Job Discussion Forums

[Nismo]

[Mark]

As for the Tokyo cold-shoulder thing, I definitely agree.

I live in Tokyo, and visiting Osaka made me realize the differences. However, I'd also say that living near a small station in western Tokyo is different than living inside the Yamanote. In western Tokyo, people were generally friendlier than they are in the busier areas.

On a related note, does anyone know how far out this cold-shouler effect reaches? Is Yokohama the same sort of thing? Other outlying cities in Kanto?

[guest of Japan]

The people in Tochigi are a bit warmer, but not much. Chiba people are frigid.

I'm very fond of Tohoku and Hiroshima people.

[JezzaYouBeauty!!]

G'day Homer,

So Kyushu is pretty tough huh? What's the reasons? Why do teachers like flocking there? Or are there simply not many jobs there?

Is it all of Kyushu? How about Kitakyushu, the 2nd largest Kyushu city?

Hmm.....oh well, Homer, if you've got any thoughts on that.....great.

C yas later...[/u]

[homersimpson]

I spent a year in Tokyo and the people generally are a lot colder compared to those in Osaka (night and day). Tokyo is a City of strangers. Many people from the countryside either working or studying in the big bad metroplex.

Jezza,
Regarding Kyushu, the Big Four (NOVA, Geos, AEON, ECC) do have schools here, so they may be your best bet. I'm probably the only person here who doesn't like Fukuoka (aside from its convenient public transporation system), but most foreigners rave about it and it has become the place to be in Kyushu. I've met a few JETs along the way and many of them who requested Fukuoka end up in Kagoshima (talk about opposites!). Anyway, a think another reason jobs are hard to find here is because Kyushu is fairly rural. There are not huge metropolises and many people don't see an urgent need to learn English, so there are not as many small, private schools. That said, if you do run across a rare advertisement for a job opening in Kyushu and really want to be here, you might want to jump on it fast. As I stated in my earlier post, I have greedily (and happily!) held on to my job for three years (and sorry, a fourth is also to be included).

[Brooks]

my wife is from Osaka.
We live in Kanagawa and she works part-time in Tokyo. She really doesn`t like Tokyo and thinks it`s too big, and prefers the people in Osaka.
We plan to move to Kansai in March of 2006, but I will need a job. It definitely is easier to find a job in the Tokyo area.

There are some nice people in Tokyo, but the problem is that they put work first so it is hard to meet them.

[Zzonkmiles]

Stop saying good things about Osaka! We have too many foreigners here already! It's making finding a good job here d a m n near impossible!

Actually, I say this comment with a little bit of seriousness. Osaka may be the 2nd largest city in Japan (if you include Yokohama as a part of Tokyo), but the job market here is RIDICULOUSLY tough. There simply AREN'T that many jobs to go around here, considering the size of this city. Check out the job sites on the internet, for example, and you'll find about 2/3 of them to be in the Tokyo-Yokohama-Chiba-Saitama area. On the other hand, maybe only 1/5 of them are in Kansai, and the remainder are for the rest of Japan.

Tokyo people might be a bit "tsumetai/aloof," but that's where the money is, that's where the jobs are, and that's where you have the greatest chance of breaking out of the eikaiwa scene. And there's no Osaka-ben or Kansai-ben to make learning Japanese even more difficult for you.

[cafebleu]

Hello sandinista! I used to live in Kyushu and am back to visit some friends.

I leave on Monday to return to the new country I am living in with my husband, and I can tell you that although the salaries are not so high there, I am realising just how much better the quality of life is when you leave Japan. Full stop.

Fukuoka is a nice city. Great to get around, public transportation is wonderful and safe, the city is clean, the people can be fine (as with everywhere in Japan, the more fluent you become in Japanese and the better your listening ability, the less you are inclined to praise Japanese people too much as their conversation reveals too much prejudice for somebody from the multicultural UK).

The surrounding areas are the same. Go to the countryside, however, and it`s a different story. Homer seems to like Kagoshima because from what I know he is still there. I grew to really dislike the inaka (countryside) where I lived in a few different places.

Appalling lack of manners - loud mouths talking everywhere about `Gaijin this and Gaijin that` even when you were standing next to them, a terrible incident (for me) when I heard a Japanese man guffaw about the `Kuronbo` I was talking to. That is a despicable, racist word for a black person. The non racist term is `Kokujin`.　 I did not tell my friend until afterwards what that meant and just as well as he is a powerfully built African American who would have at the least gone up to the nasty old racist and yelled, `Say that again to my face, fool`! Maybe I should have told him.

As a woman I had to put up with local middle-aged to old women with nothing to do but stand around on the block slagging me off for apparently being `too free` (and no way was I going to justify my English teacher`s schedule to these uncivil people), asking what by any standards outside of Japan are impertinent questions, and gossiping about male friends who stayed with me when I was single. Not one of these men was my boyfriend - just friends from the UK on holiday. I had other experiences which I don`t have time to relate.

I found countryside living in Kyushu really weird - foreigners love to contrast the supposedly free Japanese with the bible Christians or whatever in the US etc but in Kyushu you find some very old, double standard notions of men and women. I found a lot of the country people puritanical in that non Christian way, with ideas of the roles of men and women that were outdated quite some time ago in western societies.

My friends who live in Honshu (Tokyo and Osaka) and are Japanese said that Kyushu people are known for being behind the times in virtually everything, including sexual mores such as couples living together, women`s roles etc. If you want a freer atmosphere I suggest the cities on Honshu.

As for jobs, forget it. Sorry to sound so discouraging but the situation was getting worse and worse when I left this year. Too many conmen and conwomen running small English language schools and paying too little, while even the Big Four are not recruiting so much here as they already have enough teachers generally.

[Gordon]

Cafebleu, where are you going?

Just curious, PM if you want.

[JezzaYouBeauty!!]

Whoopsy daisy, cafebleu....

Me have lady friend. Kyushu.....Whadda I do?!

I'm in Korea now.....of course wanna go to Kyushu. But yikes....things sound a bit worrying.

And all that racism u were talking about.....Hmm....Kyushu and Korea are very close together. Maybe they've picked up a few bad habits from each other.

Mumma Mia! Mumma mia!

-jezza

PS: Thanks Homer, for your insightful comments as well. C ya.....

[homersimpson]

Hey cafebleu, hope things are going well in your new choice of residence. Jezza, she makes a lot of salient points regarding all of Japan, not just Kyushu. Japan is not a great country for Western women to live in. There indeed are some rather strict male/female roles here and if I were a woman would not care for them. As for the racism thing, I find it's often the over 50 crowd who'll be most overt about it. Another factor is just how far into the countryside you delve. Although I consider my location inaka, we do have a train station. There are many towns in Kagoshima that rely solely on highway buses, so I can't speak about daily living condiditions in those places. Everyone will know who you are, what your business is, and kind of chewing gum you prefer. But, as a dude, people will pass far less judgment about some of your other personal actions (if you get my drift). Cafebleu mentioned about how people in other parts of Japan regard those from Kagoshima, and she is dead on. When I have gone on business to Kanto and/or Kansai I have had people tell me some rather unfavorable things about the people here. But, I think that's not so unusual; in the U.S., for example, people from L.A. often speak disparagingly about those from the Deep South. (I spent some time in the Deep South in the U.S. and wouldn't call Kagoshima the equivalent, but that's just me!).

[GreenDestiny]

[sandinista445]

Thanks for the warning about the crackers of rural Kyushu, another good reason to avoid living in the countryside.

Hiroshima sounds nice. Anyone know how hard it is to find an opening there?

[Brooks]

Zonk, my wife is from Osaka, so I have to learn Osaka ben.
She speaks it every day. She doesn`t always want to speak English.
I hear it every day. And when I talk to people in her family, well they speak either Shikoku ben or Osaka ben.

Her parents are getting older (in their early 70s) and she feels guilty that her brother has to take care of them. So I said we can move to Osaka sometime in the future. Which means I will have to get a job there (or in Kobe, Kyoto, Nara - nearby). But I have a contract until March of 2006.
If I can persuade her to stay longer in Tokyo, no worries.

[nomadder]

Osaka just doesn't seem that interesting or esthetically pleasing. Kind of a weird vibe there compared to Tokyo.