Recently I wrote down a list of all the places I’ve lived. It worked out to about 15 different homes – sometimes with family, sometimes on my own, but the number was larger than I had expected. Once I moved to Japan, the rate of increase slowed down considerably, and for the most part our life has been pretty settled for the past ten years or so.
I think that all that change in my background created a streak of flexibility in my character, and that paid off especially when I taught English here in Japan through an agency. I would show up at some factory, be directed to some stale smelling meeting room, and then be expected to teach a small group of exhausted staff a couple of evenings a month.
But having worked at Kawasaki for the past six or seven years I’ve been lucky to be set up in my own classroom. On the fourth floor of a reasonably modern office building, I could enjoy the comforts of air conditioning during the summers, plenty of mobile office furniture to push around into whatever arrangement fit the day’s teaching situation, and as a side benefit get a great deal of privacy as the classroom also served as my office.
So recently I was informed that due to some departmental shifts at our company I’d need to relocate, and it was an odd sort of feeling inside that seemed to say, “Well, that hasn’t happened in a long time…”
Yesterday I watched a small crew of very strong men come in and move everything down one floor to another classroom/office, and I’ve spent most of today unpacking and settling in.
I like the new space. The room is roughly the same size as my old classroom, however the separate room that I used to have dedicated to group lessons will now be scheduled and shared with other staff on this floor, so it is not entirely under my control. One very nice point was that during the move I could choose the furniture and equipment that I wanted to take, and simply point at old junky furniture that I had been stuck with years ago and have that delivered to someone else who will be stuck with it.
My new floor is completely different in that there is a huge office that takes up the center of the building, serving as a separation between me and all the usual amenities like the toilet, office kitchen, a clean water source, and the rest. On my previous floor I only had to walk down a hallway with all the workers behind closed doors to get whatever I needed, but now my stroll to the john can be observed by more than a hundred people. It is an odd feeling now – but I’m sure it will feel less odd in the future.
From next week I’ll start with new students, new classes, and in a new space. I’m looking forward to the change, and that it will also serve to shake up my lesson plans and teaching ideas as well.
