This kid's got it figured out.

My buddy Phi here has learned to aim low so he's more likely to be pleasantly surprised when he gets his tests back. Scoring a 67 instead of a predicted 50 is a great feeling for a junior high student. That, and he got a higher score due to my incredible teaching skills.

These kids' minds are so ready for molding...

These kids are great. Show 'em some good old fashioned western boxing and they start a brawl in the hall ways. They come up to me one day and say, "Show me how to do a hook!" "Show me how to throw a straight!" "Jab!" "Upper!"

What other possible alternatives are available to me? None. I'm a teacher, right? So, of course I educate them... and like any good students would do, they put their knowledge to work straight away.

Not gonna lie, this made my day..

I had to take a minute to soak it in, but after further inspection and the tactile response of picking it up, I realized it was real... It made it even better because one kid said, "Hey look, he's taking a picture of your notebook 'cause you're so dumb"

God, I love my job...

Holy crap...

Japanese schools are intense. With that established, the teachers have a lot of stress... So when they party, they leave it all on the table.


I love my co-workers.

First impressions

So we had an opening ceremony on the first day of school. The teachers ran me around for a little bit then we finally made it to the gym where all the students file in and sit on the hard wood floor. Poor little tykes... So after I made my little introduction to the student body, I went to stand on the side lines. Forever. Plus a day. I found myself looking for any kind of amusement. Then I caught this one kid looking at me so I give him this huge smile and cock my head back "SUP"

He starts cracking up, then a teacher comes out of nowhere and smacks him upside the head for having a good time. Heaven forbid you have a good time at an assembly. I felt kinda bad but found myself doing it to any other kid that would look at me.

This is going to be GREAT.

Finally...

Holy shite, skool starts tomorrow (Monday the 1st) and I'm chillin' on the second floor of my residence ridin' on someone's internet. For being a tech captital of the world, I expected to be jacked in when I touched down. Well.. FUCK, it's raining..

Ok, so I'm now on the staircase.. Anyway, my first week here has been pretty awesome. We hit up the beer garden on top of the Egret Center across from Himeji Castle where the view was amazing then I rocked out some Journey during karaoke and managed to cock block a fellow ALT something fierce, though I didn't realize it at the time.

Some of the English teachers who've been here the previous year took all us new guys to a gaijin bar after karaoke. And that's where I met the tallest guy in Japan at a lofty 6' 6"... He was pretty drunk so after I managed to ask what his name was, he proceeded to tell me that he can get "drugs and bitches" way cheap and his genitals resemble a fire hose. Too bad his hands were the size of an infant's or else I would've given him the benefit of the doubt.

More to come later, gotta make a good impression with my introduction speech.

And I'm at the airport...

I woke up at 4am today so I could be at the airport way too early for my flight.

I'm sitting at the terminal.

I'm tired, to be continued....

Sooo... This is gonna be stupid fun..

This Ex-Gaijin guy and I go way back so when he told me he wanted me to be his foreign correspondent in Japan I said, "Hells yeah! I'll do it."

So here's the deal. I'm leaving my half-ass job that I've been at while I finished up college and I'll be heading for this little city named Himeji in August. I'll be teaching English for a year and hopefully have some memorable experiences while I'm there (haha). Anything utterly ridiculous and/or amusing will find its way onto this blog as will any points of interest, if deemed worthy. But just so you know, it'll never come before the ridiculous.

I've been trying to prepare for my trip by playing Wii and my PSP. Other than that, I've got a rough idea on what to pack, how to steal a bike when I get there and I just finished a book written by a guy who spent a year teaching English in Japan. As far as I'm concerned, I'm freaking SET.

The main thing on my mind right now as I'm sitting here typing this is what I should do for my last day of work tomorrow... There's no one prank that really sticks out that I want to do so I'll just have to go with a mish-mash of smaller, hilarious antics.

That and I've been summoned for jury duty. Fuck.

How can I get to Japan working IT in Finance?

Let's say you'd like to work in Tokyo for a while, but you don't want to live in a 3' x 5' closet. Also, you don't want to put all the years into becoming a trader at a desk at one of the major investment firms. If this sounds like you, then you may want to look into IT. I'm sure when you think of Japan, you think "Surely they have a lot of software developers, these guys make video games"... but you would be sorely mistaken, just see here. And even the developers they do have (at least the ones I worked with), most are complete idiots that have enough problems starting windows, let alone writing any kind of coherent code. So how do you get there? Here's a list of things that helped me.

1. Study Abroad in Japan - Not only did I study Japanese in college, I studied in Japan. This gave the company that hired me the reassurance that I've lived in Japan before so I'll be fine this time too. Too bad when I studied there I was in Hiroshima, and Tokyo might as well be a different continent compared to the slow, rural life of Hiroshima. Also, in Hiroshima, the only other responsibility I had other than waking up in the morning was making sure I could stumble back to the dorms at 2 AM every day. 
2. Get a Degree in a Tech Related Field - This is sort of self-explanatory, but unlike most Japanese developers (that get degrees in history or origami), you'll be held to a higher standard and should have some tech related degree. 
3. Get Some Work Experience - I worked as an intern at a large tech company for a few years during college but that isn't the same as having a full-time job. After I graduated from college, I immediately applied for jobs in Tokyo working in IT. Guess how many of those companies called me for a job interview? None. So after college I got a job at a small tech company for a year, working in a lot of different technologies and responsible for my own work. Then I applied for jobs in Tokyo again... with no responses. Then I moved to a very large tech company, working in one, outdated technology with little to no responsibility. I applied for the jobs in Tokyo again... and got a load of responses. So it could be the 3 years of software development experience, but I have a suspicion that it is more of working for a large company.
4. Demonstrate an Interest in Finance - Probably the easiest way to do this is by taking some courses at your local college in finance. That being said, you don't need to know anything about finance to work in finance. You'll learn everything you need to know when you're on the job.

All of this combined with interviewing well got me a job in Tokyo, with the company paying for the whole move. The jobs in finance might be a little slim right now with the industry being down, but if you really want to work in Tokyo in Finance, there's no time like the present to get ready. In my next post, I'll give you my unbiased ( *ahem* ) view of what it is like working in the finance industry in Tokyo.

(BTW: The longer I wrote this post, the more I drank... so no proof-reading tonight...)

I want to live in Japan for a while, how should I go about this?

So you want to live in Japan for a little while? There are a lot of ways to do this and there are a lot of things to consider. The most popular, but maybe not the easiest way to live in Japan is to become an English teacher. There have been budget cuts within schools with the intention of slimming down the number of English teachers within each school, (not to mention the collapse of NOVA... idiots), but there never seems to be a shortage of jobs. Let me go down the list of your options from what I consider the best to the worst.

1. Student - If you're currently going to college, enjoy that shit while you can. There is no better time to travel abroad and no better time to experience culture than when you're living life while your parents are footing the bill. My first time going to Japan was when I was in college and no matter how many times I go back, it will never be the same as that. The University that I attended had a sister-university in Hiroshima so I was able to study there for a summer, let financial aid pay for $2000 of booze, and have one of the most memorable times of my life. If you have one of these types of programs at your school, you're in luck. Also, even if you don't have this type of program at your school, many other universities will allow you to join their program for a semester. Don't worry if your Japanese isn't that great because they don't do ANY homework in college. Surprising, right? You hear so much about how lousy the American educational system is and then you find out that colleges in Japan don't even assign homework. (Ok, ok, they do have some homework, but I didn't work on it more than 60 minutes in any given week. I hear Florida State is similar.... but I digress).                             
2. English Teacher - I've never been an English teacher in Japan, but one of my old roommates and best friends is a teacher in Japan. If there is one serious question to ask yourself before moving to Japan to become an English teacher, it is "Can I lower my standard of living and survive?" If you're going to be an English teacher in Japan, you are probably just graduating college or you've been out of college for a year, working a half-ass job, and you want to hang out in Japan for a while. You may think that you lived like a hobo in a railcar during college, but in Japan, you'll probably live like a blind hobo in a straw hut. Another thing, don't get a teaching job in Tokyo. There's nothing like having one of the lowest paying jobs in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Teach in a cheaper town ( even Osaka is much cheaper ) and go to Tokyo every few months to see all the sheep.                                                                                                        
3. Finance Worker - This is how I went to live in Japan. There are a lot of positives and negatives of being a salaryman. First, the positives: This is an incredibly sexy job. If you're in Tokyo and meet a woman, tell her you work for one of the big investment banks and watch her eyes light up. Another great thing is the pay. Any decent job (e.g. non-teaching job) will give you a housing allowance that will allow you to use your pre-tax dollars to pay your rent. Another positive is that working in the finance industry can be sort of interesting, for a while. Now with a few of the negatives: Working for a Japanese finance company (don't let it fool you, even if the company is an American company and it is in Japan, it is a Japanese company) can be ridiculous. Some of the idiocy that you will experience is people competing to see who can get to the office earliest. Oh, and another important thing to remember, "being at work" and "doing work" are two totally different things. Another point of stupidity is people staying at the office just to leave after their superiors, regardless of having any work to finish. There are a million other things, but I'll save that for another post...                                
4. Other - If you are fluent in Japanese you may be able to fit into this category. Especially if you are some type of skilled labor. This seems like it would be a pretty sweet job in Japan because you'll spend more time with the people. Also, if it's possible, be a traffic cop. You'll have absolutely no job satisfaction but you'll be able to show up drunk and nobody would ever know.

I'd like to hear if anybody else has worked in any other industries in Japan. Post a comment if you wanna share.

An Introduction...

I decided to start this blog so I can share my experience of preparing, then subsequently moving to Japan, and why I came back to the United States in less than a year. Japan's not an awful place to live, and actually, I had a ton of fun there. But where ever you live, if you are unable to get what you want out of life, it's probably not going to work. I'm going to write this blog in a series of explanations of my experiences and other people's experience about how to get to Japan, live there, and maybe even some day depart.