Throwback Thursday – The Interac Experience

I’ve never done a ‘Throwback Thursday’ before, so here goes. I’ve put all my experiences with Interac, the company I thought English in Japan for for two years, into this post. I’ve noticed that they continue to get a bit of traffic even a year or more since I posted them, and I thought it …

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The Interac Experience Part Three- School Begins!

After all was set up for life in Ichinoseki, I had to get ready for school. Except, as I said, there were nearly three weeks before I started, and three weeks before I’d be earning regular money. Coupled with the fact that Interac pays the end of the following month (i.e. march pay comes on …

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The Interac Experience Part Two – Settling In

Last Saturday I began a recounting of the tale of working for Interac and living in Japan. I wrote about the first week, the training at the Toyoko Inn at Narita, and the way everything was conducted. Today I move on to recounting how it was heading up to Iwate and settling in, the gap …

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The Interac Experience Part One – Arrival and Orientation

It was a strange day when I arrived in Tokyo – well Narita Airport, actually in Chiba, in 2012. My wife and I had had to drop our honeymoon plans because I had been told that training for Interac would begin in April, but in fact started on the 20th of March. We’d got married …

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Japanese Survival Guide Point 7 – City Hall and Bureaucracy

Winding down my Japanese Survival Guide now, with principally the third last post unless something else springs to mind, folks it’s time to prepare for the red tape that awaits the foreigner when you come to work in Japan as an ESL Teacher. The irony of it all is that Japan is a principally capitalistic …

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Japanese Survival Guide Point 6 – Language

I’m continuing for a few more weeks my regular Saturday spot – ‘The Japanese Survival Guide’, and today I wanted to look a bit at the Japanese language, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, if you are headed to Japan it will help to know a couple of useful phrases, but also, to someone who’s …

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World Journeys Podcast Episode 3 with Maxime Savard

Join the podcast today with special guest Maxime Savard. Maxime has been living in Japan for over eight years now, and was living on the Tohoku coast on the 11th of March, 2011 when the Great Tohoku Earthquake hit. In the podcast we talk about his experiences after the earthquake and what it was like …

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Sayanara Apartment

Well, today I said 'Goodbye' to my apartment where I have lived the past two years. If moving to Japan was tricky, leaving is not only difficult but also quite slow and frustrating. Still, even though the apartment wasn't quite as comfortable as I might have liked, I'll have fond memories. Not so much of …

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The Final Wrap – School’s Out!

Well... that's that! In a blink of an eye, somehow I am finished with teaching schools in Japan. Today, at my second school, a special needs school, I went to graduation. It was an interesting day, some happy faces, some nervous ones.     It is interesting to me that comparing the two, very very …

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