I had to get up at the mind-bendingly early hour of 5:30 this morning, in order to make it on time for the Hyogo prefecture teacher interviews. The interviews are there to choose new teachers for the various openings every year. Mr. Hasegawa, the prefecture director, had asked six ALTs to help out with the interviews.
It was held pretty far away, so together with Chelsea and Struan we made it there by train and subway. After that, we just followed the trail of nicely dressed Japanese folks. The location was a prefectural college campus, and we were ushered into a secluded room where we were given our final instructions. We were each partnered with a honcho from the prefecture, and I didn’t know if it was a good thing or not but I was working with Mr. Hasegawa himself. This is like working together with the equivalent of the California Superintendent of Education, so I was a little nervous.
We set up shop in the room and Mr. Hasegawa gave me a couple of last minute bits of advice. My role was to moderate a thirty minute discussion in English between three prospective teachers. Mr. Hasegawa was behind me taking notes and evaluating the teachers. The process was rather complicated, and I had to listen carefully to the sometimes unintelligible responses, and create more questions on the fly to keep the discussion going. My goal was to have everyone talk for the same amount of time, so I had to work hard sometimes to coax something out of shy people, and to keep quiet the outgoing ones.
We had all kinds of people interviewing, from the bubbly cute girls that crossed and uncrossed their legs trying to distract us, to the old fashioned “Force Feed English” type teachers that were looking to move to a new prefecture. It was a tough job, and hard work. If somebody was shy and clamming up, that meant I had to ask them more questions to get them to talk, and it felt like I was kicking them while they were down.
On the other hand, working with Mr. Hasegawa was a challenge that I enjoyed. He gave me good marks for my questions and flexibility, and I hope that I made a favorable impression with him. You never now what a good word from him might drum up down the road.
After each group of interviewees, Mr. Hasegawa and I would discuss our impressions, and I was surprised how much weight my opinion carried. Several times what I said seemed to make or break candidates. Ostensibly Mr. Hasegawa had full responsibility for evaluation, but I felt like I was part of the process too.
We finally got out of there around four o’clock. I caught a train to Akashi and went inside the park to see the Akashi matsuri – a town festival that was in full swing by the time I arrived. One of the JETs that I had dinner with the other night in Harima had done a live show earlier that I missed. He was the lead singer for an ACDC cover band. The rest of the band was Japanese, and I would have loved to see that. Instead, I walked around and just enjoyed checking out all the booths.
As I walked by a booth I saw a sign that said, of all things, VALLEJO. Akashi is the sister city of Vallejo, California – something that I had indicated on my application and one of the ways that I picked where to live in Japan. They had a whole booth there showing pictures of Vallejo, selling T-shirts, and pouring Delicato wine for 100 yen a glass (around $1).
I stepped up and they started telling me all about Vallejo, and I told them that I used to live right near there. The lady got all excited, and we talked in English for a while – she had quite good English skills. She had gone to Vallejo six years ago and met the mayor. The pictures of Vallejo that were hung up were heavy on the vineyards, and light on the heavy industry, but they were Vallejo all right. It was fun to talk to her. The glass of wine for a dollar was the best deal on booze in the whole festival, so I walked around the place with a glass of red wine the rest of the night.
As for food, the lines were huge – out of control. Instead I walked across the street to a okonomiyaki place that I know, and had tonpeiyaki (pork and egg okonomiyaki) and negiyaki (green onion okonomiyaki). The master of the place is always really nice, and a friendly guy. His wife did all the work, and it was delicious.
After dinner I got back on the train and continued home. Now I’m just getting ready for an early trip to bed. Tomorrow I’m going into Kobe to meet Kuniko, and I’ll likely stay in Osaka Sunday night. Monday is a day off for me as a trade for my workday today. I’m trying to enjoy these last days of summer – soon enough I’ll be busy teaching classes again.
