Working for Peppy Kids Club in Japan

This might be a bit premature since I've only been here a few months, but I've had a couple of emails from people asking me about Peppy Kids Club/iTTTi Japan, because there really isn't much information on the internet about the company. So, after I'd written a rather long email, I thought I might as well post the bulk of it on here too, to help anyone else who is looking. And I've done it in a Q&A style to make it more accessible. You're welcome :p

What kind of work is PKC? 

It's teaching children at private after school classes. Personally, I'd much rather be playing games, doing crafts and singing stupid songs with kids than teaching stuffy businessmen grammar, but it's totally a personal preference. Think before you apply about whether you're happy to work with kids everyday. My youngest class are 3 and my oldest are 17, but the average is about 8-11. You'll be teaching Tuesday to Friday evenings, and during the day on Saturdays (usually). There will be anything up to 13 kids in a class, but most commonly there's about 8 students. 

Where are you teaching?

With Peppy you're teaching at 3 or 4 separate locations, and you're (almost) always teaching independently. The classrooms are all just by themselves, taking up the space where a shop or apartment or something would usually be, rather than being in bigger schools. It's great because it means you have a lot of freedom, but I think it worries some people because you have complete responsibility for the kids. 

Is it true the commuting is a pain?

Because you're at 3 or 4 different schools, and because they're all in random locations, you'll probably have to commute quite a long way for some of your schools. I only have 3 schools, and one is a 20 min bike ride away, one is about 90 minutes by foot/train/bus and the last one is almost 3 hours away (that is because the train line leading there was destroyed by the tsunami last year, and I am only teaching there for one more month until I get a closer school about 2 hours away). The commuting is a pain but it's not the end of the world. It's outside rush hour, and the company pays. It sucks getting home at 10/11pm, but you do usually only have to go work at 3pm.

What are the working hours like?

Peppy has really quite short working hours. The MOST I work in one week is 15 teaching hours, and the least is 6. I also have one week where I don't teach at all, and instead I have "office days" where you're supposed to plan classes (but there's never enough to do so it'd really studying/computer game playing/reading/whatever time!). Even if you included the commuting time as work time, I never work anything like a full time job. Obviously, like anyone working, there's quite a lot of time spent at work, but it's really not that much compared to most jobs! 

What about days off?

As for days off/holiday, I was confused about this right up until halfway through training!! Most working weeks are Tuesday-Saturday, although depending on your schools it might be a little different. And then holiday-wise, you get a week off at the start of May for Golden Week, a week off in August for Obon, about 2 weeks over Christmas and New Year (this is when the 5 company holiday days are), as well as several 3/4day weekends, random days off, and 5 paid holiday days to be taken when you like. You can also take extra unpaid days off, as long as your supervisor agrees, and while I haven't tried to do this myself, the other people I've spoken to said it's usually pretty easy to do so long as you give enough notice. There's more time off than I thought there would be. 

Can you survive/save on the money you're given?

You can easily save money if you want to. We think we could save at least 60,000yen a each a month, and I still feel that we're making the most out of opportunities and not stressing about money to be able to save that much. Maybe in the months when we have holiday time and we go away we won't be able to save that much, but personally I'd rather make the most out of being in Asia (we're going to Taiwan for week in May :D). Some teachers seem to really struggle on their paychecks. I honestly have no idea how though. Lots and lots of alcohol, crazy trips and too much shopping I guess. But Japan isn't that much more expensive than England, so unless you're stupid you can definitely save money. Oh, but be prepared to be broke when you first arrive, whatever company you go with: the exchange rate is crap, it'll be a while until your first paycheck, and there's a lot of starting up expenses, like buying a phone, a bike, setting up utilities etc.

Is it easy to meet people?

As for meeting people...it 100% depends where you get placed. We've found it hard to meet people, but our circumstances are a bit complex since we're in the area that was affected by last year's tsunami. So a lot of foreigners left after that and there's still a lot fewer than before. But we have met people, it just might take a little while. It depends on so many factors, but there are plenty of people to be met! I think I need to get better at being brave enough to just accost random people in the street! One of the things about Peppy that isn't so good is that because you're working alone with children, there aren't many adults to be met through work. 

Are you pleased you work for PKC?/Are they a good company to work for?

Whilst we've had plenty of minor issues with Peppy, they are pretty good and helping you sort out problems/translate for you etc. They're not very forthcoming with help until you directly ask them about it, but then we've found them mostly pretty good. The work is pretty easy and the hours are fairly light. I don't feel like they are trying to screw us over. 

BUT, having said that, if I have other options, I don't think I'll work for them for more than a year. Working in the evenings isn't ideal, and I'm not a massive fan of their curriculum. Our apartment locations completely sucks which is their fault, and they weren't great at being honest with us and treating us like adults when we first came. 

BUT, I do think they're a good, easy and relatively stress-free way to come to Japan. A good starter company, I think.

I hope that information is helpful to anyone who is thinking of working for Peppy. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer. And if there's anyone who disagrees with me, then feel free to write that too. And if anyone from Peppy reads this, I hope I don't get fired! 

毎日Everyday...

There are a lot of fun, exciting things that happen in my life at the moment, but whatever exciting place you live in, there's a lot of time spent living normal life. This is mine.

Breakfast every morning. Toasted (in a pan because we have no toaster or grill) with butter. It tastes like hot cross buns (for you Brits who know what hot cross buns are). Yum. (Oh, and if this photo is a little blurry it's because I'm sitting in bed and wanted a photo and it's across the room so I just used the zoom! You can't judge that until you've lived in a Japanese apartment without insulation when it's -3 outside!)

Then, we relax during the morning, usually in bed because it's too cold to be anywhere else!

Then maybe we cook lunch, or on lazy/busy days, I head to my favourite little standing restaurant in Sendai station, and get what I always do, Curry rice with karage (fried chicken). YUM.

Then I eat a packet of these. (This photo won't rotate. Stupid blogger.)

And then I sit on a bus or a train, for varying amounts of time on my way to school, on the internet on my phone...

...or studying Japanese.

And then I get to school and set up my classroom...

...get the kids name badges out, and classes start.

We play some games (do you like the snakes and ladders game I made?!)...

...and do some drawings.

They had to combine a few animals and write what it could do. So cute.

My teacher profile, giving information about me to my students.

And then on the way home I eat more of these. Somehow I've lost more weight since I got here, I don't know how when I eat so much junk food!

When I get home, sometime between 9pm and 11pm, I cook something quick for dinner if I'm home first, or I arrive back to a lovely cooked meal if John's home first. Then after relaxing for a bit (maybe watching some pokemon), it's bedtime.

I hope you enjoyed this trip through my day!

A week of ups and downs

This week was always going to be a hard one in lots of ways.

My first full week of teaching. Commuting almost 3 hours each way to my school in Yamoto. Doing a lot of that commute along the coast that was affected by the tsunami. Teaching children who lost homes and family in the tsunami. Teaching those children for the first time while being observed by their parents. Still battling the cold and the snow and the ice. Falling off my bike on said ice. My first Japanese lesson.

It was difficult and I'm exhausted now, but I managed to have a lot of good times too. I (briefly) visited Matsushima Bay, continued to make friends, visited some new places to eat, and celebrated a Japanese festival. Photos below :)

Matsushima park

Matsushima Bay. Despite being by the coast, Matsushima mostly escaped the tsunami due to all the islands and the general lay of the land. The beauty of it feels weird next to the devastation further up the coast, but there's something lovely about it surviving too.  

Dad, maybe you could just steal one when you come to visit???

Our friend Tomoki took us to a yummy and cheap izakaya. Okonomiyaki, pig trotter (John told him to order something random), cabbage and edamame were all on the menu, as well as lots of yakitori. Yum.

Tomoki and his friend Ryusuke fighting to split konnakyu. It's a weird thing made out of a type of potato, but somehow made rubbery. I have no idea how, you'll have to google it.

Like a lot of Japanese places, there was an open kitchen. Fun! 

I couldn't bring myself to take photos in the tsunami area. It feels too prying. But I took this of the lovely sunset in an affected area. Apart from some bits, it's hard to tell what has always been farmland and what used to be housing. I think most of this is just farmland though.

Maiko, a lady I met last week, took us to the Dontosai festival. The basic idea is that you go to a shrine and everything burnt on the fire goes up to your ancestor ghosts/gods. So it's a combination of wishes for good luck, presents to say thank you, and (conveniently) New Year's decorations. 

I hope this wasn't a personal slight! I think it was just a bad choice of bag!

There's lots of food stalls too. (By the way, wondered above what okonomiyaki is? It's this! Cabbage, batter and miscellaeous other items mixed together and fried. It's yummy :D)

Things to be burnt. We wanted to rescue the poor teddies but I think that would be breaking far too many cultural taboos!

Afterwards, Maiko took us to a kind of tapas restaurant in Sendai. We had lots of tasty food but this was the only one that earnt a picture. Why? Well it may look safe, but it's actually, in the words of Maiko who couldn't think of the English word, "the bits of a fish that make semen"!! It was actually really good and just kind of tasted like a strange type of cheese!

I hope everyone else had a lot of good times this week too!

The Move Up North

So after a mad last few days finishing training, which included being stalked by a random guy who flashed me and shook his willy at me, teaching some really lovely classes and some absolute horrors, trying to go on a night out and finding the one club in Japan that shuts at 1am and having to walk 2 hours home (but making up for it by meeting some awesome but very random Japanese guys, and discovering purikura-photos below!), we have finally moved to Sendai.

This is purikura...it's a photo booth that airbrushes you a little and gives you massive eyes. Hilarious but a little scary! Stacey, we are 100% doing this when you come visit!

Mount Fuji from the train :D

Yes, that is a double decker bullet train in the background!

Well, I say Sendai, but due to annoying admin/disorganisational issues our company appears to be having, we are actually a 20min train ride and then a 25 minute walk away from Sendai. Not ideal but we are slowly getting used to it. The town we are in is a small commuter town. The town itself is quite industrial and not that pretty but the setting, surrounded by mountains and lots of trees is really pretty and will be even lovelier in summer when the trees have their coats back!

Very pretty...

...but apparently the river is killer!

Our apartments themselves are lovely, if a little far from everything- it's almost as bad as living in Banham again! They're much bigger than I expected for Japan, but unfortunately they are traditionally Japanese in their lack of central heating and insulation. Very cold when it's 4degrees outside!

View from my apartment

My very messy (just unpacked my suitcase) room

The kitchen may be tiny...

...but it's big enough to cook tasty food.

We've spent the week since we got here gradually settling in. A stressful day was spent getting our ARC, (the amusingly named 'alien registration card' which every foreigner resident to Japan has to register for) and our bank accounts. It turns out we don't count as being in Sendai, but in another area altogether, so we did a tour of local admin buildings before finally hunting down the correct one. A day of disappointments also informed us that we live in the only Leopalace (the company that owns our apartment) that anyone has ever heard of that doesn't have Internet :(

Luckily a more successful day followed, where we got phones sorted, (not too expensively by Japanese standards), went to our first lessons in this area and started to feel a little more settled.

Then on Saturday things started to really look up with a very productive trip to the Sendai International Centre where we met a lovely helpful Japanese girl who gave us advice about anything and everything, including getting bikes, Japanese lessons, international meet ups, places to travel in Japan, what to do with a random piece of paper that came through my letterbox and much more. Lots of help and support, just what we need! We also bought bikes and cycled home, quite a pretty route but at 8miles not one we're going to be doing every day! We then went out in Sendai and had a couple of drinks, failed to find a club but made a new friend, an American who has been here for 6months but is leaving next week. We also got mobbed by a group of Japanese students, dressed in Christmas outfits, who all wanted to shake our hands, give us sweets and wish us Merry Christmas! Bizarre.

View across Sendai, note the massive buddha in the distance 

On the bike ride home

The massive buddha

Haha

After a lazy Sunday morning with fried rice (yum) for breakfast, we explored Sendai some more, and are currently at our friend Amy's apartment stealing her Internet :D

Who doesn't want to cut their frankfurters into octopi?

Scary stuffed animals.

Sorry for the moaning blog, it's been a difficult week but we're hopeful of things getting better soon, so I promise I'll be cheerier next time!

Training!

Sorry for the lack of photos but I'm kind of stealing internet on my phone to write this and no laptop internet available here!
So I've been in Nagoya a week now. First we spent 3 days here settling in and meeting people (some lovely people, some idiots. Luckily the other people who'll be living near us are awesome!). We wandered around a lot, had a crazy kareoke night and are lots of good food.
Training started monday, and despite all the warnings about it being "intense", it's mostly been pretty basic boring stuff really, although we have been really busy (partly due to lots of time spent hunting out yummy food!). Peppy just want you to follow their curriculum really so there's not too much lesson planning. Lot easier than the other bits of EFL teaching I've done!
I'm really looking forward to getting to Sendai and getting properly settled into life here. It'll be lovely to have my own apartment, and to be able to get involved in Japanese life a bit more! Only 10 days, and meanwhile I'm making the most out of my time here :D

And our location is...

After years of wanting to go to Japan, many months of applying for jobs, many more months of waiting to hear our location from iTTTi (Peppy Kids Club), we finally know where in Japan we're going.

And our location is... Sendai, Miyagi prefecture.

We've known this was possible for a while. Peppy Kids Club are reopening schools in and around Sendai this month after the earthquake and tsunami in March, and the after effects of it, mainly because they've just reduced the exclusion zone around Fukushima. Since my boyfriend John and I asked to be placed near each other, and they were placing 4 teachers in Sendai, we thought this might be our placement. But it is nice to have it confirmed!

We're going in 13 DAYS! Argh! Then a weeks travel in Osaka and Kyoto, 2 weeks training in Nagoya, and we'll be in Sendai on the 5th December (which happens to be our 4th anniversary!). EXCITING!

Apparently Sendai is a lovely city, at 1 million people it's small enough not to scare a country girl like me, but hopefully large enough to fulfil my idea of Japanese city life! It's meant to be a real student city, which hopefully means they'll be lots going on and lots of people to meet!

But despite being very excited to live in a big city for the first time ever, I am also very happy to hear there are also lots of out of town day/weekend escapes...ski resorts, hiking hills, onsens, etc. Lovely.

As for the wider, living in a completely new, alien country side of things...my brain can't comprehend that yet. Too much to think about. Very excited and daunted. I don't think I'll know that til I've been there a while!