The Ins and Outs of My New Japanese University Day Job

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Two weeks in, and I’m feeling good.

As you might remember, in July I finished my job on the JET Program in Toyama, Japan, took a quick trip back to the States, then relocated back to Japan and the city of Yokohama for a new Day Job teaching university English for the fall semester.  It’s been a wild ride, but things have finally started to settle down.

As I wrote about last month, I had to deal with a two-week isolation period mandated by the Japanese government (even for vaccinated people…) that fortunately put me in a REALLY clear headspace for concentrating on my creative work.  I then spent the second week doing Zoom trainings and preparation for the new job from my apartment, which wasn’t too strenuous and served as a really good introduction to the new job and the people there.
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I’m Back in Japan on COVID Lockdown…And It’s Not That Bad

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Quick catchup for those who missed it: at the end of July I finished my Day Job teaching Japanese elementary English on the JET Program in Toyama, and in August I flew back to the States for some long-awaited reunions with family and friends. Now it’s September and I just flew back to start my new job teaching university English in Yokohama, just outside of Tokyo.

Unfortunately, Japan’s still a tad behind on COVID vaccinations and is still being tight on its border rules. Only just this week (six days after I entered the country!) did Japan relax its rules to allow vaccinated visitors to go through a shorter isolation period.

That means that even though I’m fully vaccinated, as of now, I still have to go through a mandated 2-week isolation period (notice I wrote “isolation period” instead of “quarantine”) after arriving. I also had to do a TON of paperwork, install a check-in app on my phone so Japanese Immigration can robo-call me to check my whereabouts, and wait in a 2-hour line at the airport. Bleh…

Anyway, it’s important to note that the “isolation period” isn’t a quarantine per se—I’m supposed to stay in my apartment, avoid crowded places and anywhere with people Continue reading »

Life Upheavals Make It REALLY Difficult to Do Your Creative Work

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Yeah, I’m here.

I just packed up my entire apartment, said goodbye to all my Toyama friends, spent two and a half days traveling halfway across the world, finished another round of developmental edits on my novel, and met up with my New Hampshire family and friends for the first time in two years, all while battling jet lag and struggling to find the clean socks I’d scattered throughout the darkest regions of my luggage to save space.

How you doing? Continue reading »

Leaving the JET Program, Part 4: Why I Switched to a Shorter-Term Day Job

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At the end of July I’m finishing my Day Job teaching English in Japan with the JET Program, and the transition has given me a lot to think about.  This is the last post in my series about working on JET, what it’s brought me, how I feel about it, and where I’m headed in the future. If you missed the beginning you can get start with Part 1 here.

The cover photo shows decorations for a festival on a street in my town of Namerikawa, Toyama, sometime in the early- to mid-twentieth century.

Today I had my last day of work, and it was really sad.

There were a lot of goodbyes, a lot of farewell cards, a few presents, a last-day lunch, and one of my old supervisors even came from a different school to say goodbye and thank me for my service.  For Japanese-style goodbyes, coworkers will usually gather at the door to wave to someone as they leave for the last time, and that was really nice too.

I also gave a speech during my main school’s end-of-semester ceremony, which was really meaningful as well.  I talked about the shock of working in a Japanese elementary school for the first time, how I always Continue reading »

Leaving the JET Program, Part 2: Honing My Life Focus

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At the end of July I’m finishing my Day Job teaching English in Japan with the JET Program, and the transition has given me a lot to think about.  This is the second in a multi-part series about working on JET, what it’s brought me, how I feel about it, and where I’m headed in the future. You can check out Part 1 here.

The cover photo shows an actual girls elementary school (which later became Tanaka elementary school) in my town of Namerikawa, Toyama, from the early- to mid-20th century.

As I wrote about last week, I really like my job teaching English with the JET Program, but it’s time for me to move on.  Besides some problems with one of my co-teachers and not being able to see family and friends in the States, there’s one really, really important reason for my leaving that deserved its own post:

It’s time for me to focus more on creative work, and not on Day Job work. Continue reading »

Leaving the JET Program, Part 1: I Love My Day Job, But I’m Leaving

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At the end of July I’m finishing my Day Job teaching English in Japan with the JET Program, and the transition has given me a lot to think about.  This is the first in a multi-part series about working on JET, what it’s brought me, how I feel about it, and where I’m headed in the future.

Also, the cover photo shows an actual boys elementary school from my town of Namerikawa, Toyama, from the early- to mid-20th century.

I really like teaching English in Japan.  A lot.

I work as an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) in Toyama, Japan as part of the JET Program, a Japanese government program that recruits teachers from overseas to teach in elementary, junior high, and high schools.  I live in a small town, and work at 3-5 elementary schools per semester, often a different school every day.

ALTs on the JET Program work alongside Japanese teachers in the classroom, rather than teaching alone.  While this can often lead to dull, repetitive work that JET researcher David McConnell and others call Human Tape-Recorder syndrome, I take a more active role in lesson planning Continue reading »

June 2021 Novel Update: I Stepped Away From Writing, But That’s OK

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Yep, I jinxed myself.

I’m not going to lie—June was a busy month for me.  In addition to polishing up MFA Thesis Novel in preparation for my developmental edit, a lot of my attention has been focused on a Secret Change that I’m not quite ready to talk about yet (but will be soon!).

The problem with this Secret Change is that it turned out to be a MUCH bigger undertaking than I expected.  It also required a LOT of email checking and sending, since information was constantly changing and I needed to stay on the ball.  The Secret Change also involved a lot of stress, which affected my sleeping patterns and kept me up one night until two am to make a deadline, which threw off my sleep schedule for the entire week Continue reading »

May Novel Progress: Slow and Steady…

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During my last novel update in March I talked about how I was setting the small, reasonable goal of working for 2-3 hours a week drafting my new novel.  This involved a lot of planning with my creative time in that I’d set aside one 2-3 session (usually after work, but sometimes on the weekend) a few days ahead of time, then treat it like a regular appointment and not schedule anything else during that time.

This has been going really well—I literally haven’t missed a week since New Year’s, and that’s equaled out to a LOT of novel progress.

The disadvantage to this system, of course, is that it’s SLOW Continue reading »

Novel Progress Update: Let the Drafting Begin!

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Lately I’ve been writing.

Like, not writing shorter pieces or book reviews or essays, but working on the actual new novel I blogged about researching but not yet starting a few months ago.  I’ve been working in larger chunks of 2-4 hours one or two days a week, which is a pretty good rate for me with all the things I have going on.  So far in 2021 I’ve set aside six of these writing sessions where I sat down at the computer completely free of distractions and just wrote, which also feels really good.

Now let’s get one thing straight: I’m not the kind of person who usually brags (or blogs) about his writing progress, especially in terms of word count—which is why I’m not posting my word count here.  I don’t post my word count because all too often it can come across as bragging—like the number of words someone puts down on the page are an indicator of their self-worth even if all those words suck hard.  Other writers can read that and feel discouraged and inferior that they aren’t producing the same number of words—I know because I’ve been there.

I once read an interview with the writer John Banville where he talked about sometimes spending an entire day getting a single sentence exactly the way he wanted it.  John Banville writes some pretty beautiful sentences, but the point is that Continue reading »

I’m Taking Time Off From My Day Job and Using That Time Productively (Oh Yeah!)

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As some of you may have heard, back in the fall I was planning a Christmas trip back to New Hampshire to visit family and friends…which I ended up calling off when COVID cases and restrictions ramped up.  This sucked pretty hard, and while I don’t regret calling off the trip, it’s unfortunate that circumstances forced me into making that tough decision.

Here’s the good point, though: while planning the trip, I got approved for a four-week vacation from my Day Job.  And when I called off the US trip I decided I’d still use the time off.

Quick bit of backstory: My job as an ALT on the JET Program comes with, among other perks, 20 paid days off per year that are pretty flexible, especially if I schedule them in advance.  Last year because of COVID I barely used any, so when my new JET contract started in August I found myself with a mouth-watering 29 days to use or lose as I see fit.

And I have no intention of losing them. Continue reading »

I Took a Stress Test at Work and Here’s What I Learned

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I’ve been taking it slow on the blogging front lately while I reorganize some of my priorities in my writing, my Day Job, and everywhere else.  One factor that ties all those things together, though, is stress.

Back in October, two weeks after I talked to my boss about my stress problems, a single-page multiple-choice English stress survey suddenly appeared on the desks of all the foreign teachers in my city with notes asking us to fill them out.  Now, even though the city had asked every ALT to fill out the survey, the timing seemed like quite a coincidence ;-)

I got my results back a few weeks ago (also in English!) and they were…about what I expected. However, they also reinforced that I’ve been on the right track about the challenges I’m facing right now, including where those challenges are coming from and how to fix them. Continue reading »

How I Changed My Routine to Reduce Stress – A Rundown

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It’s been a rough couple of weeks, but things have been getting better.  (And on that note, MANY thanks to everyone who reached out to see how I was doing—it means a lot.)

As I wrote about last week, I’ve been having some issues with stress and general pessimism both in- and outside of my Day Job, and earlier this month I sat down and talked with my boss about it.  This was a pretty big step for me—and not just because of the language barrier.  Rather, it was me admitting to myself that I needed to slow down, step back, and reprioritize some aspects of my life.

This understandably involved a few changes—some big, some small, some I implemented right away, and some that were more gradual.  In order from most to least significant, here’s a rundown of what changes I’ve made, why I made them, and what effects they’ve been having…. Continue reading »