Lost Time · 11:55am February 2nd
Have you heard the Call of the Night?
Vibes can be good and bad, and unlike the song above, my weekend was absolutely horrible. I was conscious for about six hours at a time last saturday and sunday, sleeping for just as long with a horrible headache and snot just flowing down my poor throat. I was doing so bad that it sent me into some kind of depression, and today is about the first day I feel like I'm truly out of it. Unrelated, today is also the first time I've seen the sun in about two weeks. I wonder why I've been feeling so bad?
Because I'm leaving soon, I've been thinking a lot about my time here in Shimane, and while it's not all been bad, this week was a great reminder of why I do not want to be here next year. Yes, I understand it's winter and it tends to be cloudy in winter no matter where you are, but it's extra life-sucking when half of your week fills you with dread. I enjoy my job, and I believe that for a good number of my students, I make their English classes fun. That said, there have always been a handful of classes that just suck 90% of the time and I just have to look away and stand there for 40 minutes, gritting my teeth while time passes. It's been like this since May. Some days are worse than others, but when I've been sick this year, It's never usually on my Monday/Tuesday school days, and It's almost always on Thursday/Friday. Truth be told, I love Fridays because my favorite 3rd grade class is on Friday, but man, my second english teacher just really knows how to smother the fun when we're doing something.
After looking around, as it turns out, I'm relatively unlucky with my placement in that I actually do have a full schedule every day. Some ALTs only have a handful of classes a week and spend a majority of their day at school on their phones. It makes me a little envious, especially on the rare sunny day like today because I would love to have been sitting in the teacher's lounge working on this new story idea I got today in the warm sunlight instead of pining for it behind a curtain while class goes on without me as I'm just standing there, doing nothing.
While there are a lot of factors that make the second half of my week kinda terrible, it makes me wonder if it's just me and I got unlucky, or if the first half of my week is the lucky part and the second half is the norm? I'll be seeing my other english teacher on monday and we'll probably talk about the lesson she observed today, and I'm very interested to hear what she thinks. Where teacher 2 I genuinely pity because she's just the perfect storm of how not to go about the job she has, teacher 1 is really just the best kind of teacher for this because she gets that making it fun is the way to get them to really learn and perform well. Not only does she get it, she knows how to make it happen.
T2 and I are constantly in friction because I have to pay close attention to her to figure out what she wants and I can't read her mind all the time, even after a year of working with her. T1 classes take about 10-15 minutes before we sync up in the first class and then the whole thing sails smoothly for the rest of the day. It's very strange. T2 and I are probably closer in age with me being ten to fifteen years younger than her, but T1 is much closer to my mom's age and we get along great. I don't know if the difference comes from her having a son not too much younger than me and the other having a daughter, and maybe T1 just has a higher proficiency in English than T2 does, but it's utterly frustrating and I can't figure out what the disconnect is.
If you've ever watched an anime where there's a hall monitor character who's very strict and always nagging on people to follow the rules, you have the first half of T2. In another or the same anime where there's a klutzy shy girl who's never certain or confident about anything, you have the second half of T2. And I hate to rag on her because she confides in me and I think she trusts me... outside of the classroom. It's like two totally different personalities with a switch to flip. Because there were so many observers today, I think the switch was a bit broken and she defaulted to the klutz more often than not. Wires were frayed, she wasn't very on top of anything in particular. It's just tragic.
Speaking of tragedy, I've been feeling sick, which made me feel bad most of the week and for a minute there, I was beginning to think I'd lost my creative drive. Couldn't work on anything, beginning to stress out about stuff, wondering if I was falling out of love with my hobbies or something, only to perk up with a little sunlight and start writing again and plan my next paint job. I've stated before that I am a lizard, just as some off hand comment, but I'm beginning to believe that I really am dependent on Vitamin D/sunlight hours to actually function normally. Cloudy, rainy days are actually terrible for me and send me into doomer depression spirals, and if I weren't moving to what is called 'the sunny side' of japan, I'd be seriously considering buying a sunlight lamp.
I was born and raised in Texas for 27 years, I'm used to having 2/3rds of the year in the sun. Here in Matsue in particular, we get about double the rain. It's not good for me. My new city seems to have about half as much rain on average, making it a sunnier place than even my home city back in Texas. Here's hoping that's true. Back in the summer, I bought rollerblades, and I did enjoy going out on the weekends just skating around town, but it rained every other day and I couldn't go out half the time. This year, with no car, I'm hoping to get a lot more out of those expensive blades. Depending on how far from school I am when I get my apartment, I might even buy a bicycle. It just depends. I should have a pretty sizeable raise since, as I found out the other day, the way the car rental works, I'm paying for about half of it every month which is worth about 200JPY to me. Add that to what I pay for gas, and I'm losing almost 250JPY just to get to work.
If any of you are ALT hopefuls, pray that you've been hired by JET because they are the best. Sure, you could get sent to fuckass japan (he says, from fuckass japan), but you'd have money to save, travel, and play around. For the rest of us, just try to get into a non driving position because that shit is expensive.
Anyways, I did break out of my rut today and I'm hoping to have a short story out soon™. I also saw a funny new movie yesterday, but that's what the story is about, so... more on that later.
That's all from me for now.
Until Next Time~
-KCZ
How curious that you've tagged Ghosting, which I will be reviewing next week. Another in that continuity, perhaps?
Sorry to hear your week has been crummy. Or that your teaching schedule's not ideal. My sister, who recently got a promotion to lead teachers instead of just being one, was talking to us yesterday about how difficult it is to schedule teachers into classes effectively. She also said that, at least at her company, there's been a severe teacher shortage making the problem worse. Maybe that's affecting your company too?
I had a chance to go to Japan this year. My parents offered to pay for my plane ticket (and only the plane ticket) if I agreed to bring my niece home to her parents in June. I was all for it, but it looks like it won't happen. They won't let Dad buy the tickets for my niece unless she has a passport-carrying adult traveling with her, and mine's been expired for six years. I submitted a request for a new one, but there's no way it'll come in before my Dad buys tickets, so that's a bust. Maybe next year.
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If I remember correctly, you said your sister is a teacher at an international school, right? I'm actually an ALT, so I'm the native in the room when Japanese people teach English. I find I'm more useful in the higher grades and really only serve as a second adult or voicebox in the room during most classes. If there's a teacher shortage, then it's on the Japanese side, and... I don't think I would want to be a japanese teacher either. Unless you're like T1 in the blog and just a master of your craft, you're fighting an uphill battle where the kids generally hate or can't see a reason to learn English and do everything in their power to not do it. I can't say anything for other subjects because I don't participate in those. I do know that calculators are like, illegal in japanese math classes, which is horrifying, but that's about it.
There is a chance you could still do it, TBH. If you submitted it now, you'd likely see your new passport by mid March-early April. I just don't know how that would affect ticket rates, if at all. When I applied for my passport way back in 2020, I think I got it within a month, not that there was much of a line at the time.
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They were going to make her the headmaster/principal (or whatever term it is in Japan) of a school in Hawaii, but then she went and had a baby and the company demoted her since, in their eyes, she could no longer contribute 150% of her time to the work. So she still works in Osaka at one of the elementary schools where everyone is required to speak English 100% of the time. I think her students' age range is 3-5 years?
My niece is coming to America in March and will be here until June 1st. Because buying two one-way tickets is vastly more expensive than a single two-way ticket, my dad is buying Evy a two-way ticket, which means buying them in February. There simply isn't time.
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If this is a Japanese company, I can 100% see that being absolutely true. School Principals here work insane hours. They start the day at like, 7, and then they work until 7, 5 days a week. Tbh, I don't actually know what the job of an american school principal is, but here in Japan, they are the school salesman. They need to smhooze, promote, be visible around the school from time to time, deal with contracts and hiring, work with the city, ensure field trips and outing are arranged, go over budgets, deal with the PTA and the community. Their jobs are a nightmare, and cannot imagine the time one devotes to something like this. Being a mom absolutely means you cannot be a principal. TBH, having kids at all would make it a very hard job.
Still you'll have to tell me what school she works for. My pay is going to go up next year by virtue of having less expenses, but I really need to be making more and I'm wondering if I could get hired by an english school to continue teaching english (from 25 onward anyways). I'm planning on visiting Osaka this year as well since I'll be on the sinkansen line and don't have to spend an extra 6000JPY just to get to the shinkansen by train.
Rip. But, I understand. I'm probably getting home and back the same way this coming Christmas season.