Time Vaccuum

I've been in a time vacuum, so I haven't found any time to blog. (It takes me a few hours to go through all my pictures, put them and my words in some kind of coherent order, etc).

So I won't be updating daily as before, since I need to ramp up my job search.

But I will say this, for now-

Going to an SGI meeting here (in the Tokyo International Group, which is composed of uh...international members) for the first time last Thursday was like being at FNCC. Meeting a bunch of interesting people from different places (several half-Japanese, several non-Japanese, from Michigan, England, New Zealand, Seattle, Taiwan, Mississippi, etc), who want to meet you and get to know you, very friendly, non-judgmental. I miss going to FNCC.

Among them were also two English teachers, who will put in a good word for me at their respective schools. Actually, I went with one to his school already, this past Monday. I met the manager, who spoke to my friend Ken briefly in private. Ken said later said that the manager thought I was "calm and friendly," and thought I might be a good fit at their school. ("Calm" is how my TESOL course classmate described me in my practice teaching, so I guess that's pretty useful in "real life" too!) So the manager is going to call me, yay!

I'm chanting more these days to find a good job, because:

1) Ken said he chanted an hour for me the day that we went to his school, for me to find the best job. I was so touched by his sincerity. (I also think that he doesn't want me to quit later on, because it'll reflect poorly on him. We've only met just once, so I know he was taking a big risk by recommending me.)

2) If he's chanting for me, I should really be chanting for myself. After that meeting Monday morning, I've been chanting anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour a day. It's a lot, considering that I haven't chanted much (ie, at all) recently.

3) Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but his job was not the most ideal---work 1-10 PM or 12-9 pm on weekdays, 10-7 pm on weekends (and you have to work 4 weekend days per month), no health insurance, no sick days. They dock your pay if you call out sick. (I know this is pretty common in Japan, kind of like standard practice...the attitude is "Why should I pay you for being sick?" or something similar.)

However, after 4 weeks of my crazy TESOL course schedule, I got really sick and couldn't speak, let alone teach, for about four days. It would be really unfair if the school deducts money from my salary over something I had no control over, especially if my illness was brought on by a crazy schedule in the first place.

I read somewhere that it's partially because of this policy of "no sick days" that there are so many people wearing surgical masks on the subways, etc. They're sick, but they have to go to work (and at least they keep their germs to themselves, unlike many people on the NYC subways/buses--yuck!).

I went to another SGI meeting tonight. (The March 16th commemorative meeting is coming up, so there are a lot of meetings, rehearsals, etc.) Because of its diversity, I felt like I could have been in NY. Except for the fact that everyone speaks Japanese, even if it's something like, "Gomen. I'm so sorry. I'll email you tonight!"