My parents have been doing an international homestay at their place in Calgary, AB so we have had students living at our family home since I was in high school from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Mexico. After realizing the struggle most of the students went thru in their attempt to get settled in Canada, I guess you could say it drove my curiousity and caused a deep desire within for me to want to go over to their country and see for myself what it would be like. I had quite a few friends who were doing their education degree at the University of Lethbridge during my years there and most of them talked quite highly of their degree and how much they enjoyed teaching. With my desire to live abroad in Asia and their positive feedback about teaching I figured that once I spent all the money I had on my 9 month journey backpacking, That Japan would be a good place to call home for a bit and a good part of the world to work and earn a decent amount of money.
As I was running out of funds I was in Austrailia backpacking the east coast at the time and realized I was not at all ready to return back home. My money was fading quickly because Australia is quite expensive to travel in so I booked a ticket to Bali, Indonesia and would spend the rest of my savings travelling around Indonesia where the cost of living was much much lower than in Australia. I applied for about 13 different teaching jobs in Japan and basically took the first job offer that was given to me. It was for a 1 year contract teaching at a Junior High School in a small rural city called Ashikaga which was located in the prefecture called Tochigi. It was about a 60 km train ride north of Tokyo but I was pleased that I was still close enough to Tokyo that I could jump on a train whenever I wanted to see what the city had in store for me. Once I got settled in I was dropped off at my school with little to no material or preparation and just expected to start teaching. I quickly realized that all the horrosr stories I had heard about working for Agencies were turning out to be exactly true. So for me, I had no teaching experience and was basically just dropped into a deep tank of water in hopes that I knew how to swim, or atleast that's exactly what it felt like! After weeks had gone by, I started to realize that teaching was a pretty chilled out job for me but I really don't think I could ever do it as a career as its a bit of a boring job and don't really get to talk much to the kids as the English learning system is pretty shifty here in Japan. The grade 9's who are in their 3rd year of English just look at me like I am talking a different language or from a different planet so the language barrier has definitely caused me a bit or grief at times. Since I was 14 I wanted to become a Police officer, and even after going thru university and now traveling and seeing a whole different part of life, I still feel like this is my calling in life.. I need a fast paced, changing job that keeps me going or else I get bored really quickly and lose interest. I noticed this even with girls too, I've had 2 amazing long relationship but a fading sense of interest was one of the major causes why they didn't continue to work out.. oh well! guess that's a sign i"m just not ready to settle down yet! still got a lot of living to do! lol.. as you know, you meet beautiful people from all parts of the world and its great to travel as it makes you realize there's no reason to feel you have to settle cause there's beautiful talented women or men all over this world..
So as for me and Japan, In my free time I helped train the girls volleyball team and they are really good. The head coach is a hard core guy who has the girls up in a sweat from the time practice starts till it ends 2 hrs later. They train 5 days a week 2 1/2 hrs after school everyday and usually do an hour in the morning too! I think a lot of success in sports has a lot to do with coaching and these girls are really amazing. We had a tournament on the weekend and ended up losing in the finals for the league champs so they were pretty torn and devastated that they only got 2nd place!! In Japan, sports take priority in life and they train hard like Olympic athletes. If you look at a sport like Judo and watch how tough the Japanese guys are, you'll begin to get an idea the talent over here.
The sad part is that once they get out of high school there is immense pressure for them to get real jobs and careers and all of a sudden all this training and talent they've gotten over training so hard during their youth is just pushed out the back door and suddenly they become so busy with work or university they have no time for sports and very few students will pick the professional athlete path in life as its more or less frowned upon..
I feel as if I've already learned a bit about this country after living here for just a short period of time. I figure if I'm only here for a year I might as well take in everything i can get from my experience here and anything to do with sports is always a keen interest for me to learn about.
The food is actually really good here and a huge bonus as to why one would choose to live in this country. I love sushi, I could eat it everyday for the rest of my life so that's always a tasty treat. its pretty cheap too, 2 pieces of sushi for $1 CDN.. you can get pretty full for like $7-8 dollars so a lot cheaper that back home... and the yakatori (kabobs) are pretty amazing too. all in all the food is great, lots of rice and noodles are common here too. Ive been cooking a lot of pasta and hamburgers and all the western food cause i didn't get to eat it for 10 months now so its a nice change..
Japan is a really humid climate here and rains alot, the people are pretty serious most the time as its a 1st world country but the girls are very beautiful. I think Japanese girls are the best looking girls of Asia for sure!
as for teaching: I'm really enjoying it now and its pretty cool!I teach around 18 classes a week to junior high kids and after school I'm helping as much as possible to train the girls volleyball team and we had a big tournament a couple weeks ago and kicked ass, won 5 of 6 games and lost in the league finals. still trying to figure out if the girls have that much talent or I'm just a wicked coach.. ha..!!
I have been keeping pretty busy with the kids so i can save money so its worked out quite well! The kids had a bit or a hard shell to break through and it didn't make it any easier coming into the school year half way through. But like most things in life, a bit of work and effort and now they have warmed up to me quite a bit and yell across the hall or classrooms as i walk by " Hi KEVINNNN!!!" its pretty adorable!
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