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sam
Joined: 28 May 2007
Location: osaka
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 Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 3:05 pm |
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give me a month and i can tell you if one company is okay or terrible, at least.
and yeah, JET is cool if you want to be living in a town of 3000 people on a mountain but i dunno, i like people too much.
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sam
Joined: 28 May 2007
Location: osaka
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| Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 3:51 pm |
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| Tokyo Rude wrote: |
| sam tell me which company so I can tell you if you're about to be fucked or not. |
well being in the UK my options were pretty much limited to the big nova-a-like eikaiwas, so i expect a certain degree of fucking; that said, i went with ECC because they seem the least evil and i couldn't find nearly as many horror stories on the internet as with all the others. they seem pretty cool and helpful so far, but i'm not in the country yet so we'll see!
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sam
Joined: 28 May 2007
Location: osaka
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| Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 2:13 pm |
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| 108 wrote: |
| sam wrote: |
| i went with ECC |
i've personally never heard anything bad about them!
give me a call when you're in town dude |
well i guess that is encouraging!
i think i'm going to be in osaka but will hit you up for curry recommendations soon as i go to tokyo.
i was placed on the JET reserve list and told i might get a call any time from may to december, but i'd decided it wasn't really for me anyway and got myself the eikaiwa job the next month. plus in my JET interview they said "you are a vegetarian. what is your opinion on my country's whale trade?".
i can tell you that everything luckystrike and tim say about the JET application process is 100% true, and the ECC one was nowhere near as bad; i emailed someone my CV and online application form, they gave me an interview the next month (they hire worldwide all year round) and i showed up. i hear ECC has the toughest interview process of all the major conversation schools, but the experience is probably pretty similar across the board:
- hour long presentation about the company
- 100 question grammar exam - 2/3rds of candidates actually flat-out failed this and were told to go home after lunch break, one of them flipped out on the head guy. i found the exam really easy and i don't think i got anything wrong, but then i have a linguistics degree. anyone with a decent grasp of grammar should be fine, it's mostly multiple choice anyway.
- demo lesson - there were only four of us left, so we were split into pairs and told to come up with a 10 minute lesson (5 each) for 6 year old kids. we had animals, the other pair had weather. i swear, if there's a more ridiculous situation in my life than prowling around an interview room in front of some middle-aged japanese people pretending to be a lion while wearing a pretty nice suit then i'll be surprised, but they seemed to like it.
- one on one interview - this is what you'd expect, but at the end the guy basically told me there that i'd very probably got the job and asked me preferences on housing, location etc.
so yeah, that's pretty much what you have to expect from the non-JET conversation school application process. i actually think the job will suit me better than JET, though it's not as well-paid or secure if that's a major consideration for you - still, i think i will like being in a city and not having to wake up early most mornings.
oh also, if you want to apply to JET you pretty much need to get a move on assuming the deadline is still end of november; i only decided to do it at the end of october last year, and that gave me a month to collect references and fill in forms and write essays and stuff. the initial package you send off is seriously about 60 pages, it's really not a trivial thing. i spent more time on it than any single piece of work for uni, no word of a lie.
hope this helps!
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sam
Joined: 28 May 2007
Location: osaka
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| Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 3:42 pm |
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| luckystrike wrote: |
Oh man, that sucks about the alternate thing. I actually was alternated as well, but I got the upgrade call within two days of finding out I was an alternate. Regardless, as soon as I heard the alternate news, I immediately said "fuck this" and moved on to other things. You made the right choice; no fucking way would I have waited around any longer. I mean, its insane that after 4-5 months of application they can tell you "yeah, if something opens up we will give you a call, mind waiting around until next november?"
God I hated that application process. |
yeah i mean i heard the chances of being upgraded were pretty high, but really i just thought it'd be better to take matters into my own hands instead of hanging on the telephone - there's pros and cons to both JET and eikaiwas, and i didn't feel particularly strongly about the JET pros. though i guess it would be nice to have gone to japan in july rather than november! i've been doing pretty much nothing for months.
| Talbain wrote: |
| Tokyo Rude wrote: |
| Also yeah the job is easier if you drink because people in this country fucking love getting plastered. |
Something South Korea and Japan definitely have in common. |
well hey, UK too. i guess i'm prepared.
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sam
Joined: 28 May 2007
Location: osaka
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| Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:02 pm |
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just thought i'd bump this thread with an update: have not been screwed yet, but holy shit is moving thousands of miles away expensive - i have basically no money at all (everything takes forever here), but i should be okay in a couple of weeks. otherwise life is good and i don't even hate my job!
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sam
Joined: 28 May 2007
Location: osaka
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| Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 5:03 pm |
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um instant ramen is really good here!
i'm living off the final remnants of my UK account. once i get paid in 10 days or so i'll be sorted, it's just difficult at first because you get paid half as much for the two week training period and then i worked like three full days so my first two paycheques were crazy small especially considering lump sums to landlords and stuff...so!
i'll be okay if i can survive a slightly ridiculous existence for a couple of weeks.
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sam
Joined: 28 May 2007
Location: osaka
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| Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2009 3:04 am |
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| crispyambulance wrote: |
| What are your living conditions like? Do people treat you funny because you're white? Do you know enough Japanese to understand what they're saying about you? |
my apartment isn't exactly tim's new place, but it's nice enough. i share with one other dude - we each have pretty big japanese-style rooms, and the living room/kitchen is fine. i've met people here with private apartments the size of my bedroom, so i can't complain.
my area is pretty weird, though! i live in a shopping arcade (my elevator is inbetween a meat shop and a used bike store) and it is exclusively populated by people that are either 90 years old, homeless, or both... the collective teeth count is probably in the hundreds. when i tell japanese people where i live they're usually like "woah that's so ghetto!" and i don't think that's true - it's safe, at least, though there are the usual yakuza hangouts - but it's certainly a little odd. my place itself is nice, though, so!
i do get funny looks from the people in my area but i think they probably give everyone funny looks. generally though japanese people have been super-friendly - i live in the middle of a huge city, and once i get out of my bizarre corner i think most people are pretty normal and used to the sight of non-japanese. my language skills aren't so hot but i'm picking it up pretty quickly i think.
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sam
Joined: 28 May 2007
Location: osaka
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:47 am |
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man i can honestly say i'm super-happy i ended up not doing the JET thing. i know a couple here in the middle of osaka, so they got lucky in that regard, but they have crazy work hours (well, crazy if you're 22 and don't want to be a full-time teacher at a school that starts at 8am) and always say how boring their job is - i don't really do much of anything, what i do do is usually pretty fun and i have basically perfect hours. i would say unless you actively want to live in the remote countryside and do that specific kind of work (and i guess a lot of people do), there are better options than JET.
i'm moving out of fucked-up arcade this weekend! yeah!
i kind of ironically like my place (discovered i don't just have rats, i have FERRETS) but i'd rather have a hip yuppie pad 200 metres down the road.
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sam
Joined: 28 May 2007
Location: osaka
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| Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:28 am |
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GABA sounds fun! i only ever met one GABA teacher, and he pretended to be me on the phone because my japanese phone manner is not so hot. also, my girlfriend is a GABA student, and basically goes there to talk about indie/punk music with people from around the world - contrast to ECC, where people come to ask me what england's really like.
maybe you could do worse!
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