Interview

I’ve been trying to be hired as an English teacher for the past month with no luck. It seems you have to be a girl because the best paying people are old businessmen and I know they don’t want to learn English from me when they could from a cute girl. Anyway, I was indirectly offered a job from a classmate whose friend’s friend’s friend’s something wanted an English teacher for their 6 year old son.

My classmate gave me the contact information and I emailed the person (I was assuming it was a girl because the name was “Minami”). Anyway I get a reply (I emailed in Japanese) that is also in Japanese but there are a bunch of Kanji that I couldn't read. So I pull out my dictionary and I was looking up the words one by one. “Minami” used the Kanji for “Arigadou” [thank you]. I’ve been studying Japanese for the equivalent of three years, and I’ve never seen ANYONE use the kanji for Arigadou before. Anyway, that’s supposed to be an indication to everyone out there how hard I was to translate this email.

But I did it, and we arranged to meet in Shibuya the following night. I wanted to do this professionally, so I shaved, put on a suit and tie, and wore my overcoat. I went to dinner with friends in Shibuya beforehand, and it occurs to me that I will have no idea who to look for when Iwent to meet her. I went and stood by Hachiko, the dog statue that people meet at, and I start eyeing everyone woman waited there. I’m assuming that this is going to be the mother of the boy, so I was very, very close to walking up to this 50 year old woman and introducing myself. But just then I saw my classmate who referred me, so I assumed she would be with the parent. It turned out that Minami was a 22 year old Keio Student, and was the niece of the family who wanted the teacher.

Basically I made a bunch of false assumptions. I ate dinner before the meeting assuming she would have told me if we were going to eat. The first think she says is “Let’s go to dinner”. D’oh. I was assuming this was the English speaking family, so I was prepared to speak English. Minami didn’t really speak English. . . at all, so my interview was in Japanese. And she was wearing a jean jacket and mini-skirt (ie, typical girls clothes) while I was in a suit and tie. She told me I looked 30. Oh well, it went over okay, and I talked a little to the family (by phone) and they said they were interested. That was last Friday, a week ago though, and I haven’t heard from them again. They said they would email me, but now I’m doubting whether I heard them right or not. (the family spoke English on the phone, so it wasn’t a misunderstanding because of Japanese.)

I went to a K-1 fight (kickboxing) last Saturday, that’ll be the next post.