Update.

Well, I received my Certificate of Eligibility (C.O.E) from the school in Fukuoka about 2 weeks ago. I then had to apply for a renewal of my passport, that took just over a week (I was surprised how quick that process was). And, a few days ago I posted my passport, visa application form and C.O.E to a visa company in London, they will receive it tomorrow and take it to the Japanese Embassy in London for me, then I should HOPEFULLY receive my passport back at the end of the week or the week after!

         This is the last stage of my the application process for a work visa, I think it is just requiring the Embassy to check my application form and stamp my passport with my Japanese working visa page. But, I am just hoping it all goes well and I get it back with it all verified and passed!

         And, finally, once that has gone through and I have received my passport from the visa company in London I will be all ready to go! I have a flight booked from Manchester on Monday the 20th February, this flight is as follows;

- Manchester to London, England (3 and a half hour change in Heathrow airport)

- London to Shanghai, China (1 and a half hours change in Shanghai Pudgong airport)

- Shanghai to Fukuoka, Japan.

         Overall, the entire journey racks up to about 18-19 hours, not so bad really considering I have done it a few times now, so I know what to expect.

Happy New Year to you all!

2017 will be a long year and I hope it will go well for us all!

I am going to try and think positive this year, despite being in a job that I hate and spending a fortune on fuel for my car every week. Hopefully in the next 2-3 weeks I will get my Certificate of Eligibility back from Japan and I can buy my flight to Fukuoka! Here’s hoping :) 

Until then, I have a 1-9pm shift at the hospital in Bangor. Time to get ready! HAPPY NEW YEAR! ^.^

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope 2017 will be an amazing year for you all.

New Year’s Morning by Ogata Gekko

1st Jan v/s Rest of the year

| FUJI COLOR 100 | instagram |  Kunihito Miki Photography |  

Update.

Well, apart from the LAST post, I haven’t really been on here for a good month or so. Time for an update post!

So, as you can see from the previous post- I have an interview this Friday with a school in Fukuoka (a second interview, which is always a good sign). I have applied for an absolutely huge number of schools in Japan, I can’t even begin to estimate how many! 

I turned down a job interview in Yokohama due to the low salary (shame as the school looked decent and the location was excellent), I turned another in Kumamoto (the school owner seemed MEH).

A school in Kagawa prefecture on the island of Shikoku wanted to hire me after a Skype interview, that was all well and all but overall I did not have a good vibe about the Japanese woman who owned the school. The interview itself was with two people, an American and a Japanese woman. The American spoke the entire time, but the Japanese school owner pretty much blanked me during the entire interview. Later that week she (the Japanese woman) emailed me twice trying her hardest to get me to accept her job offer, but I declined!

Yesterday I turned down a second job interview over Skype with a Canadian/Japanese owned school in Saitama prefecture. The school sounded really good, the guy I spoke to seemed really friendly as well. I just did not like the fact that the school has only been open about 1 to 2 years and only had a few students. Yes, the salary was good, but what if the school did not gain anymore students and may have shut down? I have to be careful about what school I accept a job offer from, especially after working for iTTTi Japan and the last school I worked at in Okamoto.

I want the job offer to be something like 250,000 yen a month, help me find housing (all schools do though to be fair), can help in health insurance and is not like the school that I worked at in Okamoto where I worked 55-65 hours per week! That job exhausted me, which was a shame as I loved working there as the students were great (well, the majority of them were!). My boss just ran me into the ground and took advantage of me, she let the other English teachers get more money than me and messed me about, something which I complained about yet she had the audacity to snap at me. So, that is the mistake that I do NOT want to make again- working for a bad boss and poorly ran school!

I have had other schools email me this past week regarding interviews. One from Gifu prefecture (the school looks a bit meh, so I declined), Ibaraki prefecture (I am not 100% convinced by the job advertisement), and I also have a job interview on Skype on Friday for a big school in Nagoya. Nagoya is the fourth biggest city in Japan, I have been there twice. Its a decent place, but it really didn’t seem like the most exciting of places, although the nightlife there is absolutely insane! The one good thing about potentially working in Nagoya would be a short Shinkansen/bullet train journey to Hyogo prefecture to see all the friends I have there (also a friend from University, Selina, is moving to Ikeda in Northern Osaka prefecture in March/April 2017, so I want to see her and take her to Kyoto, Nara, etc...). Also, Gifu, Hamamatsu and Shizuoka are not too far away from Nagoya, so it might be decent living there.

And, finally, the school in Fukuoka. This school is, from what I have gathered, is actually a Japanese elementary school with only a few English influences and I would be more of an assistant in most classes, but would then lead 2 to 3 afternoon classes in the week for older students. This job would require me moving in late February as well, so I am hoping that they give me the answer to whether or not I have been hired on Friday, as I need to apply for my Certificate of Eligibility again which takes 4-8 weeks just to receive if I remember correctly!

I will post again on Friday.

Peace.x.

So, this Friday (09.12.2016) I will have my second interview with a school which is based in Fukuoka prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Southern Japan. The first interview went really well, so much so that they said in an email reply shortly afterwards that they are ‘very interested in hiring me’. So, I have my fingers crossed! I’ve never been to the island of Kyushu, but Fukuoka has been my list to visit for a long time now.

Haha, I miss teaching kids in Japan, it was such a fun job! I miss these two kids a lot too, they were so cute!

by Remo Ferraguto

Funda-in 芬陀院 Kyoto by jose ignacio arbulo

Hondo-ji (本土寺), Chiba

日の出の時間 by zai emi

By : Satoru Matsuura (Do not remove credits)

By : Satoru Matsuura (Do not remove credits)

Interesting!