Listen to the Rain

Well, I haven't really posted about it before, but I have a lot more free time now due to being out of work. I wasn't actually told the reason for it (there were some hints), but on the Lang side it mostly seemed related to the distance. My boss was considering bringing me in part-time, but it would have cost my boss roughly ¥70,000 (about $750) a month in transportation fees to bring me into the city. It wasn't cost effective for her and I wouldn't have made enough on my end to bother with it, so working at Lang was out.

Suzugamine was a nice place to work, but as it turned out they simply didn't have the money to rehire me. Enrollment had dropped by almost 65% in the past 10 years, and it's getting low enough that the foreign teacher they have at Suzugamine Tandai ("junior college." Literally, "short college") doesn't have enough students for a full workload, so they're bringing him over to teach classes as well as getting more part time teachers with no experience. Apparently, that was specifically what the vice-principal was looking for. I expect that, since they're switching to team-teaching this year for all English conversation classes, they don't want foreign teachers who have their own ideas about teaching and therefore will screw up the JTE's perfect lesson plans. I may be being uncharitable, though.

I will miss the students, though. Here's hoping Ayumi and Sachiyo stop being so bored, and Mayumi does manage to become a translator, and Yuka goes on to become a child psychologist and Miwako a primary school teacher, and Masumi gets as good at English as she hopes, and all the others succeed. I may see them around Hiroshima here and then, but whether they'll want to chat is another question entirely.