Cultural Differences
Are Japanese and American Children Really all that Different?
I spent all of last week shuttling back and forth between my old job teaching (mostly North American) pre-schoolers at an International school, and my new job, teaching ESL at a Japanese after school preschool program. The whole experience was exhausting (imagine working for nine hours straight, all of your students under the age of … Continue reading
Follow the Crowd
I’ve been reading a lot of about “groupism” and “the follow the leader syndrome” in Japan and it’s all sort of mind -boggling. I was reading, for example, that this ice cream company in Tokyo actually hired people to form lines in front of their stores. And even though it was in the middle of … Continue reading
Teacher Barbie
I tend to treat my private lessons with my Japanese teacher like therapy sessions. I’ll tell her about how one of my student’s is abusing me. I’ll show her the bite marks and the bruises and share horror stories involving chalk dust thrown in my eyes and markers hurled at my head. And then I’ll … Continue reading
Are Americans ‘Bad Friends’?
I’m often the token American in a group of friends, which means I frequently field questions about the inner thoughts and motivations of the “typical American”. This is tough because one, I’m not a typical American, (the fact that I’m writing this from Japan is proof of that) and two, I don’t know what a … Continue reading
No Japanese! English Only Please…
The mother’s of my students aren’t very friendly towards me. I don’t mean that in a negative “they hate me” way. It’s just a fact. Except for ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ they don’t talk to me and I don’t blame them. Like most language schools in Japan, the company I work for has an ‘English Only’ … Continue reading
