OK, Let’s start in the beginning. My TEFL training doesn’t begin for another week, so I guess this is a good time to bring you guys up to speed on the story so far:
This all began about three weeks ago when one of my professors (who doesn’t even teach English) sent me an email about teaching English in Japan. I followed-up with another email and found out how it works. My university has an arrangement with a university in Japan and twice a year they send over two students to teach English. No one had shown any interest yet, and I was told that if I wanted in, no problem. I had always assumed these things were very competitive. I mean who wouldn’t want to teach overseas? Well, I guess a lot of people weren’t interested, since they were having trouble finding someone this time.
I thought about it for all of five minutes and fell in love with the idea. I’ve always been a bit of a Japan-o-phile, and I even took a conversational Japanese course way back in community college. I like to play Go. I even don’t hate anime too badly, although I do draw the line at martial-arts films. I had considered visiting Japan about 20 years ago, but gave it up as a dream that was too expensive to ever really happen. Well, here was my big chance, not just to visit but to live and work there for half a year. The ultimate working vacation.
Besides, I spend most of my time on the Internet, most of my friends are on the Internet, I can train my family to be on the Internet, so what’s the big deal? No problem, right? Wrong. I quickly found out that the Internet is not everywhere, and that net access is notoriously difficult to get in Japan. I’m still not sure that I absolutely believe it, but I have to assume that it will at least be inconvenient. Strike one.
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