He's getting settled in Kawagoe after finishing his week long training session in Tokyo. He'll be teaching English there in Japan for the next year. It sounds like a fun adventure. He sent me a lengthy report and I've encouraged him to post at least some of it here. For those of you who don't know him, his marriage to a Russian girl didn't work out so he looked east. His aerospace engineering job with Boeing came to a close so he decided to take some time and explore "the mysteries of the orient" as they used to say, and get a job with one of the major English Language schools in Japan. They have branches in almost every city of any size there and sponsor native English speakers for a year at a time, providing training, transportation, lodging, visa assistance, etc, for a year's contract. Japan has a type of part time work visa that is fairly easy to get that allows you to work for 28 hrs/week max. They also have a "cultural study" type visa that also allows part time work, also. This encourages graduate students, etc. to visit the country and support themselves with teaching/translating/writing jobs while they study. Anyway, Bob's initial impressions are fun to read because they're pretty similar to my first impressions of Japan about 25 years ago when I first started travelling there on business. It was a trip down nostalgia lane.
-- Jeff S.
