*Phew* I've finally had a chance to sit down and unwind. As mentioned in my last post, I attended some teaching in Japan things this weekend, and in case anyone else was interested, this is the general gist of it :
My Japanese journey
The day started early at 7.45 (the official time on the letter was 8am, but they suggest people get there earlier so that demonstrations and interviews can be arranged by the time of arrival ie. late people go last) at a meeting room in a Perth Hotel (seems to be the case for the letters i received).
The morning is organised in a two point five hour block where recruiters basically stick you in a room with between 12-15 people and spam you with propaganda about working for their company, life in japan, and all the bits and pieces that go in between. The first session typically starts with a general "living in Japan" in terms of cost of living, accommodation and getting there. All the typical stuff there, but I was both concerned and surprised by the range of houses that you get put in (from SHOCKING to nice) and the cost of living ($40 for a pizza anyone!??!)
The second session is then a spiel about the company, the classrooms, the teaching materials and lessons. During this session, the recruiter gave us demonstrations on how they teach a typical class there and we were all asked to be active participants. At the end of this bit, they surprised us with a "presentation test" where we were given a topic, given 15 seconds to think about the prep, and then told to present it in less than one minute. Luckily, i volunteered to go third, and was given a relatively easy topic. Apparently the earlier you go, the easier the topic (ie. my favourite restaurant). The final few people were given topics such as current affairs in Japan, the Japanese prime minister, and "my philosophy in life". As you can expect, they struggled to think of what to say in the short time span of 15 seconds, and did more poorly than the people that went first. So a tip to anyone involved in this sort of thing - volunteer to go first or somewhere near the top :D
The third session was about taxes, visa arrangements, training etc once you get to Japan. They also littered it with some fairly threatening things "if you quit before your one year contract is up, you will NEVER work for us ever again" - which begs the question, why would you return there if you quit within a few months? But yeah, several questions irked me quite a bit :S
There was then generally either lunch time / morning tea, or icebreaker type games to get you talking to each other and off your (by now) very numb ass.
After this, we had to do either a 30 minute English test, or write a 15 minute spiel on why we wanted to go to Japan. It wasn't too difficult, but there were a few people that I spoke to afterwards that really struggled ( I dont think their English was too good in the first place).
Following this, we were then asked to present a teaching demonstration based on what was shown in the second bit of the morning. So we all took turns, taught, and got feedback and participated.
After this, (depending on the school), the personal interviews took place. For one school, they took place after the group session, and for another school, they call you back for an interview in the afternoon or the next day. At this point, you are also able to evaluate whether you want to continue.
The personal interviews were your general job interview type questions. Lots of "name a time when.... " type questions, and "describe..." etc type questions. All in all, the interviews ranged from between 30-1 hour.
So that was the major thing this weekend .
I've got one more in two weeks time, and then we'll just have to wait and see...
Besides that, I caught up with my lovely friend Theng the other night and went to coffee at Banca Cafe , which is a cosy little cafe near my house and is named like that due to being in the old Commonwealth bank site. I hadn't seen Theng for ages, and so we stayed up till past midnight just chatting, and I would have loved to do more catching up (especially as she is leaving for Canberra in a month or so) but I had interviews to prep for.
This weekend also saw a lovely dinner with my favourite girls at Seoul korean bbq, a place that saw our clothes and hair full of smelly bbq odour. hahah classssssssssssssssy! =D Always nice to catch up, and the girls got me some very funky and colourful bed stuff (hehe i've been getting heaps of those) which is currently on my bed at the moment.
I would take photos to break up this text-block but my camera is out of batteries at the moment, so it will have to wait :D
