Living and Working in Japan: A Personal Account

By Gail Boggs Popp

On November 3, 1995 I traveled to Kanazawa, Japan to teach EFL (English as a Foreign Language) for an English Language Company for one year. I kept an informal journal of my experiences, thoughts and feelings as I worked there. At the end of the year, I went back to the United States to be with my family. However, in January of 1998 I was ready to return to Japan and continue teaching for the same language school as before. Toyama was the city I chose to return to. Again, as before, I kept a journal which is recorded here. While there, I glimpsed and experienced a small part of Japanese culture, found the Japanese people to be friendly and helpful and I very much enjoyed working with the students. I also visited China, which is something I had always wanted to do. I hope the reader can get an idea of what my life was like the years I lived and worked in Japan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781669800774

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Copyright © 2021 by Gail Boggs Popp.

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Rev. date: 11/22/2021

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART ONE – KANAZAWA

Going to the Far East

Kanazawa

Teaching English and Making Friends

Touring in Japan

Beginning a New Year

Visiting My Friend in Saitama

Spring Approaches

Effie and Glynn in Kanazawa

A Difficult Decision

Summer Time - June, July & August

New Beginnings & a Camping Adventure

Fall

Time to go Home

Hong Kong

Saying Goodbye

PART TWO - TOYAMA

Return to Japan

Toyama

Spring in Toyama

Kiyoko and Mutsumi Visit

Camping in Komatsu

Discovering the Toyama Area

Staying Busy and Making Plans

Linda Visits

Sandy and Barb Visit

Angie, Mike and Tina Visit

Rice Harvest Festival at Yatsuo

Visiting Kiyoko and Mutsumi

Climbing Mt. Tateyama

October in Toyama

November

December

Touring in China

Preparing to go Home

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my family and friends for their support and encouragement in my adventure of teaching abroad. It has been an enlightening, interesting, and rewarding experience. My children: Angie, Mike and Tina; my grandchildren: Sara and Dylan; my greatgrandchildren: Alek and Maya; my extended family and my colleagues in Marietta, Ohio. Thank you all!

Introduction

On November 3, 1995 I traveled to Kanazawa, Japan to teach EFL (English as a Foreign Language) for an English Language Company for one year. I kept an informal journal of my experiences, thoughts and feelings as I worked there. At the end of the year, I went back to the United States to be with my family. However, in January of 1998 I was ready to return to Japan and continue teaching for the same language school as before. Toyama was the city I chose to return to. Again, as before, I kept a journal which is recorded here. While there, I glimpsed and experienced a small part of Japanese culture, found the Japanese people to be friendly and helpful and I very much enjoyed working with the students. I also visited China, which is something I had always wanted to do. I hope the reader can get an idea of what my life was like the years I lived and worked in Japan.

PART ONE

– KANAZAWA

Going to the Far East

It was my dream come true. I remember being about ten years old lying on my back in the padded porch swing of my family’s farm home in West Virginia looking at the glossy colored pages of far away places in the Life or National Geographic magazines and hoping that someday I could go there to live or work. The journalist wrote about interesting cultural differences and I wanted to see them. I said to myself as I looked at the pictures of Asian, African and European people, that someday I would travel around the world and understand all the people of the earth. Then I would know the ways we were different and alike.

But as life would have it, I went to college, got married and became a mother, taught school, was an elementary principal, divorced and took early retirement in the hopes of fulfilling my childhood dream. I started teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) for Ohio University in Columbus, Ohio. From there I went to Quito, Ecuador for six months and then, there I was on my way to Japan to teach English for a Japanese company in Kanazawa, Japan.

I had been tutoring some Japanese people through my work with Ohio University and really enjoyed them, learning about their customs and helping them adjust to life in the United States. I wondered what problems I would face and just how different life would be for me in Japan. But, I told myself, people are people and there is only one God who I trust to lookout for me, so everything will be OK. I had signed a contract for one year, from November 4, 1995 to October 15, 1996. The company would find an apartment for me and subsidize the rent as well as provide training in their educational system. It would be my first time to work for a private school and I knew it would be different from the public school systems that I was familiar with in Ohio and West Virginia. But I didn’t know how different or in what ways.

My family was very supportive of me and my desires. However, I felt their sadness and fears at my leaving and I prayed a silent prayer that what I was doing would in someway be beneficial to them as much as to me.

On Friday morning November 3, 1995 at 7:00 a.m. I said goodbye with hugs and kisses to my children and one of my Japanese friends who had come to see me off and boarded Delta Airlines for my flight to Nagoya, Japan by way of Cincinnati and Portland. It was cool and cloudy with temperatures in the forties.

As I looked out the window of the plane, I thought about the intensive interviews I had had in Chicago a couple of months earlier. There were three other people there for the group interview. We each took turns teaching an English lesson while the others acted as students. The school was explained to us and the living conditions were described. As the brochure had indicated, the Japanese English school was a rather large business with schools throughout Japan. The company was continuously interviewing and hiring to keep up with the demand. Japanese people had a great desire to learn to speak and understand English. Although they were taught English in the schools beginning in junior high school, they only learned written English and grammar and most of the teachers could not speak or understand it when spoken, thereby creating a need for native speakers. The pay was good and the company seemed willing to go out of its way to provide services that would make the transition less traumatic. The next morning I was called back for a second interview and asked to teach another lesson. It was then that I was accepted and chose Kanazawa rather than Tokyo because I was told Kanazawa was more traditional and a smaller city. The interviewer said I would have a very small one room apartment on the fourth floor of an apartment house with a western style bathroom. He recommended that I take no more than two suitcases, because there would be very little storage area. I couldn’t imagine living for a year out of only two suitcases. He said I would not need a car because I could use public transportation, bus or train or walk to most all parts of Japan. Some people take bicycles but he advised against it saying that it was easy to get a bike over there if I decided I wanted one.

As the airplane climbed through the scattered clouds, I could see the autumn colors of the trees below, the harvested patchwork of farm fields of Ohio and houses that lined the highways or sat in corners of tree groves on farm fields with small streams or rivers or lakes on them. Mid-America. That’s what some people call Ohio. It has open spaces, wide roads and friendly people. I knew that Japan would be different. An island the size of one of our large states, it had many people per square mile and a long tradition that spanned the centuries. I was going to the far east. But, I said to myself, people are people and that’s what counts. I remembered my many Japanese friends who had wished me well and were excited for me that I could share in their culture and visit their country. I felt no fear or apprehension at all. It seemed that fate was directing me and I knew my faith in God was strong enough to guide me through any difficulties that lay ahead. I felt a little sad to leave my family but they each had their own busy life and I would be only a phone call away or an airflight in cases of emergency. I had promised to call them every Sunday.

When the plane took off from Portland, Oregon, I began to feel the excitement and anticipation of a long held dream. The plane would be leaving American airspace soon and we would be over international waters and then Japan. It was 10:00 a.m. Portland time (1:00 p.m. Ohio time). I met a couple returning to Nagoya who had been visiting family in Portland. They had lived in Japan for two years, they said, and they liked it very much. I looked for Nicole, another American going to teach for the same company. The interviewer had told me she would be on my flight, but I didn’t see her. It would be a ten hour flight from Portland to Nagoya. I settled down in my seat and tried to sleep.

When we landed in Nagoya, I got in line with everyone else to go through immigration. I had completed the entrance card on the plane so I presented it with my passport at the counter of immigration. It all went very quickly. While waiting in line, I saw Nicole. She was a small black haired woman, I guessed to be about twenty one years old. She was standing in the line beside me. I introduced myself and sure enough she was Nicole. We went together to get our bags and found that one of hers was missing. My two were there but I waited with her while she filled out the forms. Her bag would be delivered to the company office. After customs, (they never looked at our bags at all) we went to the international waiting room and there was Sally, the lady from Columbus, Ohio incharge of foreign teachers for the company. She had been corresponding with us. She sent my large suitcases on to Kanazawa (I paid her 6000 yen or about $60) but I still had my carry-on and then we took the bus and a taxi to our apartment. Nicole and I were both surprised at how much Nagoya looked like an American city. If we didn’t know better, we would have thought we were still in the States. One thing we noticed right away, though. People were driving on the left instead of the right and of course, everything was written in Japanese.

The Nagoya apartment where we would be living for that week of training was larger than I had expected. There was a small kitchen area, a dining area with table and two chairs and two rooms with tatami mats and futons for sleeping. The futons were folding mattresses that lay on the floor. The bathroom reminded me of the one we used to have on our travel trailer. But it was sufficient. At 11:00 p.m. Nagoya time (it was November 4) another company teacher, Tim, arrived from Thailand. He would live in an apartment above us for the week of training. We went to a little convenience store nearby and I got tea, honey and a cup of noodles then we visited a little and went to bed.

Neither Nicole nor I slept very well that first night. Maybe it was the strangeness or maybe we were just too excited to sleep. We finally got up about eight o’clock that Sunday morning and went out for breakfast about 10:30. I called my son to let him know I had arrived safely then we walked around looking for some place to eat. We found a Japanese buffet and it was good food but they were closing out the breakfast line and there was not much choice. We walked to the train station bakery and got some sweets then walked through the park and looked around. High school students were having a fair in the park and they played the drums for us and we took pictures.

In the afternoon Tim came down and we went with him to meet the teachers from his school where he would be teaching. He was replacing a woman who was going to Seoul, Korea to teach. The teachers were from Cincinnati, New York and Michigan, all in their twenties, I guessed. We ate okonomiyaki, a kind of Japanese pancake and had cheesecake then went back to our apartment. Later Nicole and I went to the nearby convenience store and got food for breakfast the next day. We couldn’t read any of the writing on the packages or signs so we looked at the pictures and guessed.

Training week was very busy with classes from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. We learned about the Japanese English program designed for use by the company, how to keep records and interview students. It was strictly conversation and listening. Sally was excellent - thorough and sympathetic. There were four of us in the training class: Allen who was married to a Japanese woman, Tim, Nicole and me. On Friday night, the last night of training, we went out for sushi. We all enjoyed it and said good luck to each other with a promise to keep in touch.

Kanazawa

A company employee went with me to catch the train at Nagoya Station and a Kanazawa teacher, Hidemi, met me at Kanazawa station. The train ride took about three hours and was very pleasant. The country side was green and brown with the colors of autumn beginning. Small plots of elevated rice fields lay before the mountains. A village of wooden tile-roofed homes, an occasional cemetery or pond with a few trees could be seen from the train window. Always the mountains provided a background with overcast skies above.

From Kanazawa Station Hidemi took me by taxi to the school where I met the other foreign teachers, Andy from Detroit, Annette from Phoenix and Brian from Detroit and some of the Japanese teachers. I looked at the classroom where I would be teaching and studied some of the books and materials I would be using. It was very tiring and I felt somewhat confused. At 5:30 I was taken to my apartment.

The fourth floor apartment was not bad at all. I was pleased to see the little travel-trailer bathroom. The one carpeted room was small and there was absolutely no storage space except one wall closet with shelves. The kitchenette, which was opposite the bathroom, had one electric burner, a small refrigerator and small shelf for dishes. Beside the kitchenette was a small washing machine which you must manually control and next to that was a narrow ceiling to floor closet for food. In the main part of the room there was a television, one small shelf for books, a small table, and a futon for sleeping. Frosted sliding doors opened onto a balcony for hanging clothes or looking out over tiled roofs. A small strip of grass and a tree were between the apartment house and the neighbor’s house. I made a cup of tea and went to sleep on the futon. I wondered how long it would take me to adjust to leaving my shoes at the door and sitting and sleeping on the floor.

The next morning was Sunday and I was feeling a little more rested. I showered, cooked and ate eggs and toast, which had been given to me when I entered the apartment, and then went exploring. I found an international pay phone and called America. Then I walked the streets of Kanazawa. I loved the unique houses with their wood-framed sliding doors and tiled roofs. The streets and sidewalks were clean clean and water rushing through the canal that ran beside the street where I walked sounded cheerful and refreshing. A little curved bridge crossed over the canal. Narrow alleyways crossed and snaked around the houses and stores in a confusing pattern that I could not follow. I stayed to the main streets and looked at the skyline of the tall hotels and office buildings for points of reference. It was warm and breezy. I thought the people on the streets were dressed up more than was common in America. I didn’t see anyone in jeans or tennis shoes. At an interesting shrine I saw some people wearing kimonos. I found Daiwa, a large department store with a supermarket in the basement. It was now 2:30 and I had been walking since 10:00. I bought some rice, fish, salad and other groceries and went back to my apartment to fix lunch. I was amazed at the prices, twice or three times the prices in the States.

In the apartment there was only a cup, a knife, a cooking spoon, a pan, a skillet, two bowls, a plate and wooden chopsticks. I was glad I had learned to use chopsticks. There was a rice cooker and I had brought my hotpot for making tea. I made rice, fried the fish and fixed a salad. I sat on the floor beside the little table and watched sumo wrestling on Japanese TV as I ate. Not bad, I thought. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening ironing clothes and arranging things.

Monday was my day off too, so I got up early, showered and ate and was out on the street again with my city map trying to find my way around the city. I wanted to find the school. I walked and walked. I found a large family store similar to K-Mart but I was too far from my apartment to buy anything. Finally, I decided I must be lost. I stopped and asked a friendly man at a gas station for directions in my halting stilted Japanese. He knew a little English and showed me on the map where I was. It wasn’t long until I came to the Asahi newspaper building where the company had their school. The school was not far from my apartment. I had been walking for about three hours so I went back and had a cheese sandwich and tea and then started off again. I found the famous fish market called Omicho Market and it was full of people and fish, vegetables and fruit. There was every kind of seafood you can imagine, I thought. But everything was very very expensive. One apple was 200 yen or $2. I kept looking and looking. The market aisles were narrow and they intersected several times with each aisle leading to a different street. I found several things I wanted to buy: dishes, silver ware, a bath mat, cups and a few grocery items too. But I couldn’t find my way out. Each time I went down an aisle, it came out on the wrong street. Finally I asked a lady to help me. She was very kind. She walked with me to the exit and told me, in Japanese of course, how to go. But I understood her and found my way back without a problem. Some school girls called, Hello as I walked past them. I answered back and they shyly giggled. Back at the apartment I made rice and red beans for supper and watched TV until bedtime.

The next day was Tuesday and my first day of work. I was there at 11:30 but the door was locked so I walked around and window shopped until 11:50 and it was open. I took a box of chocolates, as had been suggested and gave each teacher a little gift from America. Then I met briefly with the manager, Asami, but she talked very quickly in heavily accented English and it was hard for me to follow her. I got the impression that I was really on my own. There were very few directions. She was busy and she didn’t seem to want me to ask any questions. She said I was to observe the other teachers but they didn’t know that I would be coming in their classes. They were friendly however and tried to make me feel welcome.

Wednesday I was asked to teach two classes suddenly without having been told ahead of time so that I could prepare. Everything was so laid back, I felt confused and puzzled by the attitude of the managers. I

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My Apartment

The street leading to my apartment.

The front of the building.

The mailboxes and phone machine where I pre-pay.

The hallway outside and my door on the ???

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Traditional Style of Toilet

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- Two more pictures of my apartment - western-style bath

- Views from my classroom window - park across the street and Atrio(Daiwa), 109 Dept. Store and Tokyo Hotel

- My classroom

just followed the books and hoped it was all right. On Thursday I taught three classes, but each time I didn’t know until the last minute that I was expected to teach them. It was a little frustrating because I wanted to do a good job as we had been advised in training, but the situation was not right for it. Then on Thursday the assistant manager, Etsuko, called me after I got back to my apartment and asked if I’d teach for Andy who had suddenly become ill. I just followed the books. Everything was highly structured and the students were slow to respond. It was going to take some time for me to adjust to everything, I could see that.

On Friday Sally came for a foreign teachers meeting on how to interview prospective students. She said she was applying to universities for jobs. She had been with the company for two years and didn’t think she wanted to stay with them any longer. She said she might go to other places in Asia, such as Korea. Annette was the other American woman teacher. She came to Japan just one month before me. A journalism graduate just out of college, she had had no experience teaching and she seemed swamped and exhausted by the demands placed on her. But she was very positive with the students and they all liked her. Andy and Brian were both from Detroit. Andy had been there for one year and signed up for another. He said he loved Japan and wanted to stay forever. He had a Japanese girlfriend. Brian was scheduled to leave in March. He was pleasant with the students but he was very negative toward the company and especially Asami, the manager. He said she was terrible and he hated her. The foreign teachers were all in their twenties except me and at the age of sixty, I must have represented a mother or grandmother figure to them. They accepted me right away and came to my classroom often and asked me to go out with them, which I really appreciated.

At this time I didn’t have the bilingual TV that the contract said I would have and still the telephone would not allow me to call out. It was very difficult to ask the managers about anything because they avoided talking to foreign teachers except when it was necessary to give directions or change something. It was frustrating and confusing when a teacher prepared for a scheduled class and then it was changed to a different class only seconds before being required to teach it. There was no choice in the matter and the surprise made the teacher seem at fault. A poor teacher. That’s how the foreign teachers felt about it. They often complained among themselves and to me but I felt the same way, so I wasn’t much comfort to them.

My days seemed confused. I started work at 12:00 noon and ended at 9:00 at night, getting home sometime between 9:20 and 10:30 or 11:00 depending on whether we went out for a bite to eat afterward. I was still adjusting to the time changes and my eating habits which were definitely different. I started eating brunch, my main meal of the day about 10:30 or 11:00 and taking a sandwich for my 3:00 break and then eating a cookie and tea before bed.

As time went by I became busier with five or six classes a day being the average. There were times though when I had seven or eight. The most difficult thing was being given classes unexpectedly or asked to teach a teachers lesson without time to prepare. The whole thing seemed terribly unorganized and I couldn’t imagine that the students were getting their money’s worth. I had to remind myself that it was a business and that making money was the bottom line there. It was not like the public schools where accountability was essential. There was a lot of guessing and statements made by teachers and managers alike that conflicted. No one seemed to mind. It was just the way things were.

Most of the students were delightful. One group of high school students was a bit rude that first week. I was surprised because all my experiences had been positive. But kids are kids where ever you go, so Japan is no different in that respect, I thought. Brian said he had a doctor once who was extremely rude. He wanted a foreign GIRL he said and so they gave him to Annette. She said he was in charge of his class and she just went along with whatever he said. Because most Japanese people were very polite, it was surprising to encounter rudeness. Asami was rude and abrupt many times. She seemed to feel her power as manager over the Japanese teachers and they were extremely submissive. I thought they must be afraid of her.

At the end of my second week the boxes I had mailed began to arrive. I got a taxi to take them to my apartment. It cost me 1000 yen or about $10. One of my private college students invited me to a concert at Kanazawa University. He had been a university conductor and was selling tickets for Beethovan’s Ninth, a favorite at Christmas time in Japan.

Sunday I went exploring the city again, looking for historic sites. Kenrokuen Park is one of Japan’s three most beautiful parks and I did enjoy it. There were lovely lakes, bridges, trees, flowers, etc. A house that had been the home of the 13th lord of the Kaga clan’s mother was now a museum. It reminded me of the home shown in the movie Shogan. I left my shoes at the door and walked through the rooms in my socks on the tatami mats. The papered sliding doors, narrow halls and stairs, the costumes and interesting artifacts on display as well as the lovely garden in the back spoke of a time in history that was no more, the old traditional Japanese culture. I visited the craft museum that displayed lacquerware, ceramic bowls and vases, kimono fabric and other specialities of Japanese artists. On the lawn in the park were two women in conic hats sweeping the grounds and some men putting up bamboo poles to support the tree limbs in preparation for winter snow.

I walked along the streets and window shopped my way back to the apartment, stopping at a newly discovered supermarket on a back street near my apartment. I called America and my daughter Tina said she would be moving from Ohio to Alabama. I hoped it would all work out the way they wanted it to.

It was my second Monday in Kanazawa and it was raining. I decided to clean my apartment. The bathroom had mold and mildew in it and the kitchenette needed to be clean. I washed the walls and scrubbed, vacuumed and washed clothes, hanging the clothes in the bathroom to dry on coathangers and an expansion line I had brought with me. I called about an English speaking tour for December 28 to January 4, winter vacation in Japan, but couldn’t get much information. I learned from Hidemi how to use the telephone in my apartment. It was