Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

I have 3 days off at the moment as the third year (final year) students at the high school I teach at have exams at the moment and the classrooms my students and I normally use are busy.

We were thinking of heading up to Yili, Yili home of the Yili horse, sitting on the border between Xinjiang and Kazakhstan with its main city of Yining, otherwise known as Gulja, and with an international marketplace. But 3 days would have been too short for the trip - Gulja is (according to our guide book) 12 hours bus ride from Korla, with buses leaving around noon. Xinjiang is just too big for us to be able to take off from Korla without flying for less than a week, so we decided just to chill out here in Korla and enjoy the spring sunshine, surf the internet and, thanks to Michael’s posting, enjoy a beer.

I was reading a story from the Sydney Morning Herald about the horrors of teaching for Nova in Japan this morning (the story has been the topic of some discussion on gaijinpot). For those of you unfamaliar with the English teaching scene in Japan, Nova is the largest chain of language schools in Japan. They run things as a professional company with a responsibility to their shareholders (who incidentally have seen the share price fall considerably over the past year) which sometimes has a negative impact on their teachers. I do know people who have worked for Nova for over 10 years, wouldn’t do it myself, but they seem happy.

A lot of people, on the other hand, use Nova as a ticket to get a working visa for Japan and then as soon as they have hooked up another, better job, jump ship. Especially for Americans, who due to their country’s absurd immigration policy can’t take part in the working holiday visa programme, getting a job through a company such as Nova is one of the only ways of getting a visa from outside of Japan.

The article offers

advice to new hands … to think about going to China, South Korea or elsewhere in Asia.

Personally, I would avoid South Korea as I have heard enough horror stories about working there. In South Korea the labour law stipulates that on the completion of a 12 month contract the employer must pay for a return flight to the instructors country of origin. In effect this means that a lot of Korean companies try to fire employees at the eleventh month for any reason under the sun to avoid the cost.

Taiwan would be my first choice if I were starting out over again as someone wanting to experience Asia and work as an English teacher. The pay is good there and I haven’t heard too much negative feedback on the place.　In fact, when I visited Taipei on a visa run in Decemeber 2001 I really enjoyed myself and found the standard of living to be not dissimilar to Japan. And then it is possible to save a lot more money in Taiwan than in Japan (unless the yen does something amazing).

In China, even with the RMB still artificially low, it is possible also to save a fair bit of money. On one income here, the two of us should come out of here with a couple of thousand dollars for our travels. And it is much more relaxed than Japan. No need for suits or corporate haircuts, jeans and t-shirts are fine. And the holidays - here at Circle English I will have had almost four months holiday out of the eight months I have been here. Even when I am working it isn’t too busy - two full days and three half days a week, teaching 3 or 4 40 minute lessons on those half days.

As my boss, David Symington would say - not too dusty.

Other Random Posts from Blizzardboy. Enjoy:)

• House Hunting and Happy Birthday
• PixelMoon
• Naked Man Attacks Helpless Japanese Imperial Palace Moat