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Alberta605
Joined: 23 Dec 2006
Posts: 94
Location: Japan
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 Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 5:12 am Post subject: |
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| Dutchman, either i'm having the twilight zone deja vu episode, or your post (above) is an exact duplicate (copy/paste) of another post you placed in a different recent thread? God, I hate moments like this |
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shoosh
Joined: 21 Mar 2006
Posts: 31
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| Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 3:01 am Post subject: |
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I was looking up climate conditions in Japan around Osaka and it doesn't sound too bad at all. I don't like the idea of humid summers but I'm not worried about it as weather is not really a huge issue to me. Overall it's going to be a lot warmer than where I am so that's a big bonus!!!
Honestly up until now I haven't even really thought about the earthquakes and natural disasters. As far as I'm concerned for something that happens regularly enough I would hope that people have developed measures to protect themselves from these disasters and HOPEFULLY I will be able to utilize those means! I'm just hoping that nothing bad happens while I'm there 
The Dutchman: As far as Osaka goes I would imagine any big city could be described the way you have done so. Some areas in Toronto look like that. But I would rather live outside the city because like you said the further away you get the nicer it will look. But as for the money you are making...what range did Nova start you at? Based on what you're telling me you're saving about $530 a month which doesn't sound too bad. Probably make over $6000 by the end of the year. I'm just wondering what type of lifestyle you and the others in your position are living.
Saving money is great but I do plan to live a little! Can't be staying at home all the time. I don't care about partying. But I imagine that in a strange new country there's going to be a lot of stuff I would like to see and do. As long as I have a good internet connection in my apartment so I can talk to people here then that's all I'm REALLY concerned about. From what I hear it's cheap and easy enough to get internet access in Japan.
As for looking for apartments... this I know nothing about. Someone was telling me that I should have the school take pictures of my actual apartment ahead of time so that I can see it. But if when I do arrive and I don't like it for whatever reason I would know nothing about getting an apartment on my own. That commission that you mentioned...isn't that essentially a bribe? I've read about that in some other posts on here |
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Apsara
Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 2142
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 8:41 am Post subject: |
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If you mean the key money that is paid to the landlord, that was originally a kind of bribe or present paid to the landlord just after WW2 ended and housing was scarce. It has now long been institutionalised and is all out in the open and compulsory, so no, I wouldn't call it a bribe. The agency fee is a finder's fee and isn't a bribe either.
By the way, those of you who think Osaka is dirty need to go to somewhere like Bombay or Delhi and it will give you a whole new perspective of how dirty a city can be  |
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seanmcginty
Joined: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 203
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| Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 6:10 pm Post subject: |
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| shoosh wrote: |
290,000 ppl you say? That's about 100,000 less people than in my town. Which place was that do you remember? That might be a good idea to stay in a place with such a small amount of people assuming everything you needed was in the city already.
What's a Gaijin bubble?? I think I know what you meant but I don't want to assume
Hot and humid weather sucks but as long as the place I'm living in has air conditioning and there are places to swim I don't mind. I remember taking my TESOL cert. course the teacher told us to make sure the schools are heated and colled throughout the year. The teacher was saying that some places the schools don't bother with heating and cooling for whatever reasons. That's probably something I should ask people from the school I end up going too huh. |
Yeah, my best recommendation would be to live in a small sized city (ie quarter of a million or so residents) but one that is near a big city so you can still be kind of connected.
The first city I lived in was Akashi (the one with 290,000 people). Its about 20 minutes by train from Kobe, which is a pretty big city. But Akashi itself was small enough to meet all my needs in avoiding the gaijin bubble.
The gaijin bubble refers to the social setting a lot of new teachers find themselves in when they go to a big city like, say Tokyo or Osaka. They work with foreigners during the day and they hang out at foreigner spots during the weekend and evenings. In other words, they never really get to know any Japanese and never really become part of the regular society.
Now, in my little city most of the friends I made were Japanese. I also had a couple of really good foreign friends I made too, but we all considered it a sort of mark of pride that we were more immersed in the language and society than people in the big city. And it was totally true. I had friends working for the same company in Osaka and most of them didn't speak a word of Japanese and just spent their days on a work-foreigner bar-McDonalds-shopping-home circuit.
Still though you don't want to take it too far and live in the middle of nowhere. being near a big city has advantages, you can go shopping there and usually there are magazines like Kansai Time Out in English that are majorly useful. So I reccomend a small-mid sized city in the Kansai area. |
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shoosh
Joined: 21 Mar 2006
Posts: 31
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| Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 7:14 am Post subject: |
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I was reading more about the key money thing on here. I misread the original post wrong as it sounded more like a bribe when I read it. I think I might choose to go with a recruiter instead of going on my own simply because the recruiter will take care of a lot of the main things for me (ie. decide where I will live and have the apartment ready, have t furnished hopefully, take care of visas, etc) I think going on my own would be a little too much for me as I am a total newb. If I plan on continuing to teach then I would definately gain some pointers from people i meet there. I just have to look up the recruiters and see what the differences are between them.
I definately want to live in a smaller city within an hour's ride to Osaka or some other big city. No point in going to a new contry if I'm just going to end up living the same way I do here.
That brings me to my next question... I have heard of programs where you can go to Japan to live with a family while you're there. Has anyone here done that? What are the names of those programs? I think that's a cool idea as it would definately help you to learn the culture/langauge and I assume the people that you live with have been investigated to make sure they're safe |
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