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Hi I’m Marvin, just another expat living and working in Japan. My wife’s Japanese and we have two daughters. I’m sure you’re wondering why the hell this guy needs a beginner’s course in 日本語 when he lives and works in Japan with a Japanese family right. He must be super jouzu! Well quite the contrary unfortunately. Pretty embarrassing isn’t it. No excuses, I’ve just been riding the “I give up” train for too long. But I just got a ticket on the Textfugu train, and I’m already enjoying the ride. がんばれ！
My story: We run our own little English school here in Tottori prefecture, where I teach Japanese locals from kindy to senior citizens. I met my wife back in Australia and so we’ve always communicated in English; she’s lived half her life outside Japan and she’s practically a native English speaker. And I speak and play in English with the kids since we’re fostering bilingual skills. I’m really not creating enough opportunities to get out there and practice the language with the local people. So that’s why I’m here, to really beef up my knowledge base and to stay efficient and consistent with my self study. When I find myself in a situation surrounded by the language, I’m pretty limited with my current language skills so it all seems quite anti-social. Which is really bad coz most of these situations are with my wife’s family.
Long term goals are primarily to communicate better with my wife’s side of the family. Totally different to my career driven goals when I studied business and Chinese in uni (wrong language I know). This is for my family and to make my life easier living here in Japan.
Textbooks are great but I haven’t been sticking to them on a regular basis. The free weekly community classes are ok but the teaching varies from decent to a complete waste of time. The online courses on iKnow are good for vocab but that’s pretty much it. So that’s why I’m here giving this a go. Thanks Koichi and Team Tofugu. よろしくお願いします!
Nice to meet you Marvin and welcome to the Textfugu train.
One of my goals was to actually each English in Japan, but after hearing from a relative about Japanese preferences for Caucasian teachers, I pretty much gave that dream up for dead. I’m now considering becoming a Chinese teacher (those years of suffering under the Confucian education system…-_-) or a translator.
Sorry about the rant, I tend to do that…Anyway, may you build a better relationship with your family and make more friends! =)
Hi Marvin, welcome to TextFugu! I really enjoyed reading about your motivation, good luck with your studies!
Yippy, you are not Caucasian? This is just from what I heard but I think as long as you are an English native speaker, then you should be alright most of the time. Depends on where you teach English though, though it seems to be the same for both university and/or 英会話; its just that if you want to teach at a university, should get that MA degree.
Hi Marvin, welcome to the forums! It’s great that you’ve decided to get serious about learning the language. Better now than never! And at least you have opportunity for plenty of practice!
You don’t happen to have a blog or a photo stream about living in Japan, do you?
Good luck with all of your studies!
~CassandraThank you all for the warm welcome. What a great online community of like minded people I’ve come across. Great to meet you all!
Hashi love reading your blogs man. Cassandra thank you and feel free to check out my Flickr on http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxmarvin/And Yippy, thanks mate, but I gotta say, don’t give up on those goals man. Don’t stop believin, hold on to that feeling… well you know how it goes… Hehe.
Seriously though, if I may go in rant mode back at ya, don’t let one disgruntled relative change your mind. Go out there and spread the word that the native English speaking community comes in all shapes and colours. I lived in China for three years and had an unforgettable, life changing, and invaluable experience. Yes there were some downs with the ups but that’s all part of the tests of life we get given now and then hey. Now I’m here in Japan and having an even more rewarding experience as a language professional. In fact some of my students sought me out coz I was of Asian descent. Go figure… That’s like making discrimination work in your favour right. I’m sure there’s some rap song about that.
Have I copped discrimination because of my Asian heritage living and working in either of these countries? Of course… And a million times more harsh in China than here, and I don’t live in big cosmo city Japan. So many people in China just couldn’t accept that I was “Australian”. I remember being laughed at when I walked into a lecture hall full of Chinese English majors. And it wasn’t because I had my fly undone… I remember checking just to be sure. But I saw passed the prejudice and won their respect and then some. Yeah my white dude and dudette teacher friends got the instant attention from passerbyers, but neither did it mean that they were always treated nicely. As far as employment opportunities being jeopardized coz of the way you look… Yeah of course it’s gonna happen, but that happens anywhere in any industry. You don’t have to go too far too find some bigoted person in authority. Just ask any minority Caucasian, non-Caucasian, of any religion, sexual orientation or what not. People are always gonna find some reason to try and knock you down. Doesn’t mean you gotta up root your dreams and miss out on broadening your language skills.
Damn I’ve gone Tony Robins mode… my bad! I get pretty worked up about it I guess coz I’ve been on the receiving end of this ignorant behaviour. It sucked but it would’ve sucked even more if I through in the towel… And ten times more sucky if I didn’t grab a towel in the first place!
So go pump yourself up, and look forward to whatever choice you’ll soon make… but in the right attitude. And don’t give up! That’s my way of the ninja… Ok time for some Naruto… I mean TextFugu!
またねー！
マービンSorry for the late replies, life kinda got in the way and made me forget…
@Missingno15: I see, thanks for the tip, it might be useful later on. =)@Marvin Fox: Thanks for the words of encouragement and also the rant. =) I’ll think about your experiences the next time I feel like this as a pick-me-up.
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