Culture Shock & Eikaiwa Teachers in Japan
by Kevin Burns
Moving halfway around the world, to a culture as foreign and
difficult to penetrate as Japan`s is difficult for anyone. If you
become an English teacher here, you will probably have to deal with
a Japanese boss and staff with different cultural values from your
own. This can lead to a feeling of paranoia in some cases; isolation
and disillusionment.
To a great extent, leaving your friends and family and going to
Japan to teach English engenders some of the same
feelings as that of teenagers rebelling from their parents in the
West. Teenagers rely on their parents, yet resent and rebel against
them. Of course they complain to their friends about them too.
Foreign English teachers in Japan must rely on their Japanese
bosses for: their work visa, in some cases their apartment, and of
course their salary. Some teachers come to Japan with virtually no
knowledge of the country. Childlike, they ask questions about Japan
that many six year old Japanese know the answers to. The new
teacher can feel embarrassed at times having to ask such basic
questions as how do I use the Japanese toilet in my apartment? Can
you open a bank account for me tomorrow? How do I get home from the
school? To someone used to being independant, it is an
uncomfortable, flashback to the teenage years.
Japan is a beautiful, interesting, yet daunting country for the
newcomer. Some people thrive in the adventure that is teaching
English in Japan and others don`t. For them it is the toughest
thing they have ever done. The new arrival to Japan is faced with
three alphabets to learn just to read her pay cheque! One comes to
feel pretty helpless and childlike at times. Going to the doctor
for your first cold can be intimidating. You don`t understand her
questions and she doesn`t understand your answers.
Paranoia is common amongst immigrants the world over. Experts argue
it is a symptom of not understanding what is going on around you--
linguistically and culturally. The isolation this can lead to,
causes the paranoia.
Resentment can set in if you are not prepared for this kind of
culture shock. The possible symptoms of culture shock are many, and
of course different levels of culture shock can occur over many
years. If you are not a member of the majority, culture shock can
hit you at any time. One symptom we often see in Japan is that of
foreigners lashing out by complaining. They complain about the
food, they complain about Japanese people, if they work for a
Japanese company, they complain about how they are mistreated, and
if they work for an Eikaiwa school, (which comprises most Western
foreigners in Japan), they complain about the Eikaiwa school they
work for. Some complain about all Eikaiwa schools as if all of them
are the same, and all are bad. Some expats in an attempt to beef up
future sales for the book they are writing, even set up a whole
website to complain about Eikaiwa.
While there are certainly problems in Eikaiwa, there are many
great things happening too. You only have to open the pages of an
ETJ magazine, ELT Journal, or read the latest article at ELT News to
see that. No this prevalence of complaints is something more.
Indeed culture shock is one aspect of this phenomenon.
At many of the big schools the working hours are about the same
as they are at public schools in North America. Yet the teachers of
GEOS and Nova complain about their 28 hours of teaching and 40 hour
a week shifts. (They work a 9 hour shift, five days per week at
GEOS, with a one hour lunch break which equals eight hours of
preparation and teaching). One Canadian elementary school teacher
said: " I don`t know what they are complaining about. That is what
I do every week. That is what we all do at the public schools in
Canada."
At many schools though, the shifts are much shorter and they
don`t require you to be in the office. The work time of around 20-
25 hours per week, would be considered part-time work back home. At
Kevin`s English schools the teachers work between 20-25 hours per
week with no requirements to be in the office when they are not
teaching. Under the contract they can be asked to work as many as
28 hours per week but none are currently doing so. The current
average is about 22 hours per week. They are not required to put in
any office hours, so when they don`t teach their time is their own.
Many of the Eikaiwa teachers miss their friends and family back
home. Some were not happy in their home country and escaped to
Japan to try to sort out their lives--only to find they are not
happy here either. The old saying: "Where ever you go, there you
are." springs to mind.
I assert that the rampant negativism on the
internet about teaching at Eikaiwa schools is only in a very small
part due to the schools, but is a symptom of
culture shock and the difficulty adjusting to life in Japan for some
teachers. It is a reaction to the sense of
dependancy some teachers feel as they have to rely on their bosses
and Japanese staff for many things.
The boss who is in some cases also the landlord, is cast by the
teacher (unconsciously) in the role of parental figure, and the
Eikaiwa teacher, the star of our show, is the rebellious teenager
with a need to get it off his or her chest. The internet forums
provide the perfect venue for that.
While most Eikaiwa teachers are well balanced and make the most
of their time in Japan, it is the vocal minority we see on the
internet complaining about how unfair their Eikaiwa school is. While
some of these complaints are legitimate and the Eikaiwa school
should be taken to task, others are merely venting a teenage like
rage, as they rale against what they fail to understand is simply
culture shock.
If the person is your friend, you need to listen to them and
sympathize, but at some opportune moment, you may want to suggest to
them, that couldn`t their negative feelings about their boss or
school be due to something else? If their complaint is legitimate
then talking with their union, labour relations board or finding a
new job with one of the many great Eikaiwa schools here, might be
the answer.
Kevin Burns
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