qwertyytrewq wrote:

IceCream wrote:

@Qwerty: what a load of shit. Are you by any chance an aging male trying to justify preying on young girls? Never forget, YOU are ALSO in competition with younger, less sleazy and disgusting males, and you aren't likely to win the instant you open your mouth and express any of these opinions.

Any reason why that is a load of shit? Based on my view of society (which could be wrong) younger females and older females frequently compete for older males. However, I rarely see the opposite: younger males and older males competing for older females. Any reason why that is the case?

If I was an aging male, then certainly, I am in competition with younger males. However, if I was an aging male, then I have one advantage: money. If I was an aging male, then I might not be as good looking as younger males simply due to age, but I have money, which is the equalizer. If I was an aging male or any male for that matter, I obviously wouldn't win if I expressed those opinions. However, I don't need to, because my money can speak for me. And that is exactly what's happening right now: Older Japanese males paying younger Japanese females for sex or dates. I'll ignore the word "preying" because that's too strong a word for this kind of scenario.

Zgarbas wrote:

Qwerty, I think you're in the target audience for this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr7zryA2 … re=related

I like this one too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVmtZsr8FfA

What?

leonardodiregrettorino wrote:

So **** you Japan, I'm out.  Wish I'd never came here, honestly.  Back to the fatherland of the EU for me.

Great post, and thank you for an honest opinion.  I certainly don't disagree with you as a whole.  There are a lot of problems with this nation.  But as others have pointed out, it's pretty easy to do that with any nation.

You know, there's some jacked up stuff here.  But there's also some good stuff too.  But don't get it twisted:  they're interrelated.  And you know that.  The reason the service is so good in the restaurants is the same reason that people are so bad at interrelating with one another.  If they were all casual and carefree like the U.S., it would take you ten minutes to get a beer and then it would taste like dishwater.  The last time I was back in the U.S., I walked into a restaurant and all the staff were sitting around a table and one kid looked up at me, laughed, and said, "Yeah, what do you need?"  And that's fine.  That's the flip side.

I think you were right about a lot of the problems that you outlined.  I disagree on some of the minutia, but hey, okay.  Even if I wrote it, I'd probably disagree with half the shit I wrote myself.  So whatever.  But my point is is that the good and the bad are interrelated.  You can't change one variable without altering the whole equation.

I support your decision to get out of here.  I doubt there's a foreigner here who hasn't felt the same way (unless the place they came from was truly horrible).  Just try to see the bigger picture.  Japan isn't a terrible place, and it's not a great place.  It's just a place.

JapaneseRuleOf7 wrote:

Also, there seems to be an inverse relationship between how much Japanese you speak and how much you enjoy Japan.  Something to think about.

Could also be that if you speak Japanese well, you're also more often in situations in Japan that are part of "real" life, and that can suck. Work life in Japan often seriously sucks with its hierarchies and bureaucracy and rigidity. No way would I want to live in Japan if I was pursuing a corporate career. But I don't, so I really enjoy everything Japanese in my life, from food to books to movies to really good conversations with Japanese people.

IceCream wrote:

LOL my thoughts exactly. Currently debating with myself whether i should even bother to attempt a proper reply here......

No, you don't want to.

I ignored the post(s) simply cause "Evolution makes my dick stand up when I see 16 yr olds, so it must be right." isn't really a good argument. That and as much as I like debating, it has cut into my study time. Writing well thought out posts is time consuming.

Jarvik7 wrote:

Those who stay long and have good Japanese are usually neither honeymooning or bitter, but tend to have an overall positive experience and have used their language ability to get out of eikaiwa.

In this day and age, with every third person being 2級・１級 and skilled enough to communicate. You often have to rely on more than just your language ability to land you a job else where. If you can't sell yourself on something else, you are pretty much stuck in eikaiwa...
Language is a given, skill is a requirement.

Just something I wanted to point out in general since I often hear/read people talking like getting 1級 will "open millions of jobs and suddenly people will be knocking your door down to give you a job because you are the only fluent, white speaking, American in Japan." Ya...

Last edited by vix86 (2012 February 13, 8:31 pm)

turvy wrote:

@vix86 Whites? Every 3rd person being 2級 or 1級? Really? I am sure there are plenty fluent gaijins in Japan, but I am just a little skeptical about those figures.

I don't mean them to be taken as fact, just being figurative.

The point still stands. There is no shortage of people that can speak Japanese at 1・２級 levels. Yet you get a lot of ALTs/Eikaiwa people that come over (I hear it often from JET though), and they say stuff like "I'll get fluent and then get a job." Like they expect that someone will just hand them a job at a company regardless of what ever skill they have. If all your resume has is that you graduated with is a B.A. in English and you have passed the JLPT Level 1; not very many places will be hiring you.

Eikaiwa is a very easy job and if you are happy with the money it's great for awhile (I used to love going home at 4:30), but you will NEVER get a raise or promotion, you can never be sure you'll still be employed in a few months, you have no company pension or taishoku-kin, you'll get fired if you get pregnant/old/sick, and the work environment tends to be pretty poor. The money itself is pretty bad though. It's barely above what any new seishain will make right out of university, before bonuses or benefits. Most ALT make far less because they aren't paid for 3 months of the year.
I suppose knowing that you are easily replaced working in a going nowhere job is what makes so many bitter if they stay in it too long instead of seeing it as a jumping off point to something better.

JET is decent money, but its days are numbered (because it's so much more expensive than hiring private ALT). You typically have a 3-5 year cap on employment though.

In terms of total work hours, a career job is not much different (9 hour day instead of 8 hour day, overtime is paid if done) but I make over 2x more money than I did as an ALT. The soul-crushing constant overtime is mostly done voluntarily by people who want to create a good impression, don't know how to work efficiently, or who waste too much time chatting/taking smoke breaks.

Just Japanese will get you a better job if you look long and hard enough and aren't completely worthless, but of course it's not a magic ticket. On the other hand, not having good Japanese will make it near impossible to break out of eikaiwa (especially if you have no skills).

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2012 February 13, 11:21 pm)

You're a bell curve.

Bell curves are worse than Hitler.

Every time someone says Bell Curves an angel dies.

Irixmark wrote:

Not much difference there, except that the students are more respectful (superficially) but also lazier in Japan. I wouldn't hesitate to move back to Japan if I got a financially decent offer.

(You probably realize this so this isn't meant for you but I wanted to list it as another one of those things that's a bit unique to Japan and often a sore point for many.)

The reason for the crappy college environment in Japan has a lot to do with work environment and the school system.

Its almost common knowledge now among 'Japanophiles' that once you pass the entrance exam to college its easy cruising. Reason for this is grades have no weight within the system. Businesses don't care what grades you made in your classes or how much effort that you put in. They only pay attention to what school you graduated from and maybe what kind of degree you got. You can make C's/Barely passing marks in college and as long as you get that piece of paper, you are good. The other problem is the last two years of college mean nothing practically. It use to be the 4th year was spent job hunting, but in recent years students have had to start in their 3rd year. During this time students hardly show up in class and professors of the classes are suppose to look the other way and not penalize the student for this. That means that often getting a passing mark in these classes amounts to writing a paper and turning it in.

So what about the first 2 years? Clubs. Vast majority of students join clubs and they spend all their time there usually.

Were you a professor intent on trying to be rough and force work to be done, you'd eventually get students showing up after the finals (after they realize they failed the final and will fail the class) begging you to let them do extra credit work and bump their grade up to 'just barely passing.' Professors are under pressure from their departments to accept this and not fail huge swaths of students so this is what they have to do.

I've heard this same set of stories from multiple professors working in the Japanese system. Its kind of the main reason why professors tend not to put hardly any time into their undergrad classes; the students simply don't care and they can get away with it.

Disclaimer: There are some exceptions to this situation. Many of the high performing schools like Tokyo Uni, Osaka Uni, Kyoto Uni, and other big names; tend to have very rough and challenging undergrad programs and students tend to have to work their asses off there. The other exception to this tends to be STEM programs and the like, regardless of school name, I've heard (far fewer anecdotes however) that often many of the students there tend to put in a considerable amount of time into their studies. Of course this could merely be the result of the fact that these programs tend to attract high achievers.

LivingNexus wrote:

I've heard that teaching English in Japan is a pretty standard way for a gaijin to get established in the country before moving on to other jobs. I'd be interested to know about the best schools/programs to teach at depending on your level of Japanese comprehension, and I'd also like to hear from anyone who has taught in Japan and had a good/bad experience with it.

JET: http://www.jetprogramme.org/

Good luck getting in though, it's quite competitive. Also be ready for them to ship you off to somewhere in the country rather than a city.

Last edited by lardycake (2012 February 19, 4:11 pm)

JET is probably the best option in terms of pay and support, despite the fact that the salary is going to be dropping a bit for new teachers from the summer.

The disadvantages are the long and pretty random selection process (e.g. waiting 3 months for a 15 min interview, followed by another 3 month wait), and that you have almost zero choice in where you get sent; could be the countryside, could be a city, could be an island with only 5000 residents.