lesson, be careful about what you say. You may find that your stories about your life are spread around and repeated back to you in a later lesson. It might also end up slightly warped, Chinese Whispers style.

Below are the most common questions you’ll get from your students. I find that it’s best to give them a lighthearted, funny answer where possible. Even if it means lying a bit. They’d probably love to hear all the intricate details about your life but you may not like what they do with that information. They have blogs too, you know.

Anyway!

Q. Where are you from?
I usually find it’s best to say the city and the country. Especially since after simply saying “Australia”, the student will almost definitely ask “Aaah. Sydney?”

*grrrr*

“No, Melbourne. It’s further south”
“Aah. Olympics! 1952!”
“Um *tries desperately to remember* …yeah!”

Q. How long have you been in Japan?

A pretty easy answer, but be warned! It will almost immediately be followed by this one:

Q. Do you like Japan?
ALWAYS GIVE A POSITIVE ANSWER. And don’t do the same faux pas that I did by teaching them the concept of a ‘white lie’ later in the same lesson. It’s quite possibly demeaning, but some students can get narky over your Japan-bashing and complain which might mean the eventual loss of job. Or, permanently unfriendly students. So, happy happy joy joy answers, please.

Q. Do you speak Japanese?
This is all dependant on your actual skill, but since I barely speak anything, I tend to go for the comical answer, which is waving my hand in front of my face in the Japanese fashion of saying ‘no’ and saying “Nihongo dame!” (pronounce dah-meh, meaning “not good!”).

Q. Why did you come to Japan?
Again, try a comical answer, such as:

“Anime”
“Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?”

That was so worth it.

It’s somewhat depressing to realise that when you teach English to your Japanese students, you may also be giving them a general education.

This is not the case for ever student, of course, but I have had students of all ages who seem to be learning basic geography, or history, or world issues through their English classes. The courses aren’t designed to teach them these things - it’s just a topic that they can use to practise English. It can give them an example to practise their formal speech, or how to express an opinion, or how to give preferences…but for some reason, the content of the lessons seems to be new to them as well as the English.

This is understandable in some cases, where the lesson is about going through Immigration or ordering in a restaurant - the students may not now what the process is in an English-speaking country. But with higher level students, the lessons become more focused on describing detail, expressing opinions and so on. And there have been a few occassions where I’ve been taken aback by a student saying something like “I don’t have an opinion about global warming, I’ve never thought about it before”
“Well, can you tell me what you’ve heard about it?”
“Nothing, I don’t know”

Or worse:

“Excuse me, what is meaning ‘Holocaust’?”
“(Mental note: vocab low) During World War 2, when the Nazis were killing Jewish people. That time is called the Holocaust”
“What is that?”
“During World War II? Many Jewish people were killed in Europe. Death camps. Gas chambers, you know?”
“No, I don’t know”

Thankfully, she was the only student in my class that didn’t know.

There is a lot of talking about current issues and common subjects like music in lessons. Some students are great, they can talk about lots of different things, even if they are low level. But some students - geez. I wonder how they even knew there was such a language called ‘English’.

Mums and Dads around Japan are signing their kids up for English classes faster than they can be provided. It may be seem to be smart thinking to get your kids started on English as soon as possible, but I really wonder if that’s necessary when the child is only two years old and barely speaks anything, let alone English.

Yes that’s right, TWO YEARS OLD. That means that kids classes are often interjected with bouts of nappy-changing and vomiting. And that’s just for the toddlers. The older ones are just like kids anywhere else in the world. They run around, they scream, they hit each other for no apparent reason, they cry, they wet themselves.

Somewhere in all that, comes the actual education, even though most of us instructors are not formally qualified (besides the mandatory eikaiwa training, which can range from 8 hours to 3 days).

Most kids classes are about songs and games, which is meant to be some sort of “learning through fun” technique. The kids are encouraged to sing along or repeat what the instructors says. There are usually worksheets and report cards, but they don’t seem to mean much.

The main idea of kids classes, particularly for young kids, is to simply expose them to the language. It’s at this age when they can pick up new languages with no troubles at all. I question how useful the kids classes at eikaiwa though. Once a week for an hour doesn’t seem like enough “exposure”, especially if they speak Japanese for 70% of the lesson and completely forget what they learnt the moment the step out the door.

From what I hear from students, English is compulsory curriculum now in Japanese primary schools anyway. So these kids classes are really just a complementary add-on to what the schools are teaching…except it costs a lot more.

If you do teach kids, either at an eikaiwa or at a private school, you have to be able to tolerate kids. For those that can’t (or, like me, are borderline), take solace in the fact that the classes generally don’t go on for longer than an hour.

I’d also recommend drawing small cats or monsters instead of the smiley faces generally awarded for good work. They’ll love it and always remember you for it.