I took a picture of some candles a student gave me recently. My students have all been very concerned about recent events (naturally — who isn’t?) and it’s all we talk about when we meet. So this student was surprised that I have never had the experience of being brought up with earthquake drills and safety rules, but you know, not everyone knows that Singapore is free from natural disasters like typhoons and earthquakes.

She presented me these candles the next time we met and said I should keep them in case there was a blackout or earthquake. Though she cautioned me not to use them if there’s still shaking because they might fall over and accidently cause a fire — these are just backups if I run out of batteries for my torch. There’s a Plan B for Plan B, in other words.

I was very touched that she cared enough to give me candles. My students are always the ones who inform me of impending typhoons in September. I never turn on the weather news in the morning so I always joke that my students are my personal weather forecasters.

I must say that the three strong aftershocks late last week and early this week shook everyone up again — emotionally, too. I know a lot of people have been commenting on the stoicism and positivity of the Japanese (they are) but they are also human and my students all expressed some degree of fear. Every single one of them asked me if I was okay from the aftershocks and they all had the same “it was scary eh? tsk tsk tsk” expression and shook their heads.

On another note, my full marathon in Oshima was cancelled out of respect to the Mar 11 triple disaster and they sent a letter to say my registration fee has been donated to the people in the Tohoku region (which came up to over 1 million JPY). I thought that was a good idea to turn that into donation money and I’ve no complaints. I’m not so bent on running a full marathon lately, partly because my ankle is still sore from time to time from the tumble I had over last Christmas. I’ll get to it eventually, I hope.

Just a random thought bubble I’d share with you today, I suppose…

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A recent gift from a student inspired this post. I get all kinds of things from my students and this one made me laugh — freeze-dried space ice-cream from the NASA space centre in Florida.

“It looks cute but it doesn’t taste good,” warned my student.

One of the small pleasures of teaching Japanese adults is that they are very thoughtful to give me omiyage (it means souvenir but people mostly give food) after they return from a holiday, be it local or overseas.

Omiyage is such a huge part of Japanese culture that most train stations and airports hawk bite-sized Japanese sweets amid a plethora of “useless” tourist stuff. That would be a Tokyo Nugget by itself…

My first gift was a floral bookmark from a student I had two years ago. She went to an onsen in Hakone with her mother and got me this little gift. As I taught more and more students, I received gifts like pears, apples, chocolate, mochi (sticky rice flour desserts), lipstick, blusher, lip gloss, masks, Krispy Kreme donuts…

I felt grateful that they thought of me but I maintained (to myself) that if I gave omiyage to my students every time I went on a trip, I’d be constantly buying gifts and be flat broke.

Just before I left teaching in 2008, I had a slew of farewell gifts and one that stood out in my memory is a gorgeous crème cashmere scarf given to me by a student I was very fond of. She was genuinely sad that I couldn’t teach her anymore and I was touched by her generous gift.

Back to the space ice-cream: it felt like Styrofoam but it really tasted like chocolate ice-cream. No, it wasn’t cold at all. It was like noshing on a dry biscuit with chocolate flavour.

If you want to read more about teacher-and-student gift giving, there’s a lovely post at Blue Lotus’ blog.

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Sorry for the long delay in this last installment of my “Teaching in Japan” series. Life has been busy with all sorts of things and I have to admit I’ve slacked a little on blogging, but I promise there will definitely be more prolific times.

Let’s dive into this topic — what are Japanese students like and how to teach them?

I am sure many English teachers will agree with me on this: Japanese students are very respectful and polite. It’s great for you as a teacher because they pay attention when you are talking and this makes you want to be a better instructor, too.

A Canadian friend who was a trainer for English teachers at a big chain school once told me she found teaching foreigners an absolute pain and missed her Japanese students. They constantly challenged her rudely and interrupted her flow all the time: “Are you sure that this is correct?”, “Why do you want us to do that?”, “That’s not right!” These were remarks she was often thrown at, on top of overall inconsiderate behaviour like talking and eating in class. She lamented that most of these wannabe English teachers were fresh out of university, 18 to 25 years old on average, had no real job experience and a real attitude problem.

SO, thank your lucky stars that you are going to teach nice people.

However, there are a few stereotypes of Japanese students and I have a disclaimer that not all my students fit into this mould, plus all these observations were from my conversational sessions with Japanese working adults and not any other kind of lesson:

Little or no initiative. The flip side of being someone they totally respect is they could completely lean on you on all aspects. One new student of mine last year met me for her first class at a busy, smoky coffee shop just outside the train gates of the Tokyo metro. It was impossible to teach nor for her to learn so I asked her if she knew of another café near her office. But she said, “I don’t know.”

I couldn’t believe she didn’t know her office area well, so I jumped online anyway and found a Starbucks close to her workplace the next day. It wasn’t a big deal but I want to use this example to illustrate the subtle interpersonal dynamics of a teacher and student in my experience. I sensed there was more of a care-giver slant in the role of a private teacher, as opposed to relating as absolute equals.

Hardworking. If you give homework, you can be certain you will get it back complete and on time 99 per cent of the time. They may even request for more as it’s important to them to improve their language abilities because of work and getting that next promotion (many employees get more cash if they attain a certificate at an official language test like TOEFL, EIKEN, and TOEIC).

Punctual. Most students will be early or on-the-dot punctual. It’s better if you get there beforehand to settle down with your drink and spread out your teaching materials. It looks really bad if you keep your student waiting, especially in the beginning of your time with them — the first month is very important to run everything smoothly and like clockwork, but after that, if daily life gets in the way, they would be a bit more forgiving.

However, missing a lesson without proper notice could be the end of your time with a particular student. I am embarrassed to confess that I had one such experience — it was the last month before I ended teaching officially and I sent him an email to cancel the lesson the day before because I was going for a snowboarding trip.

Unfortunately he didn’t check his email and thought he was stood up. Even after apologising profusely over a few emails, he still refused to have another lesson and gave a thinly-veiled excuse that he was suddenly busy with work. Aside from work, this is also social suicide, even to cancel an hour before an appointment. You can expect the friendship to end abruptly over this unacceptable infringement of social graces. I’m not saying people are so rigid here but you must give sufficient notice before you cancel — there is no magic number but more than 24 hours is fairly courteous.

Local mindset. This is something I found across the board with my students but you can’t really blame them for being less international-minded. They see global events through the lens of Japanese media where lots of things can be lost in translation and they choose what goes on TV and newspapers. Therefore, they relate to you better when you present more locally centred topics. But I think it is a basic teaching technique where talking about something familiar always gives learning a better boost.

Having such a unique language is rather crippling to the Japanese and they do see that and feel isolated — it not only affects how they view other cultures but their own culture, too.

They may throw the most candid stereotypes they have of other countries at you, but you can change this mindset because they want to know what’s real, too. Though you may encounter very shocking (or hilarious) statements, just deal with them graciously and politely.

Some examples from my memory: “Foreigners need stronger medicine because they are bigger”, “the Ainu are not Japanese”, “Tokyo is a very dangerous city”, “Tokyo is very polluted”, “women get molested on trains because they don’t scream”, “everyone has a gun in America”, “adoption is bad for the family because you have different blood” and the list goes on. But one I simply couldn’t refute at all was: “George W. Bush looks like a stupid cowboy.”

This is not an exhaustive list of qualities but more of a summary. The Japanese may be very mono-cultural as a people but within all communities lie all kinds of characters and I learned never to fall back to stereotypes. I had one student who kept standing me up because she was a busy beauty spa trainer, I also had another student who didn’t care so much about grammar and just wanted to know more about anything outside Japan, and I also taught an aspiring translator who went over and beyond in fine-tuning her skills not just in grammar but colloquial speech and common metaphors. Teaching so many different personalities made my so-called gap year intellectually stimulating for me — a pleasant surprise I must say.

This is a topic very close my heart as I miss all my students. That one year teaching them, meeting each and every one of them once or twice weekly, made my time in Tokyo unforgettable.

“I’m jealous you can dive right into Japanese culture,” the kangaroo once said to me. They told me everything and more about Japanese life and thinking. Right now, although I am back to writing which is what my career has always been about, I wish I could go back to teaching on some level. I feel like I am back in my gaijin bubble where I predominantly hang out with foreigners. I have a few Japanese friends but I could never get as close as I managed to with my students.

As a one-on-one private tutor, I was privy to their daily routines, thoughts, aspirations and problems. Some of them wept or complained to me, or shared happy moments. I usually have a couple of topics at hand to have some foundation to the lesson but sometimes the conversation flows like it is one between friends.

I remember one incident when I brought an article about AIDS and HIV NGOs in Africa for a student who was working with a non-profit organization. We chatted about the issues at hand but somehow the topic of casual sex made her burst into tears. She kept tearing and wiped away the sad drops with a trembling finger, so I asked her, “Are you okay?” Then she revealed that her new boyfriend refused to take an STD test to see if he was clear of any disease, but she did anyway and was worried about her results. It was heartbreaking to see her so upset. She sobbed a bit more and bravely continued the lesson like nothing happened.

I’m not going to romanticize that I was their closest buddy, the one whom they could tell all their dirty secrets, but I think I was allowed into a private circle of opinions that they would probably not express to their peers or families.

I didn’t write about the negative experiences because it’s not so much the point here but I would just like to say it’s not roses and peaches 100 per cent of the time.

So there you have it, my sincere mind-ramblings about teaching English in Tokyo. This entry inspired me to do several portraits of some students who were absolute characters. I’ve gone on long enough and will touch on this again soon.

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As promised in my first post about advice on teaching in Japan, I will do two more entries in this “series”. Today, I will talk about how to get a teaching position in Tokyo.

I have only managed to get private one-on-one type of gigs and any advice outside of that realm is from other people’s anecdotes. This is a super long post so don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

Do I need a teaching qualification?
You don’t need one, especially if you come from a native English speaking country (North America, UK, Australia, New Zealand), but your salary could jump significantly if you did — at least 25 to 40 per cent more.

The basic rate for teaching in Japan is pretty much what you need to live on so it would be hard to have significant savings. Teachers who earn more are attached to big corporate companies that actually have a training centre, which includes an English language and communications department. But they would want to see qualifications and tons of experience related to teaching Business English, so that is something you might want to consider at a later phase in your career.

But don’t feel you can’t hack it if you don’t have a teaching qualification. What was your degree in? For example, if you studied Economics, you could teach Japanese students who are in finance-related roles. I think most Japanese language schools have that basic requirement — a university degree, so anything less than that is a challenge or you would get very low pay (JPY1,500 per hour; market rate is JPY3,000 per hour for an unqualified teacher). If you majored in English — even better — which is how I nailed the jobs I got.

What do Japanese English language schools or companies look for?
Enthusiasm. Lots of it plus you need to be engaging and fun. Across the board, in any kind of teaching position, this is the top quality they are looking for. I have experienced this myself and have heard many other teachers and students say that is the most important thing in a teacher.

This aspect always scared me since I’m pretty shy to speak in front of a group of people, but I quickly got over this by being prepared.

In conversational gigs, the first lesson is the “trial” lesson where the student will judge and see if they like you. One important thing that the teaching agency coordinators always told me was to be on time. That is like 50 per cent of the work.

Next would be your degree and relevant experience. Think: transferable skills. I was a magazine journalist so I highlighted my experience in speaking to many kinds of people in different situations, both business and social. They were also impressed that I was a published reporter. Lastly, what always got me the job was that I emphasized I was easy-going. Japanese adults can be fairly nervous about speaking in a foreign language so if you can assure them you would be nurturing, as opposed to being strict and exacting, they would love you.

In all teaching interviews, you will have do a demo of your teaching skills, even in one-on-one situations. For all the schools that I have encountered, they would require you to prepare a five-minute presentation on a simple topic. You need to look like you are confident at keeping an audience’s attention and giving clear explanations.

For teaching beginner classes, you need to make or buy supporting materials. My props could range from soft toys (my own…don’t laugh, but Mickey and Minnie have been great in He and She dialogues!), fruit, pictures, drawings, and be prepared to “act”. I’ve had to show what certain adjectives were — for example, “arrogant” so I would act it out — and role-play in mock social situations (waitress, mother, boss etc.)

Don’t worry so much about the scope of your knowledge. Most of us normal human beings don’t even care what’s a dependent clause but you will learn from the textbooks that you teach. What I forgot in my English degree came rushing back and I’m grateful that my memory was refreshed — the nitty gritty of a language I use everyday is not based on instincts anymore.

What is the interview process like?
I have never completed a formal interview with a major brand school like Berlitz or Aeon which I have heard are very good schools to be with. These jobs take at least three months to process — from sending in your resume to signing on the dotted line on your contract. In between this time, you have to be prepared to fly down to Japan for a face-to-face interview, at your own expense.

The cycle of the school term system matters when you apply. For Berlitz, they go by seasons so it would be advisable to send in your resume three to four months ahead of the time you think you want to start work. I was turned down by Berlitz because I was too late for the Winter application (I submitted my resume in early November to start in January) so they told me to apply for the Spring cohort. I’ve applied to several other schools but was rejected, too, for reasons unknown.

I don’t know if it was because I was too inexperienced or because of my nationality. In Singapore, English is our first language, but I still meet a lot of people who don’t know that — they are floored by my English ability because they think Mandarin is my first language (sad to say, it trails behind my English as a sorry second at best).

It is a little harder for Asians or non-Caucasians to get teaching positions because I think there is a stereotype of native English speakers being white but this perception is changing slowly as companies are more open to different coloured folks. I knew an Indian lady who was teaching English in Tokyo and my Japanese friend has a British-Jamaican English teacher — so how about that.

One thing that really hits some foreigners is the hard reality of living in an extremely mono-cultural society — you encounter a lot more discrimination than in your own country. I think it is especially harder if you come from a very Western, liberal culture and many gaijins leave after several years because they get sick of being “different” or elbowed out.

A word of warning: if you feel very strongly about equality and it truly upsets you when things aren’t right in this department, Japan is not a place you would be very happy in — you would be a very angry person. I’ve had Swedish friends whose rental application was rejected just because they were foreign. Don’t imagine a lack of human rights type of situation but you will definitely be treated unfairly at some point to a certain degree. If you can overlook this aspect of life, then it is a fantastic country to be in.

Back to teaching: am I embarrassed to admit I didn’t manage to get a full-time gig? A little, but I found my niche in teaching conversational English last year and here I am on the Internet every single day doing what I do. I wasn’t too fussed about it either, because I didn’t have a teaching qualification, nor did I want to branch out to teach children and teenagers where the possibilities just seemed limitless.

As a last note, you can find a teaching position with some effort but do consider the terms carefully, which brings me to my final point.

What should my salary expectations be like?
The schools are upfront about this on their websites — I see an average of JPY200,000 to JPY250,000 per month as starting pay being stated. You would also have to pay tax, which is less than 10 per cent in Japan in this income bracket. I mentioned the cost of living in Tokyo and some may find it hard to deal with having less luxuries like travelling overseas and other lovely frills.

Teaching is a very noble profession but an extremely embattled one. Even those who teach may look down on their own jobs. This job pays very little in a city where most people would regard JPY600,000 per month as just average. The teachers I know who have a more comfortable lifestyle supplement their income with a side business (one guy I knew taught 40 hours a week, on top of his part-time venture of helping small foreign companies to set up operations in Tokyo), or teach privately in their spare time, or are attached to lucrative contracts teaching business English solely in Japanese corporations.

Business English is red hot in terms of demand and I would’ve definitely continued in this direction if not for taking up my web editor position. Many Japanese employees take the TOIEC or TOEFL tests annually as a salary incentive and have to deal with overseas colleagues in English. I have made several forays into teaching business English and it is about helping your students communicate in formal language in various situations and accumulate presentation skills. It is not the same as teaching grammar but you would find yourself going back to basics occasionally.

That’s all for now and if you have reached this far, thank you for reading, and look out for the next episode — what it’s like to teach Japanese students and some useful tips.

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Due to several queries from readers about teaching in Japan, I decided to run a series of entries on this topic to help those who are considering taking the plunge. I usually send off long replies and it dawned on me this could be very useful to those who want to teach in Japan.

The lessons I learned in teaching conversational English were drawn from the advice of a friend, who had a year of teaching experience, and my own trial and error. It isn’t something too hard to pick up without a teaching qualification but it has its challenges.

Here are the common questions that my readers are curious to know:

Is it advisable to go to Japan without a job?
No, because it is very expensive to live here, unless you come from a Scandinavian country. Even if you think you have it all worked out, what if you can’t find a teaching job you like before your cash runs out? Let’s say, you do have substantial savings for six months, but do you really want to blow so much money while living in uncertainty?

Also, if your money is running out, you may force yourself to settle for a job that has very compromising factors like less money, less benefits, longer travelling distances, less say in who and how you teach to name just a few.

If you come in on a tourist visa, you have three months grace and then you need to fly out of Japan to come back in again — there is a pretty limited number of times you can do this and no one knows what the ceiling is as everybody I know (or who knows somebody) has had difference experiences.

Three months is not a lot of time, unless you have set up interviews before you fly to Japan. Again, it is a fairly large financial burden to undertake because you have to fly home and back again if you manage to get the gig. Schools here do not pay for your airfares home.

There is another scenario, which is completely different from individuals who want to come to Japan by themselves, is that of the trailing spouse. If you are in this situation, then of course you have the luxury of time and financial support to look for a teaching position. But you may want to speed things up by setting up some interviews before you arrive because it is just no fun hanging out by yourself everyday with not much to do.

What is the cost of living in Japan?
If you are in town just for a fun year of learning Japanese or are on a working holiday visa, you could stay in a guest house offered by Sakura House or Jaf Plaza or Tohto Guest House which are just a few out of many available. Here, you just need to concern yourself with the rent.

The average rent for a studio (or it is called 1K, which means 1 room with kitchen; 1DK means 1 room, with dining and kitchen areas; 1LDK means 1 room with living, dining and kitchen areas) ranges from 30,000JPY to 80,000JPY per month. This is the most common style of living for singles (but the kangaroo and I shared one of these; we called it the shoebox) and they can be as small as 14 to 16 sq metres. Be warned that lower rent means you will be further from the city centre and may have to travel over an hour to get to your work place.

Most teachers starting out don’t really need to bother with rental issues as the company that hires you will help you look for accommodation or even have apartment compounds where they house their teachers (I will talk about salary expectations in my next post).

You could very well have to bunk with a colleague — some folks may not be enthused by that but the size and comfort of the place would sure beat what you get if you have a tiny studio to yourself.

If you are looking to settle here and stay in a proper apartment, it is a whole different ballgame altogether which I won’t go into as it is not so relevant to this post.

When you find yourself settling in more, you may want to consider looking for housemates to share a more expensive, comfortable, and centrally located apartment — this is what a lot of non-high earning professionals do.

Like what the Lonely Planet does in their guides, I will make a standard of living barometer from a myriad of items:

One apple = JPY178
Three tomatoes =JPY398 (this one always amuses my Singaporean friends — tomatoes are like a handful for SGD$2 or something)
One single stop subway ticket = JPY160
One bagel = JPY140 (plain with nothing in it)
One movie ticket = JPY1,800 (but they have special promotions on certain days of the month)
One beer = 500 to 600 yen
A pack of cigarettes = JPY300
Starting fare on taxis = JPY770
A modest meal at a mid-range restaurant with two drinks = JPY4,000

Do I need to learn Japanese before I arrive?
Yes and no to this one, but I would strongly encourage you to learn some basic skills for the sake of moving around and getting daily things done.

It’s not necessary for your job interview, especially if you are targeting big chain schools, junior high schools and high schools.

You would be surprised that knowing a high level of Japanese could set you back, as I have heard that most schools prefer teachers to speak only English to their students. Rumor has it that some schools even forbid their teaching staff to speak any Japanese on the premises.

Alright, that’s it for now, but look out for my next post on finding teaching positions in Tokyo.

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Teaching Japanese adults is winding down to an end. By March 1, I’ll be working full-time from the kangaroo’s office.

All this week, I’ve been informing all my students about my new job. All of them said nice things like, “I’m so sad to see you go!”, “All the good teachers eventually find full-time jobs — they don’t stay in teaching”, “You’re a really good teacher!” and my favourite: “Where am I going to find another one from Singapore?”

I’m so going to miss chatting about Japanese culture and lifestyle. They sort of became friends and I will miss some more than others, especially the chattier ones like Saturday’s fashion executive Mami, Tuesday’s translator Asami, Thursday’s real estate mogul Nozaki, Wednesday’s education business boss Mayuko and Monday’s advertising account manager Takashi. Everyday of the week, I learned something new about Japan and what make the Japanese tick.

On the other hand, I won’t miss explaining vocabulary nor the repetitive grammar exercises. And the ones who are fairly mild in opinion or wait for me to stir up conversation every single minute.

But the reality is, these lovely souls are just a part of one small phase in the scheme of things. Time to encounter new experiences.

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I’ll start with the “down”. The novelty of teaching is waning a little and I’m glad to have the upcoming month-long break. It has been good mostly but yesterday was one of the most trying days of my life (after the girl who keeps crying — she still holds the number one worst student spot in my book). My student, who drove me up the wall, is an Osaka-born Tokyoite, so he’s much more direct in his approach to things. He is an absolute beginner (so he has no sense of tenses, spelling, or vocabulary) but is extremely keen — he actually tries to read The Daily Yomiuri. I would normally applaud such enthusiasm, but if you don’t know basic grammar, this is simply beginner’s passion.

I coin it so because these students are the ones who tend to fall the hardest. They are impatient (I have never tried to read a Japanese newspaper — it’s like a two-year-old struggling with The Economist) so when they can’t speak quickly enough, they lose interest very fast too.

So Mr Osaka was given four pictures with people in different states of “employment” — there was a retired man, a full-time mother, a student and an unemployed man. After going through all the vocab, Mr Osaka insisted that the unemployed man is a full-time mother because a full-time mother is also unemployed. Hmm, well, this logic may work in other fields but I told him that’s not the case. I told him that this man cannot be a mother because he’s not female. Mr Osaka then insisted, “He is a full-time man.”

I tried to explain that a “full-time man” is a strange concept because if he were a “part-time man” — he would be a woman half the time and a man half the time.

He still persisted in this stubborn salaryman way. I was so impatient and kept going, “Chote hen! (It’s strange!)” I was exhausted from this sour-faced, confused dude. I went home to the kangaroo and related this. He was most comforting. He said, “Yeah, I know what you mean, it’s like, ‘Mate, just give me my money.’”

************

The upside of things: I think i got my bicycle legs back and teaching was really alright today. My teeth did not gnash a single time.

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One of my students, Yasuki, made it on his TOEFL test! It’s been a long, arduous journey tackling sample questions and marking his essays. He got a score high enough to qualify for an MBA school application in the US. I was so happy for him and I guess I helped in some way. I always fretted that being an untrained teacher, I didn’t know shite about pulling a student through official English proficiency tests.

This is so totally what I need right now to keep going on the teaching front. I never believed that I would hit a wall because my experiences with teaching conversation has been good for the past six months. But now, I do face some frustrations and I get tired more easily than before. Sometimes I would wonder if my students are improving at all or that I am just collecting easy money where it feels like a complete farce.

It’s nice to know I can help and will just bask in this one for a bit.

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Don’t let this entry fool you but I’ve had 90 per cent good teaching days but one lesson today totally sucked. I pride myself in always making my lessons fun and interesting. In fact I get annoyed when people say, “Isn’t teaching frustrating? I don’t know how you do it!” I mean, are venture capitalists given such sniffy comments?

Most of my students are fairly chatty as they are genuinely keen on expressing themselves in English. This group also loves the language so it pleases me that they go to lengths to speak their minds or mention something unusual. The others whom I classify as raw beginners show more or less the same enthusiasm.

But I have one particular student, Makiko, who is difficult. She takes conversational lessons to communicate with her French boss in English. She doesn’t say this frankly but I gathered from our numerous lessons that this boss of hers is a difficult man to deal with. I imagine French impatience and arrogance, plus an equal inability to communicate well in English, on top of an unwillingness to learn any Japanese are a recipe for disaster.

After two months, I had a particularly trying lesson with her. She clammed up at whatever I suggested. I was worried that she couldn’t understand me at all and asked her many questions to promote conversation but she froze. Then she burst out with a breaking voice, “It’s too difficult for me! Why can’t I speak spontaneously after two months’ of lessons?” She also added with her lower lip trembling, “I need more time to read and understand the article. I can’t just read it once.”

I was quite shocked because a) how could you expect dramatic results after eight weeks? b) why didn’t she tell me earlier it was too difficult? c) I’ve never made anyone cry during a lesson. I always knew that the average Japanese is rather reserved, and so, less talkative or expressive. I’ve also learned that being indirect is one of the hallmarks of the Japanese “way”. Sometimes I take refuge in that because I’m not fond of confrontations myself but I do feel this overwhelming suffocation when I’m faced with this wall of silent opaqueness.

So we reformulated her class — I would give her the news articles beforehand so she could have a thorough read and to check out all the words she didn’t know. This would give her more time to talk during the lesson. I had misgivings about this because her problem is not really a lack of English grammar or vocabulary but really about self-confidence. It seems she hates looking like she doesn’t know what she is looking at or to be unprepared. But how do I foster “spontaneity” if she clearly abhors being put on the spot? The crux of having conversational lessons is to be in an environment where you are more or less unprepared so you can speak on the fly.

When I send the articles to her a week before our next lesson I would gently remind her to think of related topics to talk about, but without fail, when I meet her, she would fidget awkwardly and I would launch into various topics first. Most days I’m fine with this as I feel it’s my responsibility to take the initiative but today I felt a wave of irritation when she didn’t complete her sentences and looked absolutely lost. I tried to guess what she was trying to say, encouraged her to use her dictionary and told her to forget about grammar for once. Usually I would overlook her silence, let her dismiss her half-formed thought and move on to the next topic but I just had about enough of her meekness today.

She looked like she was going to cry. Instead of feeling sympathy, I was even more annoyed as I thought inwardly, “You’re 40! You work for a huge multinational nuclear energy company! Who on earth is going to keep being so patient with your shyness or unwillingness to speak up?!” Mind you, I didn’t scold her at all. Maybe my forced smile was enough to fling her into a spiral of fear.

I skipped to the next topic where she clammed up again so I was thankful when the clock said it was the end of our hour. Here I am, surfing around the Internet, looking for other teachers in Japan with the same problem and perhaps offer me a solution to this dreadful pain of a silent student. It seems this behaviour is quite common and it must be worse if you’re facing 25 poker faces — so I’m in a luckier position apparently. I hope next Wednesday wouldn’t have a repeat of this. Boiling away now…

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I just finished six lessons today. My jaws are exhausted from talking. I knew I was in trouble when I was tired by the end of my second lesson of the day. I ploughed on and on and on. I don’t know why I am so tired because I’ve been doing this for several months already…

Not only did I have to speak so much, I had to do it over loud café music sometimes. One student in Ebisu meets me in a very teeny bopper café Bagel & Bagel that blasted Avril Lavigne’s latest album at top volume. I immediately regretted my choice of topic — Michael Moore’s latest documentary on America’s flailing medical system, Sicko. It was esoteric and overwhelming to explain every other word. So much for my enthusiasm for his movie.

As I crawled home on my heels, I decided to open up my weekday rest day, Wednesday. I usually take this day off to meet my language exchange partner and run in the hash at night. I decided to teach in the day but still keep that evening free for my beloved running group.

I’ve been using Brit expat in Taiwan (now in Syria) Daniel Wallace’s experiences as a yardstick of sorts. He thinks five or six lessons are tiring but possible, while seven and eight are just mind crushing.

Now I know how my retired teacher mum feels at the end of the day — grouchy and tired. But I don’t know how she could carry on nagging all night after a day of painstaking verbiage. For the first time ever, I nearly lost my patience when a particular beginner student (a 40-year-old salaryman) refused to admit repeatedly he didn’t understand my instructions “Can you point out the sentences that describe the Mona Lisa picture?” He just stared at the textbook while I asked him for the meaning of each and every word in Japanese. Still nada.)

Please don’t ring me — just message me online. Let my fingers do the talking. The spirit is willing but the flesh is not.

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