In other news i had two interviews on Friday and they both went well. One is the small school i would very much like to work for. It`s a small school with a mix of kids and adults, run by a lovely Australian woman, and not too far away by train from my house. The pay is alright but i would have time to teach private lessons and study Japanese ( i have ten months to become more or less fluent before the test! eep!).
The other company is the much larger GABA, who offer a strange arrangement whereby i would be an independent "contractor" and so i could, in theory anyway, totally customize my own schedule but i would be teaching mostly businessmen in one-to-one lessons and the pay is crap. I suppose it could help fill the small gaps in income from the other job... Funny thing, though: It`s a big company (like Nova, though not quite as large) and suits are required (black suits and nothing else, apparently), as is professionalism, and yet the calibre of people at the recruiting session was dismal. What has become of my generation? Can no one (or at least so few) wear a suit properly, tie a tie, or conjugate their verbs correctly when asked? Pathetic. One of the questions on the written "task" we were given was to conjugate "to teach" in 12 tenses. I thought the guy next to me was going to hyperventilate and pass out! Another question simply asked us to explain four idioms as if we were teaching a low level student. They were "a long face," "out of the blue," "down-to-earth," and "on the ball." That last one did NOT apply to most of the people in the recruiting session! Like some watered-down nightmare of junior high school exams, candidates were at the elevators afterwards quizzing each other on what those expressions meant! *sigh* Perhaps the black suit is in mourning for the English language? Again i ask, what has become of my generation? Moving on. Fingers crossed that the small school calls or e-mails again...
Other than that, last night i played (DJ) at Zerro Bar and got paid, which was nice. I love going out, playing my favorite music, and coming home with MORE money in my pocket! Good times. Lots of people stopped in to say hello and welcome Ulala and i back also, which was really nice. And we saw our friend Wes who had had heart surgery while we were away. He now has a mechanical valve but seems as bright and cheery as ever. Helluva scar, too!
Now, something interesting: giant red carrots!! They are called "kintoki ninjin" and are a variety of carrot that i had seen before here in Japan but hadn`t tried. So the other day i bought one and cooked it up in nabe (a kind of hot-pot meal) and today again i bought another and made fantastic stir fry. The taste is similar to carrot but not quite. A little stronger maybe, but delicious nonetheless. Here is a picture alongside a massive orange carrot and a green bell pepper for scale. And, just so you know, the orange carrot is very large by Western standards. I don`t know what they do to their crops here but the tomatoes and watermelon are tiny while the apples and carrots are freakishly huge.
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