I’m getting real tired of working in an eikaiwa, so I want to improve my Japanese and take the JLPT. But, I can’t find any time to go to Japanese lessons.
Most days, my lessons start at 5 pm, but I have to clean the classroom, do lesson prep, do some paperwork, and eat my lunch. Depending on the school I’m going to, those 4 things can take 2-4 hours. And that’s not counting the commute.
By the time I get back to my home station, all the language schools are closed. I just can’t seem to find anything that fits my schedule that isn’t self-study.
How do/did you balance work and study?
18 comments
i think there’s a school called japan switch? my friend goes there and they offer 9am-2pm classes. but it’s only in shinjuku or online
What do you expect working at an eikawa?
>I’m getting real tired of working in an eikaiwa, so I want to improve my Japanese and take the JLPT.
Just learning Japanese won’t help you escape eikaiwa. Japanese isn’t a job skill, it’s a requirement to live in Japan.
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> I just can’t seem to find anything that fits my schedule that isn’t self-study.
What’s wrong with self study? Even with lessons you are still going to have to spend at least one hour a day studying.
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>How do/did you balance work and study?
My company paid a Japanese teacher to come to the office every day for about three years. If your employer is serious about keeping you, they will pay for the lessons and allow you to take them during work hours. It’s a pretty standard benefit for skilled professionals in Tokyo.
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And that brings us back to:
>escape eikaiwa
If you don’t have any valuable professional skills, you probably won’t be able to escape. The only path that seems to work is get an unlimited visa like spouse or permanent residency and find a blue collar job driving a truck or working in a factory or construction. If you had valuable professional skills, you wouldn’t have taken the eikaiwa job.
Are you working during the day? What level JLPT? Self study is possible especially while in Japan. I think your best bet is to self study for now, and worry about formal lessons later. There are also people willing to do lessons online via Skype or zoom, so that might be an option too.
Don’t give up.
Try CafeTalk. Nothing wrong with online lessons! They have plenty of instructors based in Japan so time zone isn’t an issue. As well, you can schedule for times convenient for you, even if the day and time changes every week.
Eikawa is famous for horrid hours. The older you get, the worse of a job Eikawa becomes. If you want more free time, switch to ALT
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At this point, just go home. You’ll be more useful there (maybe). You’ll also be able to gain a real skill that could help you get a better job than anything the Japanese language alone could give you.
Sincerely, a fellow dancing monkey stuck here until the free flight home 🙂
I’m no success story but my plan involved:
– Teaching all day
– Doing 2 early morning Japanese lessons at the international centre every week (focussing on functionality rather than JLPT… a mistake in hindsight maybe, but I can speak pretty decent Japanese now, watch movies and play retro RPGs so I achieved something)
– Practicing kanji for 30 minutes every night
– Doing an online TESOL through an Australian uni (where I’d previously done a face-to-face teaching degree)
date a japanese person
not for language lessons, but simply using the language to communicate
I’ve been taking lessons online through Preply. It’s great! You can choose your tutor based on location. I was located in Korea and my tutor in Japan so it was super convenient. He was amazing! If you want I can send his info?
Go in the morning. When I worked eikaiwa I started at 1pm so I took a 10am class twice a week. Boom.
Why don’t you take lessons BEFORE your work??
I’ve never worked full-time in an Eikawa, so I’m not sure how your hours are structured, but my first year in Japan I came here as a student to study the language. My usual day was as it follows:
• 9:00 to 12:40 – Japanese class
• 12:40 to 13:00 – quick lunch (usually made the day before or bought in the morning to say time)
• 13:00 to 14:30 – commute to workplace (I was working in a shop) plus relax time
• 14:30 to 16:00 – study time before my shift
• 16:00 to 21:30/22:00 – work
After that I would go home and study a bit more if I got home before 23:30; if not, I would shower and go sleep.
Saturdays and Sundays were pretty much the same, except I would have my shifts instead of school and well, more free time/study time. Also, this was when I used to work on my freelance projects.
Things changed a lot when I got my first full-time job in Japan. Typical day was:
• 8:50 to 17:00 – work
• 17:00 to 19:00 – relax, food
• 19:00 to 23:00 – freelance projects, Japanese study, more relax time
I get from your comment that your have chronic insomnia, so maybe you can try to squeeze in one or two hours of study after work and maybe one or two before work. If your commute time is long, study on the train whenever you can.
**However** I want to suggest you to invest only half of this time in studying Japanese and using your other half for studying/practicing something you are interested in and you would like to do in a future.
JLPT will not magically open you doors (or give you contracts) – I would rather suggest you to practice doing job interviews in Japanese and boost your confidence in speaking Japanese over taking the JLPT. Experience was what gave me (and my friends) jobs offers when I was looking for a job, not JLPT (also, most Japanese people/companies have no idea what it is, and they will mistake it with the kanji aptitude test, only to find out later what a JLPT is actually about).
So well, improve your Japanese, improve skills that you need for your future job, and practice a LOT for job interviews in Japanese.
(I can be more detailed about my own “leaving English teaching” experience if you want, but since question is about balancing work and study, I decided to leave it out).
Have a great day!
JLPT N5, and I’d say N4 as well, don’t require a teacher, just motivation and a textbook. At the lowest levels, half of it is just vocabulary acquirement.
I was working eikaiwa, and I just went in an hour early everyday to study at an empty desk for a year, and was able to get my 4 (before N5, it was just 4). After a year and a half of that, I was around N3, and I needed a teacher. The nuance of the language started getting harder. I found a private instructor and did an hour a week at 9:15 pm for two years. But I’m the early stages, it kind of seems like a waste of money.
Find a private tutor that can work with your schedule or and this is something I did to make friends.
Offer a free 英会話テーブル at your local 公民館 on one of you days off. Set it up more like a free flow conversation table where people don’t have to use English. Maybe pick a topic or something and just let everyone go at it while you socialize a bit in Japanese.
Once you make some native friends your Japanese will improve exponentially with your friendships. Plus it will probably help keep you from going crazy from working at an 英会話 school
I went to Japanese Language School in the mornings and worked in Eikaiwa in the evenings.
RTK. Anki. Audio books. Real books. Push hard to the point where you can watch/listen for fun. You do not need a teacher, just a conversation partner.