Talked with my supervisor yesterday about recontracting, specifically with my base school.
And I said yes.
I won’t pretend that I was anguished over it: honestly, I want to to stay another year and hopefully renew for 4 and 5 before transferring everything I’ve learned into working for Fukushima from abroad. In a big way, this was always my personal plan, but living in somewhere that’s not Tokyo –nothing against it, it’s just not my kind of city despite having amazing people in it, such as @todayintokyo and @shoku-and-awe – has really forced me to rethink how I want my studies and work with female persons and Japanese history to be shaped.
(I should say that I feel incredibly thankful that I’m not anguished over my contract. I know for a lot of good folks, this is a hard time to say yes: some of us haven’t been home in nearly two years, and that’s not easy. Some of us have horrible schools and difficult situations. Others, well… others are just facing the reality that all things come to an end or transition, and that’s still not easy either. to those with full heads and heavy shoulders, I wish you the best: make your happiness, whether it’s here helping students or elsewhere. Don’t force yourself to stay for a check: money is necessary, but you’ll break under work you can’t find any interest in it especially when we can feel so isolated here. To some degree, if there’s a chance to go home and you’re at your limit, take it. There’s no shame in being done with a chapter and turning to the next when you know it’s time to do just that.)
I want that future to strongly contain Fukushima, cultural heritage, and work that helps all the residents, foreigners included, and work that lets me be a tool for the prefecture and citizen’s goals for change, not my own ideas.
I’m not sure what July 25th, 2018 will bring. I’m not sure what a new school year in April will bring. What I can say, however, is that I do believe I’m setting myself up –if I do my hard work now– for a year where I’ll pass the N3, start prep for N2, pick up Chinese again, do more volunteering and work on my literacy. I think it’ll be a year of growing more and more into who I am.
Signing this contract really reinforces what I think next year will be about: Taking Chances, just for me and to make a bright future for myself.
It’s that time of year again to talk about the Elephant in the Room: recontracting.
I thought that this might give some insight to all new potential ALTs, and might show my process of deciding on my contract status for 2018 – 2019. This is just kind of a bit of my why: there’s a lot more than this, but that’s my personal life, so I’d rather keep it to myself.. Here’s a kind of broad view though that maybe can help.
Anyways, let’s jump in.
Right now, thousands of people are making the choice this month to dedicate at least a year of their lives to living abroad. For some, this experience is mostly about the J: Japan. It’s about a chance to explore a different culture and see the country, for whatever reasons. That might be a return to cultural heritage or for many, a desire and curiosity that can stem from Anime to Sado, island included.
For some, this experience is about the E: Exchange. This is about being a bridge between Home and Japan, between positive difference. Others will find T -Teaching- to be what brings them, will encourage them to learn from a different system, to teach and help cultivate learning environments.
For all, hopefully, they want to sample all three as equally as we can. I’ll admit that I’m in strong favor of the E: I feel that encompasses so much of what makes the J & T of JET come together.
My reason for contracting deals a lot with the E: that’s been really present in my daily life.
Each day, I exchange: Japanese, English, money, papers, actions, kindness. I could say that everything in Japan thus far has been an exchange of ideas and actions that have helped me build the Me I want to be.
That’s not to say this hasn’t been a hard transition.
I would love to tell you that I’m not homesick, that I don’t miss cheese, that I haven’t cried a lot recently, and that it’s just been a party and then some all day, every day, but I’d be lying and misleading you about what life is like here. I live a good life: I have good food, good friends, and I get to travel regularly, even if it’s just in the prefecture. I have good school and feel appreciated, feel like my work is good and has lots of room for positive growth, and I feel like I get helpful feedback that pushes me to keep trying in a healthy way.
And while yes, I’ve got a lot of happy, it’s also been tough at times too.
Life in Japan can be very humanly lonely at times, even speaking Japanese: I always feel keenly different, and that’s hard for anyone to weather without a support system. I have worries about fitting in because I don’t really like bars or drinking, miss having a car –and hate being limited to not having one for work– and often find myself wishing I maybe lived closer to other ALTS (That’s up in the air because this ALT likes quiet too!) You have to come in knowing what you will and won’t be able to handle, and truly hold onto that to buoy yourself when times turn sour.
Living abroad doesn’t mean living without worry: it just means living in a different country with the same problems you’d’ve had at home.
I’m still happy: I can say that with a honest heart. And I still have a lot let to do in Japan: there’s a lot of growth here for me that I haven’t tapped into. And I can say that I do have a good life: while I’ve shifted from spending so much time with ALTs and did so quickly, I feel connected to my neighborhood and community. I go places by myself more often than with groups, something I feel is important.
(Learn to be alone and enjoy the company of Just You. It is truly a gift.)
Even still, saying yes wasn’t 100% easy. I’m fully for saying yes, and have no hesitation, but that took work.
I had to be critical of my year here and look ahead: what struggles might break me, what might have to change, what might I have to raise my voice for to help me have success here? That’s really hard to think about, but if we don’t, then why stay? Money and travel just simply aren’t enough to sacrifice your health for.
So why am I staying?
Simple: change.
I mentioned earlier this year that I physically felt change, and I’m feeling it again: it’s like someone put a knot in my belly and is tugging, hard. It’s insistent, but I keep resisting, whether from anxiety or fear. But I want to give in and let myself change.
And that change is still here in Japan.
Last year brought a physical world of change: I moved my entire identity to Japan, had to learn how to function with my Blackness and Queerness, had to learn how to find peace in being different and Fat, how to learn how to love myself. I can feel a fresh wave of change (time to fortify!) and this time, I’m gonna ride it: I don’t want to resist it, not with all my growth.
I can’t pinpoint it –and may never be able to– but change is here for me, and it’s here in Japan. Already, I can see what they might be: a revival of my research into Girls and Women’s culture, pressing ahead with achieving N2 in my Japanese, cultivating my teaching skills as a Facilitator, and eventually, hopefully giving a lecture at Mechademia Japan in my 5th year.
In all of that, however, I want my growth to be about living in now.
I have a bad habit of planning: I plan for the future in every contingency, stress myself about what might happen a few days down the line if I chose one action over the other. So often, I treat my life as if it’s a Choose Your Own Adventure book, except I forget that yes, even when things are bad, I can make up for it and turn the pages and have a new storyline and outcome.
Finally, I think I’m at a place of letting that go.
It feels good and cleansing to tuck away the old and bring out the new. I feel like I’m throwing open a window to the sun after a long window: refreshed, revived, and ready for a new season. While this growth and change won’t happen overnight, it will happen, and I look forward to the Me I’ll be in 2018, 2019, 2020, and finally, 2021.
I haven’t gotten my paperwork yet, but I haven’t been reading any indication of not being recontracted. I firmly believe I will: I am on time, I do good work, and I feel I contribute to the workplace environment. But when the time does come…
Today I signed my paperwork determining my recontracting status.
I want to say that it was a really big, special moment -a pause in the world kind of thing- when I signed my name to say that, yes, I would be committing another 365 days to Fukushima City, my base school, and Japan, but honestly, I signed it right as I was leaving to head home, and right before a wonderful conversation with 教頭先生 about my trip to Tokyo and Tokyo Big Sight. It was an incredibly normal moment because it was a perfectly normal thing to occur during my day. Honestly, getting to check out a library book about Tsukiji Fish Market -where I stayed for Comiket- was more magical because it was followed with an offer to take me to the public library.
I don’t think everything in Japan needs to be punctuated with a flourish a-la-Studio Ghibli.
That’s the true magic of my Fukushima Life: things like this just affirm my goals here, but aren’t special. They just allow me to continue sharing cultures, to continue learning and growing. That is more special than ink on paper: the signature just lets me keep loving these kids and making memories.
So yeah, I said yes, but it’s still Wednesday: it’s another wonderful day in this life that stands out, but was all a part of my goals here.
Even though I don’t have a high-paying subscription with Smart, I appreciate the effort done to encourage me to renew my subscription.
I’m currently subscribed to SmartBro’s plan 499. I use the SIM in my Xiaomi Mi Pad 4. It comes, initially with 6GB of data and after my 1st renewal (last year), they increased the data allocation to 7GB.
Every year of subscription, a renewal comes with a…
So the paperwork hasn’t come in but I’m saying “Yes” to another year of this Lucky Island Life.
Honestly, I’d love to give you a really detailed reason of why, but there’s nothing so deep about my decision. It’s honestly based on one key thing: my happiness.
And I am incredibly happy here in Fukushima City, Fukushima.
Of course, it’s not every day: that would be exhausting, and as beautiful, witty, and charming as I am, I do get occasionally sad, under the weather, or even negative about my days –almost 120 of them!- spent in Fukushima City. Sometimes, when it rains, it pours, and it’s poured on my head a few times since arriving on the other side of the world.
Yet I’ve persevered, and here I am, four months in, ready to circle back to this very same point in one year.
(That’s worth something, right? Like, maybe good enough for a few hundred grams of vanilla Coolish? I think I’ll see when I buy myself some tonight. Or not because I finished the rest of mine last night and am tearing through this pack of grape Mentos like nothing, and surely don’t need any more sugar in my body. I’ll just think about being good enough for a few hundred grams of Coolish. Read on if you think I deserve some Coolish though.)
Happiness –or rather, contentment, satisfaction, and how I emotionally and physically felt in Fukushi– is a big component to my “Yes.” Of course, it also helps that I’ve been thinking of this answer from the moment I stepped off the bus in Koriyama –a balmy Wednesday when I discovered my pants had a hole in the thigh, I was sweaty, and I felt so tired I collapsed once the police helped me home that night– to now, November 17, 2016 on a cold, autumnal day. It’s not a decision I would, or was going to and am– take lightly: doing another year means committing to keeping my work ethic up, taking care of myself, and being away from home. It means dealing with distance, with the other ALTs who are here, with city life, possibly no car, and still learning how exactly to live in Japan with ease.
Realistically, that’s incredibly hard: I will be honest that next to having to bury my father at eighteen and breaking my ankle at 21, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and may very well be in the top five at the end of my life.
It was not easy to blow a kiss goodbye to America, hop on a plane at George Bush –not LAX, though now Miley’s Party in the USA, a good song I’ll say, for the 2000s, is stuck in my head on repeat alongside Apple Pen– and take off to a country I’d only studied. Even with six years of academic study, fourteen years of dreaming, and two degrees, Japan has not been easy at all, good, bad, or otherwise.
Japan giveth, and Japan doth certainly taketh.
But nothing is every wholly unequal in this situation. I’ll cede that. There’s a side to everything.
There’s a lot of good that’s happened: filling my apartment with furniture, buying my own bike, order clothes in Japan in my size from Japan, sharing food, breaking bread, gifts from my students, gifts from the staff. Laughter, laughter, laughter, laughter, tears at the corners of my eyes, stomach aching laughter. That’s be plenty: you kind of have to learn to laugh living in another country because there’s time when you want to cry, but you’ll have to force a laugh until it becomes real. Plus, let’s be honest, there’s just strange things here: toilets that sing with bidets that attack, looks from obaasans who you’ll later find were nervous to speak to you but give candy away like it’s going out of style, miscommunication, first times, and a lot of adventures that you’ll find funny. (Or at least, I found funny.)
Suffice it to say I’ve grown a lot over four months, more than I think I did –in some ways– over four years. I feel more competent, more capable of being part of a group, have more fluidity with my Japanese and English, and generally feel really good. My self-esteem is really high: half my closet is plus-sized Japanese clothing, I can ride a bike and use a bus and train, I’m having a shamisen concert –recital, I suppose– in January, I’m going to Comiket in December, and my bills are always paid with a generous amount left over for a bit of fun every week.
Also, Yuri!!! On ICE had a canon kiss last episode between our two male leads. Things are good in my life.
I feel good being here: healthy, hearty, whole, and smart. I feel necessary, needed, wanted, and desired. My students work hard, and it’s rewarding: I’m helping the next generation of the workforce prepare to be active. Adults have yielded me results too: I help volunteer on Wednesday teaching public servants English, I regularly talk to the staff at both my schools in English when they ask for my help, and I feel like my Japanese has opened many eyes to what being an American is.
The Lucky Island is treating me well, and as I continue to work, I want to treat it well in return.
I’ll even add that I like my job: I feel necessary and used in my role as an ALT. I teacher twelve classes a week, have English Club on Monday, an eikaiwa I started on Thursdays, and get asked daily for my input, assistance, solutions, and worksheets. I help in class, am asked to correct and instruct, and feel like I’m an assistant who is needed. I’m not minor character: I’m here to help just as much as my JTEs.
So I’m saying yes.
I want to keep growing, and I think that Fukushima City is the place where that growth needs to happen. Sometimes, we know when it is time for us to move on. Sometimes, it’s easy. Sometimes, it’s hard. Sometimes, we don’t know until zero hour when it’s time to finally pick a side. I know a lot of my fellow first years are really struggling with this: it’s not as clear cut an answer for them as it was for me, something I think it’s rather difficult to cope with, in the end. I had the luxury of Japan being a lifelong dream: that’s not everyone, and sometimes, that’s just alright.
However, I know in my heart that I need to be here, especially to experience the start of a school year. I want to be there to greet the new first years, to give my self-introduction in April and welcome them to my school and show them around. I want to be here for my second years –a group more personal to me– when they graduate and I watch them take that Next Step that I’m a part of. I want to be here to welcome new teachers, greet old teachers, and be a teacher.
All of that is my happiness. I think it’s fair to say that I’m going to protect and work for it. I think at the end of the day though, that’s all I can do: continue to work hard for me and a place I quickly came to love, and let that guide me.
tl;dr: Like an American bride-to-be on TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress, I’m saying yes to an opportunity to grow further in Fukushima City. I can’t promise –even myself– that next year will be the same, that I’ll always feel so great. But I can promise myself that with continued effort, I will continue to yield great results from the region, my job, friends, and my experience. I think that’s better than a perfect story: bumps, bruises, irritations, and sadness all make the moments when I succeed and feel great better because I made it through a bit of pain to arrive there. Saying yes because I’m happy may sound simple, but there’s a lot at play: happy is only the surface of why. I guess, in the end, I really do have a lot of reasons for staying here. Let’s see what Year 2 yields in the end!
Over the last week I have had all but 3 people that I came over with on JET leave. It’s been an emotional couple of weeks and I was trying hard to just ignore the upcoming deadlines which clearly has not worked.
Toyooka is now like this weird twilight zone, where the place itself is the same, but everything else is slightly askew. Just enough to throw me off balance, just slight enough that the fact that people are all gone slips from my mind every now and then before hitting me like an earthquake. Essentially stopping me in my tracks, no matter what I am doing.
It’s so strange having this void already that I can feel in my town, a space where these people were for the last two years. I think I was lucky that no one left last year but it really still hasn’t hit me that when I go into town I wont see any of my old friends around. That I cant just ask to meet up for dinner or a chat; that they're all now spread out around the world, so far away. Selfishly I’d hoped they would stay longer but I am glad they are moving forward with their lives and have nothing but the best wishes and hopes towards them all. The memories I have with them will never be forgotten and treasured for years to come.
The new people seem really lovely and no doubt everyone will get closer with time, but it still hurts. I miss them all a lot.
Okay, so you’ve decided you don’t want to continue on with Interac for another year?
The timing depends on the branch, but way back in November 2015 I received a survey in my inbox asking if I intended to stay with Interac for another year. This survey was not binding and was purely to gauge numbers. In the middle of January, I received the official survey. It asks whether you want to re-contract, and then questions if you would like to move cities and/or branch (if so, where), whether anything such as your passport or driving licence would be expiring soon, and give you space to leave any comments or requests.
I initially signed up for another year but then was offered a good temp job from my former employer (which fitted in perfectly with my plans to go back University to get a PGCE) so I sent an email to my MC explaining my intentions of leaving and reasons why (though you can just state outright that you want to leave; you don’t need to explain yourself). He phoned me up to double-check I was okay (as he knows I love it out here; he was a little shocked) but after that told me I would receive a leaving pack within a few days.
It took a week to receive the leaving pack, which contained:
An end of employment form, with very simple questions such as whether you have a car, and what date you want to move out of your Leopalace (up to 3 days after your last day of employment).
A final salary payment form. You can choose whether to have your final 2 salaries paid into your Japanese or overseas bank account (though anything going overseas will be taxed).
A takeover form. Basically just fill in information about your schools, students and teachers to better inform your successor about their new placement.
A notification form for immigration, to inform them that you are changing/leaving your job. This needs to be mailed to Tokyo within 2 weeks of you leaving your schools.
After you email the first form back to Interac they will set up your car collection, gas and water inspection, and Leopalace inspection for you on the day you move out. Please be aware that Leopalace will charge you a ¥30,000 cleaning fee, even if you go out and hire your own cleaners beforehand. I’m pretty sure this is taken out of your final paycheck.
You’re not allowed to tell your schools that you are resigning (I’ve heard it’s led to bad relationships in the past). Apparently the BOE will inform them sometime in March. I still don’t know if my schools have been informed yet or not; no one has said anything to me.
And that’s that! The next big hurdle: fitting everything into my suitcases!
