Hi everyone. I know I haven't written in a long time and to be honest I have been 1/2 busy and 1/2 too lazy to do so. I'm in my winter term of graduate school in Japan and I can honestly say that it has been a humbling and eye opening experience for me thus far.

I have figured out what I want my research topic to be but I'm not sure about how I will go about collecting empirical data for it. There are several options I have but finding the one that will best suit the ends to my means is difficult to decide.

This semester I have taken my first graduate class in Japanese and at first it was very daunting. to be honest it still is but I am trying to pull through. I know that the language in an academic setting is another world entirely that needs time to get use to and sometimes I do feel overwhelmed but the teacher and the other students are nice and (to what I can assume anyway) not judgmental so I will do my best to tough it out.

In addition, I have started my own YouTube channel about my experiences in Japan. It's not too interesting but I hope to make more videos in the future and try to talk about subject matter that's relatable and interesting to people. Please subscribe and give me some suggestions =)

Also, it's almost been three years that I have been with my boyfriend and lord...that just deserves a whole separate blob post for that. However, despite all the things we go through I love him and appreciate him. Hoping that there will be more years to come I cross my fingers and pray XD

When I first started this blog, I focused a lot on my hair since in 2009 I cut all my hair off to begin my "natural" me journey...or rather to not care about what society thought of my "wild" hair and  just let it grow out of my hair free. I have learned a lot this past five years of living with my natural hair and to be honest it feels like I'm just beginning to learn what my hair does and doesn't like. It's grown a lot as you can tell and I'm looking forward to seeing what the future hold for me and my hair journey. I'm actually not one of those girls that's obsessed about length. I use to be though. Now, I just  let it do whatever and am grateful that I have healthy hair on my head. However, I'm not about "tail bone almost touching the floor" hair life. I really don't have time for that! So once my hair goes past armpit length, its snip*snip.

Anyway, I just wanted to write an update on my life and thank everyone for reading.

Going back to school...part 2 Graduate School MEXT

So in September I will be a graduate student in Japan at International Christian University. I still can't believe that I actually able to have this opportunity. I was able to receive the MEXT scholarship that the Japanese government offers international students. My graduate school is hence free for the two years of my study for my masters degree. I know I will have to work hard but I am so grateful for this opportunity when I know how expensive school and an advanced degree can get. I'm still paying loans off from my undergraduate degree so I can't believe how blessed I am for this opportunity. I know that this will mean that I will be away from my family and my boyfriend for two more years...I just hope that I will be able to have the strength to overcome whatever these two years bring. I know I had originally wanted to go to Nanzan University's International studies program but at this point in my life I feel like my Japanese isn't up to the potential that I see it going to and I feel that at ICU I can hone my Japanese studies better than at the school I had originally planned to go to. Plus, ICU is familiar because I have studied there before and I do feel like I can gain a lot out of this opportunity.

My full year at Amity

Hello everyone.

So I haven`t been updating my blog in a while and this is because I have been so busy with finding a new job, moving and finishing my contract with Amity. I`m writing this blog post to give anyone thinking of applying to Amity some advice with the application process and the teaching aspects of the job.

The application and Interview process:

The application process and the essay that you have to write are pretty straight forward so I won`t get into a lot of details about it. The interview, however, takes place in certain cities across the US and Canada (I believe) if you have an interview in a city that is far from where you live, you will have to bear the cost of paying for your hotel, meals and plane ticket to and from the interview site. I lived in Maryland and interviewed with Amity in Boston so I had to pay for everything in this regard.

At the interview site, the interview will last two days. I have written about my interview experience in a previous blog post but I will summerize it here. If you want more information about it please look at my `Amity Interview` blog post found here [1] [2] [3].

The first day of the interview is bascially an introduction to the company, life in Japan, salary ect. I will say that working with the company you can save money even if you have student loans but you will have to budget wiselly and complete your contract. I was able to save around $300 a month while also paying loans and other expenses. Putting that aside, the first day is an introduction and you will also have to do your model lesson with the other applicants and the recruiter. For this part of the interview I would say to just have a lot of energy and put some time into your props, if you have any that you will use. Amity recruiters want to see that you take the time and effort to make quality lessons because you will be asked to do a lot more if hired for the company.

After the first day of the interview you will wait for a phone call from the recruiter to tell you if you have a second interview. This can be a very nerve racking period because if you are like me you spent a lot of money to get to the interview and not getting a second phone call and having to go back with no job and less money in your pocket will suck.

Anyway, after you get your phone call and are offered a second interview you will do another model lesson but this time not in front of the other applicants but with the recruiter. S/He will pretend to be a Japanese kid which can throw you off but just go along with it and do the lesson. All the props and cards the recruiter will give to you and you will have some time to prepare for the lesson. Once you finish the lesson the recruiter will talk about the job some more and will contact you when an available placement comes up. For me this process took around two to three months.

Training and Placement in your branch school:

Now, we get into actually going to Japan when you get your placement and everything. I`m saying this because I do have a certain level of proficiency in Japanese but I highly reccomend that you learn or already have some language ability under your belt. It will help emmensly when you  get over to Japan. For exmaple, when I got to Japan and the person that I was going to replace messaged me on Facebook, she said that I should just apply for the internet myself because going through the school could take up to 3 months. This being said I went to an internet provider myself and applied and had internet within a week of arriving in my apartment. There are alot of situations like this so knowing Japanese will definitly be a plus.

Not to mention that you, more times than not, will feel/be isolated. I say isolated because in my experience I felt that a lot of the times Amity doesn't treat it's employees, or rather foreign employees with the amount of respect that one would wish for. For example, there are times when your branch school meet "spirit" goals or some other occasion happens where you go out for drinks or eat dinner together with your co-workers. In this setting, most of the Japanese teachers will speak Japanese and if you don't speak any Japanese then you are just S.O.L. Now, I didn't have a problem with this because as a constant learner in the language I thought it was a good chance to improve listening/speaking and what not. However, for Amity to intentionally bring people who speak NO Japanese to try and authenticate the atmosphere of the Amity school and then turn around and exclude them at events like this is in my mind like using someone as a tool and putting them on the shelf to later use again.

This is not the only instance where I have felt this way. For just another example, as Amity employees it is sometimes necessary for you to attract new "students" to the school. Now, sometimes you may have to just put flyers in mailboxes around the community but if you are lucky and have a festival or something going on in your town, you might get to play the jolly goofy foreigner that doesn't know a stitch of Japanese that kids should flock around and point at. One day I needed to go with my manager and hand out flyers and instead of being an active member in trying to explain what Amity is about and try to actually get use out of my Japanese abilities, I was told to wave at the kids and say "Hello" to attract people. Exploitation at its finest if you ask me but hey this is just my personal experience and I know others who work with Amity may have different experiences but I thought it would be beneficial to contribute my experience into the collective pool of thought.

Getting back on track from my rant there, you will have to pay for your own plane ticket and you will have to choose a flight approved by Amity to make sure you arrive there on time. They will give you a list of flights that you can choose from and from there you will have to bascially pay around $1000~2000 for the flight. Once you get there, you will meet the trainers at the airport to go to the training facility in Okayama. I can`t say that I have lived in the training facility before because when I went, there was overcrowding in the facility so all of the girls in my group got to stay in a hotel. However, from what I heard the training facility doesn`t have any internet and is bascially like a dorm. You will be staying here for a week while you undergo training.

Training will be intense as there is a lot of information thrown at you each day. You will probably also be jet lagged and if you are anything like me want to just go to sleep at 3 in the afternoon. Do your best to get through the training and the trainers also know you are jet lagged so they will be understanding. What is different from when I had training is that now Amity uses computers for its lessons. Before, I had to make all the language strips, props and other materials for all the classes myself so it being computerized helps with the workload but it will still be a lot of classes that you will have to teach and prepare for so be warned.

Personally, I feel Amity made this move to computerization because back in 2011, a Japanese Amity employee committed suicide. Japanese society has a history of death by overwork or becoming to consumed by overtime work and committing suicide. Working at this company I absolutely felt that it was way too much work and way too many classes for someone to do just starting. I remember when I first started out, I literally spent all of my weekends and break periods preparing cards, lessons and other prep materials for the classes. In my mind it's very easy to see someone getting so consumed in the work that it because too much for them. I was lucky that I had another foreign co-worker that gave me the best advice "don't take work home." However, now that most of the class are digital now I'm guessing the load is easier but I have only been fully immersed in the "digital" lessons environment for only a week so I'm not completely sure how true that is.

Aside from another rant, after you have completed your training, Amity will pay for you to go to your school by Shinkansen. This is the Japanese bullet train. Once you get to your school you will meet your manager and your `Co-Net,` the other foreign teacher at the school (if you have one) and the other Japanese teachers. At this point you will also shadow the person that you will replace for a week and you should also be prepared to teach classes on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday of that week. The person you are replacing will decide the days and you should be informed about the classes you are teaching when you get your class schedule on the last day of training.

The first day can be overhelming to some people as you begin to see how much work needs to be put into the lessons and the amount of classes you have. Especially if you were at a big school like I was. Just remember that everyone feels overwhelmed at first and you will get used to it. What I had in the back of my head is that I spent a lot of money just to get here so I might as well finish what I started. Some people freak out and go back home on the first or second day. In my training group I know of two people that didn`t last a month at their schools. The person that was suppose to replace me actually cracked from the pressure on the second day of his shadow week and left, leaving the company with no replacement for me until July. I had other plans after my contract finished with Amity so I wasn`t able to stay longer, thus they had to call in emergency teachers.

Not to mention my manager had already decided in her head that I wasn't getting a second contract for unexplained reasons (I'll write about that later) so Amity was not in my future as a default choice.

However, just remember that with any job people feel overwhelmed on the first day and that it will get better over time.

Financial Aspects:

As I said before, the start up cost that Amity makes you pay on your own can be quite substanial. With your plane ticket, start up living cost and the processing fee, it can be around $4000-$5000 you are spending just to get settled into Japan for this job. Since so much money is required you really do have to be commited to completing your contract if you don`t want to lose a lot of money in the process. For me, I liked to think of this as an investment in myself and going throughout the year I would say that it was a good investment because Amity`s work experience will definitely get you ready for any other job you would have to face in the world...however the bonus at the end of your contract is basically around $500...so I mean monetary wise its not good, not great, just ok. Throughout my year with Amity I saved around $300 a month while paying for $650 worth of student loans I had. To be honest Amity used to pay a lot higher but I`m guessing because of the recession they docked the pay to 270,000 yen a month when orginally it used to be in the 300,000 yen range. I believe that as much as the teachers have to do at the schools the pay should be higher but it`s only my opinion and one of the reasons why, if offered, I would decided not to extend my contract beyond the predetermined date. However, to put it simply you can save money at this job while paying for student loans if you have any.

Daily Life and your Manager/ coworkers:

Once you get used to your school, the one thing that everyone says is that the manager at your school can make or break your experience at Amity. I can only tell you about my experience and the impressions that I had. My manager was a nice lady and when compared to a lot of the other horror stories I`ve heard I`m glad that she was my manager but we didn`t really gel well together. I don`t know if it was just a cultural thing, being that she has never been abroad before or whatever but we just didn`t get along. I mean we didn`t have fights or argue or anything like that but you know how you can just feel hostitality in the room with someone that you don`t like, that was my situation. When it came time for my six month review she said if I didn`t change my `attitude` that I wouldn`t be able to work there anymore. I was really surprised when she said this because I was super friendly with all the parents and the students and all of my co-workers and I got along well so I`m guessing she was just saying that because of her own personal feelings or the fact that I didn't fit the "foreigner" mold that is laid out for the native English teachers. The only thing that really upset me was that I didn`t get to listen to what was being said about me to the trainers or who ever is in charge of rehiring.

That`s one of the things I didn`t like about Amity is that the communication there is so closed. For example, me and my Co-net at the time decide we want to go to Korea so we took the same days off in order to go together. A couple days later the manager calls me in and says that as I may or may not know both foreign teachers aren`t allowed to take off on the same day. Now, this wasn`t told to us at training nor was it written in the policy manual but they are just telling us this now when we already booked our tickets. We still took off the days but our manager was like remember it for next time. I was really upset at that because why do I have to subject my days off to when someone else takes their days off. I should be able to take my days off whenever I want to regardless of whoever else is taking the day off. Not to mention that whenever, my co-net or I decided to take days off it would always be a hassle and we would be scrutinized for not working hard like the Japanese teachers. We have five days written in our contract and we should be allowed to take it without question if we put in our request two months before like we`re suppose to, however, I always felt it was a struggle, especially for my co-net to take days off. I feel like the scrutinity was because Amity is a business and everyday that you aren`t there working the company is losing money.

I feel that`s one of the things that you have to realize when working with Amity. You aren`t working for a school. It is a business. If you want to work at a real public school then Amity is not the place to apply. Because Amity is a business, you will feel pressure to get more students, meet business goals for textbooks and other promotional things the school does to make money. I also didn`t like the pressure I was put under every day which is another reason why, if offered, I wouldn't have extended my contract.