My Job. (Really.)

OK, OK ... I really (really!) don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but check this out:

I work Tuesday through Friday. Monday is my "research day", but there are no expectations on me to research, so it's effectively a three-day weekend. Each day I work, I wake up at 6:10 AM, take a shower, and am out the door by 7. I walk to Mikage (my neighborhood) station and catch the train to Oji-Koen (where Kaisei College is) around 7:06.

On the train, I watch packs of uniformed adolescent schoolboys do knuckleheaded things to each other. For instance, on the train they play this paper-rock-scissors game together, and the loser has to sit patiently as he gets finger-flicked in the forehead by all the winners. This reminds me of my junior high days when I would play a game called "quarters" in which the last person to touch a spinning quarter must subject his knuckles to the sliding rough-edged coin hurled at him at a high velocity. It's nice to know that somethings never change.

Anyway, Oji-Koen is two stops from Mikage. Once I get out, I buy a breakfast pastry at a konbini and, whistling a happy tune, start walking up the hill toward my college. The walk itself, even though it involves a sharp ascent up a hill, is a wonderful experience that never gets old. The path I take travels alongside a babbling brook and is canopied by pink boughs of blossoming cherry trees through which the morning sunlight streams and shimmers. Even if I were blind, the floral fragrances alone would make this a wonderful stroll. As I get closer to the school, I take a path which lies on a low bluff overlooking the back of Oji-Koen zoo. 20 feet to my left, I see emus, deer, ostriches, kangaroos, wallabies, and giraffes, and I like to cheerfully wave at each beast as I walk past. As I get closer to the school, I am greeted by a granite sculpture of the Virgin Mary perched high atop on of the school's columned towers.

Once I arrive at the college (around 7:40), I am warmly greeted by one of Kaisei's uniformed security guards (I have no idea why Kaisei has its own police force, but they do...). The guard always cheerfully says "ohayo gozaimasu!" and bows deeply. I reply by doing the same. As I enter the building, I sign in at the front office, check my mailbox, and walk up a flight of stairs to my office where I consume my breakfast pastry and go over the day's lesson plans.

Perhaps I should describe the working atmosphere of Kobe Kaisei. I'll start with the command structure: Kaisei College is ultimately ruled by a mysterious cadre of elite nuns whose powerful perch is so lofty that I, from my low vantage point, am unable to perceive it. Occasionally, I see a nun walking around (a nun even--I shit you not--poured me a glass of beer at the school's semester-opening party a few weeks ago) and I wonder if she is my great-great-grandboss or something. Underneath the nuns is the president, who I recognize by his aura of professionalism and coattailed blazer. Underneath him is a legion of people who I think might be my bosses, but I'm never sure because no one ever bosses me around or even tells me what to do.

Everyone is immaculately groomed or clean-shaven, and all garments are well-pressed. Women teachers wear sharp-looking businesswoman wear, and the male teachers wear suits and ties. I, on the other hand, wear my trusty cargo pants and an untucked button-down shirt which (I think) is meant to be worn untucked. Somedays I am scruffier than others (most readers know how loathe I am to bring blade to face) and my hair is often clearly wind-blown from the walk up. I keep expecting someone to tell me I look like shit and I need to clean myself up, but everyone treats me with unceasing politeness and mention of my appearence has yet to be made.

As for the students, the person in Fort Collins who told me Kaisei College students wear uniforms was mistaken. The students wear whatever they want. Older students often wear businesswoman suits (they often have job interviews after class), and younger students wear casual clothes, with jungle camouflage being a prominent fabric pattern for some reason. A handful students regularly dress in what I call hooker-outfits (~4 inch high heels, thigh-high stockings, daring miniskirts, miniature halter-tops), which can often be distracting to any non-neutered male teacher. One student even wore a shirt that sported an image of Disney's Bambi--a frame from the scene where the young deer was trying to stay balanced on an icy surface. Above the image was printed "Face-Down, Ass-Up, That's the way I like to fuck!"

Sheesh! And there's nuns walking around outside...

The biggest challenge in this job is getting students to participate in class discussion. Japanese girls seem to be the polar opposite of Arab boys, who like to shout comments to the teacher and answer questions, and are rarely afraid to look like an idiot. At Kaisei, the students usually look at me, pay attention, take notes, nod in understanding, but never raise their hand or say a word when I ask the class a general question. Even if it's the easiest question in the world, a question I know everyone knows the answer to, they just stare at me and watch me squirm. I've been told many times that this is standard classroom behavior in Japan, but it's quite difficult to get used to.

So, a casual classroom in which students freely dialogue with the teacher and answer questions and ask their own seems to be a fond memory and an impossible dream. What I have found, however, is that putting students in groups actually works, and wonderfully so. Take three or four normally catatonic students, put them in a group, give them a task, and watch them go! I never thought I'd be a cheerleader for any form of groupwork, but in this culture it's great.

After class, the students like to come up and ask me all the questions they didn't ask in class when they were supposed to. Sometimes, they also just want to talk to me, try out their English, be friendly, and make me feel very welcome. Students are usually just being kind and friendly, but it's in these situations where most of the terrifying flirtatious attempts and bold innuendo occasionally occurs (from them, not me of course). The less mentioned about that the better, but suffice it to say I am a heterosexual male, and a solitary one at that, so, on a chemical level, it's extremely difficult to maintain a disinterested poker-face and politely shut them down. But this is something I'm getting better at--a skill I never thought I'd need to learn.

Perhaps I should shift here and describe my pay in vague terms. Kaisei College pays for my apartment and train fees. They also pay me overtime because I'm in the classroom more than my contract-mandated 16 hours a week (I'm at 20 this semester). Additionally, I can expect a hefty bonus twice a year. The kicker is that, for my first two years, this is all tax-free. My yearly salary might be average and silly-to-boast about, but I am currently making at least four times as much money as I've ever earned in a single year. For comparision, just a few months ago, I was at King Soopers grocery store in Ft. Collins, cashing in my accumulation of pennies in order to buy four rolls of cheap toilet paper.

As for drawbacks to this job, about the only one I can think of is that Kaisei College isn't a demanding or impressive institution in an academic sense. The Kobe Kaisei compound in which I work has multiple buildings, and students from kindergarten to college are taught there. In terms of prestige, Kobe Kaisei Junior High is, I'm told, the Harvard of private junior high schools in Japan. Kobe Kaisei College, on the other hand, is regarded as highly as Front Range (a very pricey Front Range). It's exceedinly rare to fail a student, and the administration discourages this. This policy, of course, doesn't mark Kaisei College as an elite institution. So once all this is said and done, I'm not expecting future employers to be awed at my tenure here.

But it does qualify as "overseas teaching experience," a critical aspect for anyone seeking to make a career in this field. Plus it pays great, has wonderful perks, wonderful students, and I'm really having a wonderful (albeit lonesome) time here.

Here's a picture of the cubicle-hell destiny I always feared I'd wind up in--a destiny it would appear that I've avoided (for now, anyway). It's a great 2D CG picture with some spiffy Cthulu imagery (again). Check the label on the printer... it and all the other minute details make this a superb and brilliant "everyday dystopia" satirical masterpiece.


Whew ... so that's pretty much my job. I hope I didn't sound too bragadocious, but I love it. Any questions? Now what do you people want to know about? I'm open for suggestions.