(upbeat music)
- Ohayougozaimasu! Aloha! good morning from Ibaraki, Japan.
My name is Tianee and today I will be your
ITA story takeover host, showing you a day in my life
here in Japan teaching.
So today is actually my last day of summer vacation.
I start school back for the second term tomorrow,
September 1st and today,
I just wanted to take you around my city,
show you some of the schools I work at and what I would do
on a normal weekend or a day off here in Ibaraki.
So I'm going to take you over to a Lawson's a few blocks
away from my house and grab some coffee. But first,
before we head out,
I'm going to attach my Instagram handle and
a question box on the next slide.
You can send me any questions you might have about Japan,
teaching or anything I talk about today.
So, Ikimasho!
So this is the outside of my apartment building.
We live in a pretty standard lil palace apartment.
There is parking space for bikes and
I live on the main road in our city.
So the station is right over there.
Let's head over.
So coming with me on today's journey is my boyfriend's Zach.
- Hello.
- He's also from Hawaii, we moved to Japan together.
We live in the same city and we work in different cities.
So let's show you around today.
So as you walk further down this main road,
we have an Izakaya, all you can eat, all you can drink.
There's a soba shop, a tourism center,
and over there is the station.
So this is the view from above the station in my city.
We are right next to the beach and mountains.
So there's a pretty nice view. It's really cloudy today.
We had a pretty big thunderstorm yesterday,
but still a nice day here in Japan.
So on the other side of my apartment, we have a small hotel.
There's usually a bakery and lots of other businesses,
but I'm up pretty early, so everything's closed.
I usually get up around seven.
My typical work day is from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM.
So let's head over to Lawson's.
Also right on the corner here, is my friend's Eikaiwa
or English conversational school
that he does after school every evening on weekdays.
Okay, so let's head in.
Convenience stores or conveni are a staple here in Japan.
All of your convenience items,
anything you could use every day, ATM, printer.
All of the food, drinks, snacks, ramen.
Bakery and all of the aikido.
You can grab a quick bite, so much good stuff.
Also some fresh food.
So with our company, we got a car.
Since we work in two different cities,
we're going to drive over to a park and
I'll start answering some of your questions.
So this is a really small park that we come to sometimes
to work out or exercise and it's nice and quiet.
So we're going to take a seat and answer some questions.
So I wanted to show you guys what we got from Lawson's
I got a green tea latte and melon pawn,
and Zach got same drink and a Tamago sando or egg sandwich.
So let's answer some questions, a little about my work life.
I've been here in Japan for about two and a half years.
I'm currently in my third year of teaching.
My first year I taught at four kindergartens and
one junior high school.
My second year I taught at the same schools
plus two elementary schools.
And now this year I just work at the two elementary schools
from 8:30 to 4:30 every day.
So I am currently an ALT or assistant language teacher
here in Japan, I work for Heart Corporation
one of the dispatch ALT companies.
There are many others like Altea interact or border link,
and there are also private English conversation schools
or Eikaiwa like Eon, ICC, At On.
So there's lots of different opportunities.
I found my job on gaijinpot.com,
which is a website you can use for jobs,
apartments and all kinds of things here in Japan.
It's so useful.
I definitely recommend checking out Gaijin Pot
where you can upload a resume,
get in contact with other companies.
So I actually had a few different job offers before
accepting with Heart Corporation.
And it's a great way to get your name out there and connect
with companies that are looking for English teachers,
Zach and I both took the ITA TEFL online
certification course back in August of 2017.
I completed my practicum in 2018 and
we moved to Japan early in 2019 before the spring semester,
the online course really did a good job of preparing us to
come and teach English abroad.
It was so thorough and it helped us with lesson planning and
getting used to teaching kids in another language.
And I highly recommend it for anyone considering
getting the TEFL. This is definitely the company to go with.
I had a question about how difficult it might be to find a
job as a fluent English speaker,
but non-native most companies will most likely ask that you
are a native speaker of English,
but a lot of the companies are very flexible
with their rules.
For example, I don't have a four-year degree.
I'm actually here on a two year degree and
experience in teaching.
So it really depends how willing the company is to work with
you and provide you with that instructor visa that will
allow you to come here to Japan and start working.
And that is actually the visa that we are on,
the instructor visa.
That gives you two years of time to live and
work here in Japan.
We do have a lot of friends here in Japan
that are non native speakers and teaching English just fine
from the Philippines, Italy, Singapore, all over the world.
So I definitely wouldn't worry about that.
And to answer the other question. Yes,
it is easy to find other ex-pat friends along the way.
We met our closest friends from our orientation
with Heart Corporation and just traveling around and
meeting up with other people who obviously speak English,
like us creates friendships that are so great to have while
you're living abroad in a new country.
So don't worry about that either.
The other question that we got was what was something that
surprised us the most when moving into our new house,
I'll have Zach speak on that.
- I was very surprised at how small the apartments are in
Japan, especially for both of us living together.
- Yeah, and if you know anything about Japanese apartments,
they're really compact and small.
So I'll attach two videos of the apartments
we've lived in so far. So you can go ahead and
check those out.
- This is our new apartment.
- Next I'll post the slide about my total monthly expenses.
I'm going to go into quite detail on it so that you know
exactly how much you'll be spending here in Japan.
And if you have any questions,
you can ask me about that too.
So this is the nice little walk on the way up to
one of my schools, we're on a mountain.
So we're surrounded by nature.
The kids will be in school tomorrow for three days.
We actually just got word that school will be suspended for
the next two weeks due to coronavirus.
So the kids are going to come pack up their tablets and
textbooks, and then we'll probably be teaching online.
But this is the outside of my school,
the school yard, gym, and the school building.
It's very nice.
So I won't actually be going inside today,
but I will attach some videos
of the English room that I teach in.
So you can see what it looks like on the inside of school.
This is a question that I would definitely love to answer.
Why Japan?
Originally, when I got my TEFL certification,
I was planning to move to Taiwan because I know that they
hired teachers who only have a two year degree,
but upon doing my own research,
I found out that there are companies willing to hir
teachers even with the two year degree.
So Japan became my first choice.
I visited Tokyo and Kyoto for two weeks when I was in junior
high school for taking language class.
And I also, I'm Japanese,
I grew up in a Japanese household with the food and culture.
So I knew it would be a perfect fit.
- Now I'll tell you about why Japan was my top choice.
I chose Japan because I love the culture.
I love Japanese food.
I love Pokemon, anime and video games.
Also, I like to do photography and I figured Japan
would be the perfect place for me to practice photography.
- I think this is probably the question
that's on everyone's minds.
Will Japan be open by 2022?
So I'll talk about that a little.
Currently, things are still a little crazy here in Japan.
There are 21 prefectures on a state of emergency
including Ibaraki and 12 prefectures on a pre emergency.
So tourism is still locked down.
You can't just come here on vacation.
If you do have a company that hires you,
they are still giving visas for instructors.
So we still have some friends that have been coming over
a few months ago and getting jobs.
As long as you do the quarantine for 14 days,
your vaccination status has nothing to do
with the quarantine. Everyone has to do it.
So as long as you do that, have all your paperwork done.
It's totally possible to start working here by 2022.
Now we're going to take you over to our local shopping area.
Here's a 7-Eleven, Deisel, Geo.
One of the hyper media stores where you can buy
all your video games and use products
and the EON and Seria, another $1 shop.
And we'll head to the arcade in there. Lots of cool stuff.
So this is a pretty typical EON.
They have these stores all over Japan.
The food selection is great.
I want to show you guys what we can pick up for lunch.
They also just recently added this import foods aisle.
So I can grab ingredients for cooking
from all over the world.
They even have my Hawaiian sun juices from Hawaii.
It's pretty awesome.
And of course it wouldn't be complete without all of the
super cute breads Pokemon.
And if you're interested in knowing what
school lunches like,
I'm going to attach some pictures from school lunch.
So this is Seria. One of the shops similar to Deisel.
A hundred yen is roughly less than $1.
So everything in this store, less than a dollar.
Check it out.
There's lots of super cute goods.
They always have Pokemon and anime.
All of your stationary stickers, beauty products,
everything you could imagine, but a hundred.
Sorry, I cut off on that last slide there.
There's so many of my students in here right now,
since it's still summer break we're in the game area,
all of your Nintendo Switch needs some gatcha.
Of course, Kimetsu no Yaiba or Demon Slayer,
all kinds of cool stuff.
And over this way, we have the arcade.
It's pretty loud, so I won't be talking
So many cute plushies to win.
Let's see if Zach can get this Gojoe.
Oh, no.
So now we're at the beach.
There's usually some pretty nice breaks in between the rocks
over there. If we want to surf with your friends,
you can exercise, play Pokemon Go.
There's like 20 stops and gyms all along this beach.
And it's a nice place just to come and hang out and
be by the ocean.
This is definitely one of the places
I wanted to show you guys.
A super beautiful Cove on the coast of our city.
So beautiful, relaxing.
Japan is something special.
One of the best parts about living in Japan for us,
is being able to travel.
We take advantage of every single vacation and we've visited
about 23 different prefectures hunting down all of the
Pokemon centers and cafe's, different festivals.
And just seeing as much of Japan as we can.
If you want to check out any of our traveling,
you can head over to our Instagram accounts and we'll answer
any questions you guys know.
(upbeat music)