Teaching Engrish

Japanese people are lovely people to teach. Their culture has created legions of people who's sole purpose in life is to have a job and be educated. I work for Nova, the McDonalds of english language schools. I teach from a series of books designed by Japanese people for Japanese people. The books have lots of picture of westerners doing wacky western things like: going to the movies! Ordering at a resturant and complaining about the food! Telling your friends about your most deep seeded phobias! (this is actually a lesson). Working through a lesson is easy, you simply read to them from the book. You sit in a teachers lounge (tiny room) before the lesson to get ready for it, then a bell goes and you go out a little door and up a flight of stairs. The room you teach in is a tiny glass box barely big enough for the small table and 4 chairs situtated inside. Usually Ill teach, say, a schoolgirl, a housewife and a business man. I sit down and they are all waiting for me. "Hi how is everyone today?" Schoolgirl says, "I study for exams 6 hours today, im tired" Housewife says, "My husband makes me work so hard! Im tired" and business man says "I work 90 hours dis week, berry sleepy". You begin the lesson and get them to say things like "Nice to meet you, my name is ..." to eachother for 40 minutes then you're done. Back down to the teacher dungeon, and repeat 5 times. Its pretty easy work on the whole and you meet some crazy characters.

The Japanese dress up in the newest fashions and have the latest technology, but when you interact with them you get this weird sense of history. Under the ultra modern exterior, you sometimes get the feeling your talking to descendents of samurai's, farmers, or monks from ancient times.