"You might not be able to fight like a samurai, but you can at least die like a samurai."

Hisashiburi (long time no see).

It's been a while, and for that I apologise, but the important thing is that I am here now. How have you been? What have you been up to? Anything nice? How is your mum doing? Yeah, yeah, I have been fine, thanks for asking. Christmas was good - two weeks back home in sunny England (I swear I saw the sun once in the second week I was there, up in the sky somewhere, but looking back on it it could have been a street light). The good things were better than before I left - absense makes... and all that - bacon sandwiches; seeing my family; roast dinners and decent beer; pubs, crisps and sticky tables. The bad things were worse; chavs and litter, rain and English food. Two weeks was enough, and by the time I reached the end of my holiday, with the exception of not wanting to leave my friends and family, I was ready to move on. How was your Christmas? And New Years too?

I have been back in Japan for two weeks, and they have been good. I have been up to a lot, if working and teaching counts as something to be "up to", and when I'm not doing that I've been drinking a little more than I should, skiing a little less than I would like and studying a lot less than I want. My Japanese is coming along OK, and I've set my sights on level 3 next December, which is a bit ambitous, but I won't be happy any other way.
My students are all approaching the end of their syllabus now, so work has been pretty hectic the last two weeks but I have been really enjoying it. I designed lesson plans for over half my classes last week, made the materials and ran the classes myself, and much to my amazement they all went really well. The students even learnt something! This has been a really great two weeks and has reminded me how much I enjoy teaching (you remember me at school right? Who would have thought it would end up this way!). Here's a quick list of things you might care about that I've been up to (this is so much easier than writing proper prose):
- I took a scenic ski route up at Nozawa ski restort that allows you to coast down 8km of slow, windy road and gives you a perfect view of the entire mountain range the whole way down. The weather was perfect, you could see for atleast 30 miles all around. Probably the most beautiful view I have ever seen. Then I crashed into a snow wall and now I am walking with a limp.
- There is a girl at school who I was sure is a student, but I have never seen her in any of my classes. She hangs around the teachers office on random afternoons and everyone seems to know her, but I have never seen her anywhere else. It turns out that she has difficulties learning in a classroom environment, surrounded by other students, and she has been unable to go to classes since September. She wanted some help with her English from one of my teachers because she was taking her High School entrance test in 4 days and had only just started studying for it. I siezed the opportunity and intercepted her when she was confused by the verb "to be" and proffered my services. I tutored her for 3 hrs straight and became her new friend, and it was three of the best hours I have had here since I returned.
- I had a mini LAN at a mates house today; we ate pizza and played Dawn of War. You have to get those little tastes of home where you can.
- I rode the Shinkansen back to Nagano from Tokyo. When the train hits its final destination, after all the passengers have disembarked, the seats are turned around to face the front of the train for the journey back in the opposite direction. Being Japan, this is all motorised and looks shockingly like the train has a mind of it's own, that it is conscious of the needs of it's passengers and will adapt itself to suit them. The train journey was OK, but it lacked all the normal excitements of train journeys - the scenery, the otherwise uncommon intimacy with complete strangers around you crammed into adjacent seats, the people watching and gaze dodging. Everything was too easy. Next time I will hitch it.
- I went to the XBox Lounge in Tokyo - they have beer, hard spirits, free XBox, sofas, coffee and hot women sitting around reading books and wearing glasses. It is the closest you can get to heaven without a needle or a noose.

The final thing worth mentioning took place a couple of days before I left to go back to England. I taught one of my better first year classes, and it has a couple of girls in it who I get on really well with - one is nothing but mischief, the other is the most intelligent and hard working girl you will ever meet. They got together after class and asked me to wait around for a moment, and fetched one of their friends from another class. Between then, they presented me with three christmas cards, all written in English, that they had decorated themselves. In Japan, they don't even give Christmas cards, they give New Years cards, so they would have had to find out about the tradition and what sort of cards you give all by themselves, then made them in their free time. One had a picture of a snowman on it, labelled "Snowman", and the other showed a picture of me with my girlfriend in Christmas kimonos (who this illusive woman is, I have no idea, but the cards sadly presented me with no clues as to her identity). It was all distressingly cute, and although I did not cry, I no longer felt like the hardened man I once was (you know it's true).

Well, that's pretty much it for now. Keep in touch, and write back as soon as you get a chance (I know how busy you are) and I will try to do the same. Good luck with the new year, and I hope everything keeps going alright for you.

Love Craig
xxx

PS I wrote two letters at once - don't forget to look at the one below too!

"Just the facts, mam."

I was asked a couple of questions by a friend, so I thought that I would post my answers here incase anyone looking into JET comes this way and might find it useful. I have paraphrased his questions because I can't be bothered to quote them - all writing and editing credits go to me, and he has no ownership over the original material.

Craig

1. What are your students like? Teaching gives me The Fear. And what about that Kancho Guy?
You must remember that you are team teaching, you are not teaching alone (at the start, anyway), so you don't really have to worry about discipline. If the kids are badly behaved, at the start it just isn't your problem and all you need to do is get in, teach, and get out. Only after a while may it become an issue.
My school is also a very good school, with one 10-20 disruptive students in the whole school, and maybe only 4 of them are bad enough to actively interrupt your team teaching. In comparison to when I was at school, it is nothing, but then again, I am at a good school.
One of my friends is at a bit of a ghetto school full time, and he gets almost no support from his teachers regarding discipline. The kids don't really care and aren't very well behaved and the teachers don't help him out that much.

Most of your questions about the teaching side can probably be answered very generally by saying these two things:
1) You are team teaching, not teaching alone.
2) Your school placement is a lottery, and there are as many different school and classes as there are kids in them. Mine is great; others are not.

Things that broke me when I first started no longer do, and I am becoming a better teacher and more confident person because of it. I have approached it with the attitude of whatever breaks me now will make me stronger tomorrow, and although that is hard, it is proving to be true.
How you resolve your concerns is something you will only be able to decide when you arrive, because it is impossible to predict it before you come.

And if it helps, I never ever wanted to become a teacher - it's too hard :)

Regarding Azrael's Editorials, everything he says is true, but a lot of what you take from your time here will be how you respond to what happens to you, not just what happens. I have experienced lots of similar things to him (alright, not 17 year old gang-sluts, but I did meet a pretty cool prostitute in Matsumoto city and she had really decent English) but I do not share his opinions in any way. Except regarding Hard Gay; nothing on earth is stranger.


2) Nihongo (Japanese Language) - What do I have to know? How have you found it? I have Level 4 Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Is watching lots of anime enough? What is the Japanese word for 'eunuch'?
Living in Japan is a constant struggle until you are level 3 atleast - all of the shop staff and many others speak honourific japanese, which you don't learn completely until level 2 (I think), and everyone else uses the plain form of verbs, not the polite, which I still haven't properly learnt yet.
Simply, you just have to get on with it. I started with only 3 months of Japanese study, done in my spare time, and it was practically useless. Considering how much study I have done (I would estimate it at about 150 hours now) I know almost nothing practical. I can speak and be understood, but I can not understand. You just have to get on with it. I have done it, so can you, and one of the most important lessons I will take back with me is that you do not need to confidently speak a mutual language with someone else to communicate with them - there are other ways, and you will find them.

3) Free time out of school and annual holidays - what's the deal? I've got s**t I need to get done! Oh, and sports clubs and stuff, yeah.
Most JETs work 8:15am till 4:30pm, finishing early at 3:45 on Fridays (I am pretty sure this is correct, if anyone reads this and knows differently, please tell me and I will check). You also get around 15-20 days annual holiday, but this is different for every school.
I have a different arrangement - I am contracted to work 8:15am till 5:15pm everyday, but in exchange those hours add up and I am given some time off during the school holidays when I am not needed. I also receive 20 days annual holiday.
Most JETs do not have to work that hard, either because they do not have teachers that are very supportive of them, they don't want to work, or there just isn't the work to be done. There are a few that have to work a lot harder, and I include myself in this (I work around 50-52 hours a week, give and take), but those JETs are the ones that tend to enjoy their job a lot more because they get more out of the kids and the work they do.
Personally, I find that I have plenty of free time, much more than I did when I worked full time in England, and if it wasn't for the fact that I spend most of it studying Japanese, there are probably lots of other things I could be doing.
This is my first year too, which will be much harder than any other and each year after this I will have progressively less and less work. Your work load will also fluctuate wildly - last week I have 3 classes in 4 days and spent all my time studying; this week I worked 11 hour days on tuesday and wednesday, and have made resources and lesson plans for almost every class I have taught.

Finally, regarding school sports clubs, in my whole time here I have only met one JET who joined a sports club. Teachers and students are pressured into it, you are not, so don't worry - for ALTs, it is completely optional.

4) I need cash for bitches - how's that gonna work?
JETs are paid very well because our cost of living is so low - many municipal employed JETs receive their appartments rent free if they are more than 20 mins walk from their school (atleast in Nagano they seem to). If you live in the city, it will be much harder to budget, but if you live in a village I really think you will be OK.
Personally, I have found the first year a little expensive because I bought very little with me and my board of education gave me little because it was a newish house, previously unlived in. This meant I had to buy heaters, iron and ironing board, a whole winter wardrobe, etc etc. In summer I am hoping to buy a car and a computer also. However, I still eat out whenever I want, go drinking whenever I find the time and don't have to worry about coming to the end of the month, so in that sense it can't be too bad. The second and third years should be much much easier too, now that I have acquired the basics.

5) Japanese in the classroom - do you do it? Is it good to do it? Who else is doing it and should I try it?
When I went to the orientation in Tokyo, many of the speakers felt that you should never use Japanese in the classroom - "YOU ARE THERE FOR ENGLISH! SPEAK IT!" - but I completely disagree. I can not find the sense in speaking in English when they can't understand you; it may take 10 mins to explain something to one student (if you even can) and there might be 34 other students in the class who could do with your attention. I have found a good rule is simply to always speak English first and Japanese last. Speaking Japanese to students does, however, do three very important things: 1) It may express something you otherwise couldn't 2) It may be much faster to use Japanese in circumstances where time is the most important thing, and 3) It will help students who can't speak English open up to you. If I only spoke to my ichi nen sei in English, I couldn't talk to them and they would hate me. At the same time, my third years are good enough to fend for themselves in English and teaching English is what I came here for. Just use your common sense, and be sensitive to the needs of your students and the desires of your teachers.

Owari.