Another Job Update

Strawberry Shortcake

The last update I wrote was posted a few days after I wrote it, so this one will appear to be close, but there are actually a few days in between.

Today I had interview #2 at the Foreign Language College. This time, I had a sample lesson for 30 minutes (The longest sample I've ever had to do) with 5 students while the head of the school observed. I think it went really well, and the students were great. After the lesson, I had an interview with the school head, and the head english teacher. I think everything went well, so I'll hear from them soon. I think I'll get a part time job with them, but hopefully they'll offer me the full time job.

I also had an interview with the Japanese tech support company that I found at the employment office. It went okay I guess, but I'm sure I made a bunch of mistakes in etiquette.

I also got a call from Bloomberg today for an interview on Wednesday, which is exciting.

Saturday's interview with the dot com was terrible. Admittedly, I wasn't as prepared as I should have been, but neither was the interviewer, (the president of the company) but he was a jerk even before he really started asking questions. Even if I was better prepared for the interview, I wouldn't want to work for him.

After that on Saturday, I met Ai and her mom for dinner. Ai's mom was the one who really convinced me that I could find a non-teaching job, and now I don't want to stop until I find something. But I'm kind of on a short time limit. My current visa expires at the end of May, so I'll have to renew it, and I have to move out of my apartment by April 25th, so I have to find a company that will sponsor my visa, and cosign my apartment lease pretty soon. I hope I wont have to settle for something less that I want to get a visa and apartment.

Gland Canyon

Gland Canyon
They probably should have
checked the spelling before they
had it set in stone.

I know, I know. You've all been refreshing your browser windows every 30 minutes to see if I've updated my bolg. At least those of you who are still reading.

Well, I've been pretty busy. I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but that job that I thought I had, well, I don't. I'm too young. Apparently, some schools set an arbitrary age limit, under or over which they are reluctant to hire even qualified teachers. So these last two weeks I've been applying to everything I see. The result of this is that I've had 6 interviews in the last week, and I have at least 5 more next week. The exciting thing is that there are some pretty neat jobs in this bunch, including some non-teaching positions.

First, I have been applying to some ALT positions, kind of like what I've been doing for the last year, except for private schools, which pay much better. Generally $2800 to $3500 a month. Most public school positions pay $2200 or less, averaged over 12 months.

The next step up is a position as the head teacher for a small foreign language college. The current head teacher is really trying to sell me to the management, but he's concerned that my age (again, too young) will be a setback in terms of the management's ideals. If I don't get full time with them, I should get part time, paying about as much as my full-time position did.

The most exciting for me potentally, are two interview I have set up, one Saturday, and one Monday, which are not teaching positions. The first is for what I guess would be a DotCom, which has a variety of online business, mostly to english education, as a sales person. I don't know much about the position itself, but it doesn't include teaching.

The second is a result of a tip that my friend Sunny gave me. She was an exchange student from Korea at Asia University, the school that I studied at 4 years ago. She currently has a job working with Korean trading company in Tokyo, which she found by using the government employment agency. Yep! The unemployment office! There is actually one in Tokyo that is specifically for foreign residents. I was a little apprehensive at first. I'm not too confident in my Japanese skills, and the information on the web said it was for foreign residents of Japanese ancestry. But I decided to check it out (Since Sunny doesn't have Japanese ancestry) and found that they are really quite good.

After a quick registration, I sat down with an employment councilor and an english translator, and they asked me some question, mostly in Japanese about what I wanted to do and about my work history. After that, they searched through a huge database of employment requests sent in by companies. We picked out about 7 or 8 of them, looked them over more throughly and called two of them. One manager asked to talk directly to me, and in Japanese, he told me a little about the position and asked about my computer background. Mostly he was concerned that I understood Japanese and Unix. I have done some tinkering with Linux, and Mac OS, beneath the surface is basically a kind of Unix, so I think he was satisfied enough to schedule an interview for Monday. The other one we called, didn't want to talk to me. They just wanted me to write a Japanese resume and send it to them so they could check my Japanese ability that way.

Some other jobs that we found were sales positions, and a position at a real-estate company that works with foreign residents finding monthly apartments and stuff, which could be interesting.

So I have a full schedule of interview, plus my third attempt at the drivers test next week. Don't stop reading!

Driver's License Getting pt. 2

Driving course
Here's the course for the driving test. There is a practice time for an hour before the testing starts where you can walk through the course. The place that I failed at is right behind me.

Today was part 2 of my driver's license getting adventure: the driving test.

I knew it would be difficult, but after talking to a girl who had tried it 3 times already, and attended a practice session last weekend, I got the full picture of the difficulty. Errors that would be one point off on the Washington State driver's test, like running over a curb, are immediate failure on this test, and things that they wouldn't even care about, like staying close to the left curb while making a left turn, are points off.

So, out of the 15 people that tried today, 12 people failed, (including me) and none of the first time people passed. The mistake that I made that failed me immediately was made as the tester was explaining a small error that I was making, so my concentration of other things was broken. But he did say that my shifting was very good (even though it was the first time to drive a stick shift in Japan, which is on the opposite side of US cars, and even though I haven't driven a stick since we sold the Subaru about 4 years ago.) But driving a stick, kept me from making the mistake of turning the wipers on when I tried to use the turn signal, and I didn't make the serious mistake driving on the right side of the road like the person before and after me.

I did meet some cool people this time though. One guy who was trying to get his license had lived in the US for the last 5 years, first at Evergreen State for an English language program, then at Ohio State for college. The girl that had taken it three times is from Shanghai, and just finished a masters degree at the university right on the other side of the hill from my apartment. So I'll be seeing them next time, and maybe for practice this weekend.

My next attempt will be next wednesday.

Driver's License getting

This week I decided to use my copious amounts of spare time to get a driver's license. I have an international driver's license, which until about a year ago, would have allowed me to drive in Japan for as long as I had a current one. Last year however, the law was changed so that after a certain period, you can't use an international driver's license even if it's valid. None of the descriptions of these changes that I have read have been entirely clear, but it seems that you can't use an international driver's license after 90 days of living in Japan, and you must leave the country for more than 90 days before you can use or renew an international driver's license.

So the only option is to get a Japanese driver's license. Unfortunately, laws governing exchanging a foreign license for a Japanese license have changed recently too. It use to be that all you had to do was show up with a Japanese translation of your license, take a simple written test, probably in your own language, and they'd issue you a Japanese license. The laws have changed however, so that now only citizens of a few countries are eligible for a direct license exchange. In order to be eligible for a license no questions asked (well, ten questions actually...), your country must pass certain overall standards for traffic safety, and give licenses to people who are licensed in their own country. The problem for the US is that the national government does not maintain records of the type that Japan needs, plus each state has its own licensing policies, making it very difficult to meet Japan's licensing department's requests. Since the US doesn't meet Japan's qualifications, we have to take two simplified tests of our knowledge and driving skill.

So begins my process. I started by getting my Washington State Driver's License translated into Japanese by the Japan Automobile Federation (Like the AAA in the US) in the middle of last week. I planned on going to the licensing center last friday, but when I woke up, if was very cold and snowing, so I went back to sleep. On monday however, I did wake up, at half past seven, and headed for the licensing center. Unlike in Washington, where it's usually located in an old strip mall or something, this licensing center was a huge complex of buildings, with a large driving corse. I arrived at 9:30, just before the application period closed at 10am. After submitting my paper work, waited for about an hour and a half until I was finally called to the window for a few questions. About 10 minutes later, I was given back some paper work, and told where to go to pay the fees, and have my picture taken. At 11:30, two hours after arriving, everyone was finally called in for the written exam. It was a ten question true/false exam, in any language you wanted to take it in, (I choose English) and we were given 30 minutes to complete it. There were questions like "If you are traveling through an intersection, and an emergency vehicle is approaching behind you, it's okay continue traveling because you were in a hurry" and "If you approach a pedestrian or bicycle crossing, and there are people crossing, you must stop and wait until they have crossed the street", and "If the traffic light is red, but there are no cars coming, it it okay to go trough it". I was the first to complete the test -- about three minutes after we started...

After everyone was done with the test, we went into another building to get our tests graded. In the same lobby, there were another 800 or so people (told you it was a big place), who were taking the full test, waiting for their test scores to appear on a large screen. When the scores appeared on the screen, about two-thirds of the crowd screamed happily, and the other third stormed out angrily, often being chased after by a friend who had just finished screaming and jumping up and down. It was interesting to see how everyone else has to do it, kind of funny to watch, since passing the written test in Washington isn't much harder than the one I had just taken, and also relieving that I didn't have to take the same test that they were all taking.

A few minutes later, someone came out and told the ten of us that we'd all passed. No one was screaming and jumping up and down this time. They handed us all a a map and certificate that we'd passed the written exam, and a date and time to show up for the skills test.

It was now 12, and the driving corse was open for walking, so I too a walk around it. There are stoplights, traffic signs, fake railroad crossings, and two small hills, and some narrow streets to simulate many of the small neighborhood streets in Japan. Most of the corse is apparently done at a pretty slow speed until the last section, were you must speed up to 40kph (25mph). So basically, if I don't run any signs, hit any curbs, or forget to use my turn signals, I should be all right. Oh, and I have to drive on the left side of the road, and the stick shift will be in my left hand, and the turn signal in my left. But other than that, I should be fine.

I'll let ya'll know on Thursday if I pass.

Welcome to March

Today was my first day of nothing. I started by doing a little job hunting, and then went up to Tokyo to meet Ai. I bought another suit, which I'll have to pick up later this week, and went to Ai's university to go to an interviewing and entry sheeting seminar. (I had to sneak into the library with a fake student number though.) I bought a couple job hunting weekly magazines that Ai's mom recommended, but didn't see much in either one, but we met her at the station on our way home, and in 30 seconds of looking through it, she found a few more. Wow, she's good. I did a little favor for her so she owes me a bit, but she'd help me anyway.

That's it for my short stupid random post that says nothing. You can tell I didn't work today huh? I'm not to tired to write! I have no milk, and it's too late to get some. No 24 hour groceries nearby.

Job offer, but do I want it?

The original position that I was offered by the company I've been talking with didn't work out. This school thought that I was too young. They said that they wanted someone that was at least 25. Whatever, that's not a big difference. But the whole thing was starting to frustrate me. The company (I wont name it, since it would be really easy for it to be picked up in Google) said that they'd call me back soon with another position. Late last week, I didn't much care if they did or not, since I was frustrated with them. I whipped off a bunch of applications to some other companies that were advertising, and got a few bites, but today, the company (which will not be named) called me back with another offer. I don't have the details yet, except that it's at a private high school teaching 10th and 11th graders, with a total of 18 teaching hours a week. (That's full time)

But now I'm not sure if I want it. I had given up on my project to find a real job a few months ago because I couldn't find anything that I thought I could do. Everything I saw was a mid career position and/or required almost native level Japanese. But last night I talked to Ai's mom for a while about real jobs, and she's convinced me that there are plenty of jobs out there that require little more than me being young, capable of learning, and being a good english speaker. So I was looking forward to having a lot of time this month to look for a real job, but with the call today, I'm being forced to make the decision between a pretty good job now, but with little or no future, or starving for a bit while I look for a real job.

Train Gropers (and Job Update!)

Laurie (disguised as Steve) sent me a question about an article Tokyo's 2004 record of 2,201 reported gropings on Tokyo trains.

No, I have never been a groper nor a gropie, but it is commonly know to be a problem. The Yamanote line, making a 45 minute loop around Tokyo, is the busiest line in Japan, and during the morning rush, thousands of people cram into each train. The trains are so packed in that if you didn't have your hands free when you got on the train, it can be very difficult to get them above your head to grab a handle, especially without inadvertently groping someone. I suppose it is the hope of gropers that their groping will be assumed to be accidental, or just ignored. From what I've ready, most gropings probably go unreported, because it is thought to be too troublesome to peruse it, or no benefit will come out of pursuing it anyway. Anecdotal stories suggest that many get away with anything from a slap or kick somewhere important, to a shout of "pervert" by the gropie. For those that are actually drug out of the train to a police box, a fine usually awaits.

Job Update

I got an update on my job Saturday afternoon. I passed the test that I had last weekend, and the sales people were quite happy with it, so this tuesday, they plan on selling me to the school. It sounds as if they feel confident that the school will want to meet me, so probably the following week I will go meet the school in person.

I still haven't decided when I will cancel my apartment contract. Since I have to cancel it 30 days in advance of my move-out day, I'd like to cancel it soon, (I hoped to do this yesterday) but the start and end dates of rental agreements are more flexible in Japan, so I may arrange it so that I have a few days to a week of overlap between the two to give me time to move my stuff. I might try to rent a truck, but I don't have a drivers license, and your can't use and international drivers license if you've been a resident for over 90 days, so I'd have to get a Japanese license in the next few weeks. Ai wont drive a truck either.

The last day of my job is Feb 28th, so I'll have a 3 week break. Maybe I'll try getting a driver's license.

To (a)Part(ment) or Not

Well, it seems like my job is getting closer, but it's only inching, or maybe even creeping. It's been over a month since I first sent in my resume, and I've had two interviews with the company so far. Last Saturday was a kind of test, after which I was told that there were two other people being considered for the position, and that they'd give me an update by the end of this week after the other two people had their second interview. Today I found out that the sales staff will be having a meeting on Tuesday, and that they'd be trying to sell me to the school sometime soon after that.

My biggest problem is that if I'm moving out of my apartment, I have to give one month notice to the landlord. (much better than in Washington, where you pretty much can't get out of a lease before it's over) But I would have to start my new job on or around April 1, which means that I have to know by the end of next week. So my big dilemma is whether or not to cancel my lease this weekend so I will move out by March 20th, or to wait until I hear something. I suppose It might be nice to have a day or three of overlap between the two apartments so I can move my stuff more easily. I wonder if I could rent a truck. (I've still never driven here...)

I'm expecting news about my job within two days. I'm not going to say anything before that time, other than that I have been shopping for apartments in Tokyo. Here's a random photo for your enjoyment.

6 Dollar Apple

6 Dollar Apple
Originally uploaded by noexit.

Ever wondered what I $6 apple tasted like?


No? Me neither.