Confessions of a Gaijin – Prologue

Author’s note: This piece is written anonymously for two reasons. Firstly, fudging the names of both people and places is necessary in order for me to write something that is honest and candid about my life and work but which won’t land me in hot water with my employers. Secondly, I’m hoping to remove some of the ego that can go often go hand in hand with travel writing – and for better or worse that’s what exactly what this is – as the last thing the world needs is one more white person trying to make themselves look cool in a foreign country. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent alike, but everything else is cast-iron fact. I hope you find it worth your while

PROLOGUE

The doer alone learneth.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Heated toilet seats are my favourite thing in the world right now.

Japan has a lot of them. It also has lots of other things, like vending machines on street corners and people wearing those white surgical masks which are supposed to stop them spreading disease. It has lots of amazing cheap (by British standards) sushi and pachinko parlours and people bowing all the time. And there’s one other thing that Japan has right now, but only in the singular; me.

I’ve come here from the UK to teach English for one of the country’s better-known chain of eikaiwas (foreign language schools). I see their ads on the Japanese subway from time to time, where an attractive young Japanese woman gazes bright-eyed with hope as her command of gerunds, infinitives and vocabulary steadily improves week by week.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live and work in Japan. I’ve loved the country and its culture ever since I came here on a school trip when I was little. That experience planted a seed which grew and grew until last year, when I finally made the decision to man up and give it a go. I did a TEFL course, fired off some job applications, and here I am.

I have no idea if this whole experience will “work”. I can’t speak the language (yet) and I’m leaving behind family which I am extremely close to. I haven’t worked full-time in over a year, and I’ve never lived by myself before. There’s some other stuff too, but we’ll get to that further down the line. In spite of these hurdles (or perhaps because of them) I’m giving it my best shot anyway. I aim to die with as few regrets as possible, and if I don’t at least try and make this a success, the regret will very loom large.  At the time of writing I have been in this country for over a week, immersed in the boot camp of teacher training with no time for anything else besides eating and sleeping. It’s been brutal. I spend consecutive nine hour days (not including the nightly homework) trying to retain massive slabs of information on methods, protocol and technique whilst working my way through the thick fog of jet-lag. The days zoom by, but every one of them is arduous.

I give nerve-wracking teaching demonstrations that last up to 50 minutes- all the while watched intensely by an eagle-eyed trainer – stumbling through my lines and practicing non-threatening eye contact and hand gestures. Every night I stumble back to the hotel room which the company is paying for. I live surrounded by half-unpacked suitcases and piles of litter, and sleep fitfully before the fun begins again the next morning.

But most of it has gone okay. I was fearful before I came out there that I would be exposed as some sort of massive fraud who had no affinity with teaching of any sort, but my trainer tells me otherwise. I am, apparently, the man for the job. I project energy and enthusiasm and get positive feedback. And there’s only been one train wreck moment so far; a kindergarten teaching demo where I my gesture for eating a hot dog made it look like I was fellating someone. Whoops.

The big finish is tomorrow, where I present my final teaching demo with as few fuck-ups as humanly possible before heading onward to my school and my own very own apartment. The adventure (and this really is what it feels like) is only just beginning. Some or most of it is going to change my life. There will be highs and low. But I trust  I can bear it all good grace. I just hope my place has its own heated toilet seat.

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