The teaching of eikaiwa, or English conversation, is quite an industry in Japan, and there are many schools where people of all ages can learn the language, usually for around $100 a month for four weekly lessons. Although there are many small schools offering ESL, usually also operating after-hours tutoring schools (juku) on the side, the market tends to be dominated by the chains of English schools like Aeon, Geos, ECC, and the largest, Nova. These large schools promise “a study-abroad experience right in front of your local train station,” a tempting proposition for the estimated 1 million Japanese wanting to practice speaking English with a native speaker. Although I’ve had teacher friends who had good experiences working for companies like Nova, when J-List readers have asked for information on teaching in Japan I’ve generally steered them away from these “McEnglish” chains. The business practices of the schools often leave a lot to be desired, including overworking teachers and keeping them on short-term contracts unnecessarily, and structuring “discounts” for students that result in them signing unbreakable contracts for 2-3 years of lessons. Now it seems the bad karma of the school is coming back to bite it on its pink rabbit ears, as the government has ordered them to stop signing up new customers for six months as penalty for their past misdeeds. (Of course, I have an only slightly outdated guide for anyone wanting to know more about teaching here.)
In Japan, they do like to take tests, and you can find standardized exam- inations for just about everything, including English, Kanji, using an abacus, entering prices in a cash register in a supermarket, and even for using the Internet, a test called “.Com Master.” The Japanese use these tests to improve themselves and pad their resumes, and for the most part I’ve seen that Japan’s test culture has had a good effect on people overall, although my son quit our city’s skiing club because he got tired of their incessant focus on preparing for the next level of the National Skiing Skill Examination, which has something like 11 levels to it. As the Japanese government comes to the realization that manga and anime are perhaps the country’s greatest cultural export, there’s been more focus on nurturing the artists that create the works that interest so many around the world. To that end, there’s now an official Manga Creators Ability Test, which covers creation of characters, stories and skills as an assistant to a professional artist, at several different levels. Last week six hundred would-be manga-ka (comic artists) took the test for the first time, pitting their skills against each other while professional artists judged. I wonder if a future CLAMP or Rumiko Takahashi was among the test-takers?
Japan is a Parliamentary Democracy that takes its structure mostly from that other famous island nation, Great Britain. The national legislature of Japan is called the Diet, which is why Japanese people are so thin (ha-ha), and it’s lead by a Prime Minister elected by the party or parties in power, currently a coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito. If you want to know a fun Japanese joke that will probably surprise the heck out of any Japanese who hear it, here it is: the word for Prime Minister is souri (pronounced “SOH-ree”), which sounds like the English word “sorry” to the Japanese. Sori, a similar-sounding word but with a shorter vowel at the front, means “razor.” Japanese kids have a stupid saying that has endured for decades: “I’m sorry, hige sori [beard shaver], jori jori [the sound of rough, unshaven whiskers].” If you’re ever talking to a Japanese person, and they apologize to you for something, come back at them with “I’m sorry, hige sori, jori jori!” [HEE-gay SOH-ree, JOE-ree JOE-ree] and watch the look of shock on their faces that anyone outside of Japan would know this.
