A New Job
One Sunday, I get an unexpected visitor in my secret life. It is the bright, environmentally conscious vegan photographer –JET teacher Timdesuyo who trains aikido with me at Shosenji dojo, here to take some pictures and get some information from the world of shadows for an article in this regions’s popular foreigners’ magazine Kansai Time Out, short KTO.
Only a few weeks later, I’m holding a copy of the magazine in my hands, to have a look at what he has written about the place I devote my weekends to, and the people that populate it. His pictures are good, the article a summary of parts taken from the recently published bilingual edition “A Journey to the World of Ninja and Kengo”. With nothing but Kansai Time Out to accompany me on my train journey from Sone to Umeda, I dejectedly leaf through the classifieds section, and my eyes fall on an ad placed by the German European School in Kobe. They are looking for an early years teacher and an English as a Second Language teacher. Somehow I can’t take my eyes off the ad.
German European School. It sounds like a place that would give me work. Me being of distinctly German-European heritage, and with language skills in German, English, and Japanese. Also, to me European values seem especially attractive in a workplace right now, since I am working for a Japanese company, crushed daily by the weight of corporate pressure, spending every night painstakingly resurrecting the individual I am before I go to work, from the paste of muscles, blood, and sweat, the raw materials used throughout the day to contribute to corporate profits.
Teaching. Well. It is what I’m doing at the moment. It is something I CAN do. My main worry is my secret life. There might be opportunities there for me which would grant me better access to the world of shadows than this. But then again, there might not. And if I should get this, my working hours would decrease, and I would get more holidays to escape into this world, and become a bigger and stronger part of it.
Taking the ad as a sign, I give my CV a quick once-over and put together a cover letter that emphasises my Germanic roots, language skills, teaching experience, practising fondness of European values, and most of all, my enthusiasm at taking on this position (either one of the two offered, yes that’s how far my skills go). My internet connection is stubbornly denying me access that night, but I manage to send everything off the next morning before I go to the gym and move on to have myself crushed and used once again.
A few hours later, I have escaped from work for a short period of time to grab a snack at a nearby kombini, and my phone rings. “Moshi moshi.”
“Ja, Frau Sanner, Müller hier, Deutsch-Europäische Schule Kobe. I have your CV here in front of me. Are you still interested in this position?”
Hearing a German voice in a kombini in the middle of Osaka startles me so much I forget which three kinds of yoghurt I had narrowed my choices down to, but as it has been a mere three hours since I applied for the position, I reply promptly that I am indeed still interested.
“Dann müssen Sie ganz schnell hier her kommen, sonst wird das dieses Jahr nicht mehr!“ (In that case you have to come here, and soon, otherwise it won’t work out this year.) “
“OK, would that still be possible tomorrow morning?” I ask, as I am working till late tonight, as usual, and have to dash back to the school in a minute.
“It IS still possible tomorrow morning, but that will be the last chance, Frau Sanner. After that I’m off to the UK and Germany to do conduct some more recruitment activities and then go for a long summer holiday.”
Long summer holidays. Various instances of my present superiors trying to talk me out of even the seven days of holidays I dared to take for the whole year come floating back to me. I am definitely still interested in this job.
“How about tomorrow 9 o’clock,” Herr Direktor Müller suggests efficiently.
“Tomorrow 9 o’clock. Certainly.” I efficiently agree, feeling perfectly at home in this conversation. Herr Direktor Müller describes to me how to get to the school, and we end our pleasant and efficient call.
As the yoghurt shelf comes back into focus, I find myself looking for Müller yoghurt, the one with the corner you can flip around and pour jam, or little chocolate balls, or cereal into the bigger corner that holds the yoghurt. “Alles Müller oder was?” goes the commercial. But the choices offered bring me back from Germany to Japan, Hannover to Osaka, and I have to make do with a new blueberry edition of shibō zero (non-fat) blueberry yoghurt instead, featuring health-inducing pieces of jelly-like aloe vera.
Then I rush back to the school, and for a change, at the prospect of leaving this establishment for good, my business smile comes naturally.
The next morning at nine o’clock I knock at Herr Direktor Müller’s door.
“Guten Morgen Frau Sanner, bitte nehmen Sie Platz!” he gestures me to sit down in one of the three chairs lining my side of his giant desk, and I marvel at his air-conditioned office, which is almost the size of Juso school, my present work place. It is only 9 o’clock, yet, already, Mr. Müller is stressed. There is a mother in the office, molesting the secretaries about her own failure to officially withdraw her child from the school, and as a result, having to pay for tuition this year. She simply doesn’t want to pay. Mr Müller touches this forehead with the inside of his hand and rests the whole forearm face construction on his elbow for a while. Then he attacks the coffee the secretary has carefully placed in front of him in the meantime. I decline the coffee I am offered. I have already had my morning dose and am too excited about what is to come.
Mr Müller asks Miss A, the Japanese secretary, who speaks good German, to take care of the trouble for now, as he has an interview to do, and Miss A retreats from his office with a strained smile.
Mr Müller tells me that in Germany, he used to work for a school with five times as many children. And still, in Japan he is faced with a lot more stress. Staff are extremely unflexible, and as soon as a child comes into the office with a bleeding knee from playing outside (an everyday type of incident at a school that instructs children between 2 and 13 years of age), it digresses from their written code of conduct, and they are at a loss. I express my genuine empathyf or Mr Müller’s trouble and remind him of his privileged position. “At least here you are allowed to exercise European values and common sense to fight the occasional shortcomings in simple management skill.” Mr Müller agrees with an amused chuckle and asks me about my teaching experience and my language skills. He seems satisfied with my answers.
“As for your language skills, I cannot rely on my own expertise.” He continues. “So we will shortly be joined by Mr Inman, head of the European section.” Mr Inman is a friendly looking young man from Yorkshire. I have read his personal profile in Kansai Time Out. “He will take a look at your English skills, but at the moment he is still busy.” Mr Müller takes another sip of his coffee, which seems to inspire him to come up with yet another efficient idea. “In the meantime, I will have Miss A talk to you in Japanese for a little while, to check your Japanese level. If you really are as good as you say, you would be gold to us. We could use you for whatever needs to be done. You could teach Japanese to begins, take the German kids when they need a sub, and obviously fill the position as ESL teacher that we need filled…” Herr Direktor Müller calls Miss A away from her brave stand-off with the irate mother who is still unwilling to pay, and she sits down next to me and asks me about my present job. I tell her how I enjoy teaching but despise the business side of things. She asks for some more detailed information about what this business side entails, and I tell her about the publishing branch, selling text books, the foreign exchange branch whose molestations are never ending, monthly specified campaigns and contract renewal promotions. She empathises and kindly tells Mr Müller she has never heard a foreigner speak such good Japanese before.
Next, Mr Inman joins us with a big, welcoming smile, and we all converse in English for a while. He tells me that their concern is that sometimes foreigners apply for English language teaching positions, but when you meet them, they make grammar errors and cannot be accepted as English teachers. “But in your case,” he continues, “it is clearly not an issue. I can even hear your Bath accent.”
Mr Müller smiles and tells me to leave them alone for a while, so they can consult about the matter. I walk around the area and inspect the cute little café selling cakes made with organic ingredients across the road, locate the nearest kombini, and enjoy the patches of green that are surprisingly abundant here, compared to concrete djugle Osaka.
I arrive back at Herrn Direktor Müller’s office, and Mr Inman says: “I think we have good news for you.” I got the job “The only problem I see with this,” he goes on, “is that you’re seriously undershooting yourself. You have all these language skills, and here you’re just going to be teaching little children, which is not the most stimulating job. So if you’d say you wanted to work here for two or three years, I wouldn’t believe you. But if you just want to get away from your present job, that’s fine. ” Mr Müller tells me he is having the contract prepared as we speak, and would I be so kind as to sign it right now, so he can reduce his recruitment activities in the UK and enjoy an even longer long summer holiday? Aber natürlich kann ich das. Of course I can.
When I arrive at Juso school today, I have trouble suppressing my smile when I force a polite introduction to open up the news to manager. The Japanese English teacher has announced her premature retirement from the company only two weeks ago.
“I’m really sorry,” I say as soon as we sit down for our morning meeting, “this is probably the last thing you want to hear, o honourable manager. But I’m going to quit.”
Manager is shocked. But she is not overwhelmed by the news. She rather professionally accepts it with a “Shō ga nai.” (That can’t be helped.) She asks me about the new job. When will I start, what will I do, where is it, and how much will I make. When I tell her about the money, which will go up by about 50%, together with a rise in holidays by about 700%, her eyes light up. And her next reaction comes as a surprise. “Isn’t there a job there for me?”
And slightly incredulous at how my news about leaving have affected her, I write an e-mail to Herrn Direktor Müller, instructed by manager, asking him about possible secretary positions at the school. Unfortunately, the e-mail arrives at the wrong place: at GEOS head office. When I realise my mistake, I promptly send another e-mail to my trainer, apologising for the miss. I get back an irate message, rebuking me of gross abuse of the business e-mailing facilities for private purposes. Luckily, the content of the German message is lost on my trainer, otherwise the consequences for my manager might have been deplorable.
I use this golden opportunity and retort by giving a phone call to head ffice and renouncing my retirement from the company by the end of august. Surprisingly, my trainer is not only professional but even kind about it and tells me she will promptly inform me of what needs to be done in order to leave. Another advocate and practising member of efficiency. I put down the phone, and pop a red pill into my mouth that has been hiding in the deepest corners of my jacket pocket somewhere, for a long, long time. And as it dissolved in my throat, I see a bright future opening up before me, far, far away from the mines.
