I’m taking on a new job at an Eikaiwa where I have to interview prospective kids students. I’ll speak to the kids in English, naturally, but be expected to communicate to the parents in Japanese. I also need to speak to customers more generally – rescheduling lessons, etc.
I believe my Japanese has been somewhat overestimated, although I did pass a written test involving Keigo. I’m very well versed in the Genki textbooks, but beyond that, aside from my vocabulary (which is quite extended), my Japanese is pretty sketchy.
In other words, I’m going to have to level up pretty radically.
I’ve searched for some courses, but I can’t find anything really fitting.
Does anyone have any advice?
(Sorry if this is too Japanese language-y, but just customer service advice in general would be nice.)
10 comments
Sounds like you are already being reamed. You will be doing two jobs for the price of one. You can say goodbye to breaks and hello to unpaid OT!
What advice would you give a student who’s in over their heads in an all English work place?
Get a private teacher and shell out for some private lessons.
Can’t speak for every eikaiwa, but I imagine there will be some sort of training or shadowing, so that’s a good place to start. Learn what information you need to be communicating and what questions people typically ask. If your concerned about your language ability, taking some classes is obviously the way to go, and private lessons are usually pretty good if there’s something specific you need to practice.
Rescheduling lessons and the like are usually pretty easy and shouldn’t be too hard if your Japanese is good enough that your company expects you to use it. Names, classes, dates, and so on are something you should be able to manage fine.
Just remember self-deprecation is key to success in Japanese business culture.
My only advice is that when you’re 1/2 decent in Japanese, you can speak ‘English’ to people and they will understand it. It’s an art.
I always spoke to parents in English and they could understand it. The trick is to stick to short, canned sentences that you know will convert to Japanese and stick to words that you know a Japanese speaker will know. Also make sure you use an active voice.
Watching my mum fluff around with long, confusing sentences is painful because she uses a passive voice, lotsa idioms and lotsa sarcasm. You just need to be short, genki and direct. Anything more complex can be handled by the admin staff. Parents/kids just wanna meet you and say hi!
Sounds like you’re being screwed. If you don’t speak Japanese well then honestly you shouldn’t be explaining in Japanese. If you speak slowly and clearly, using simple English it would probably be better.
If it’s non-negotiable it would be better to see how another teacher does it, get some sort of basic script and try to remember it best you can.
A few here say your employer is taking advantage of you. You ought to be paid a premium for handling customer service on top of giving lessons. Or at least, providing you with language training.
I’m in the same situation because I work at a small school with no front office staff. There are only two teachers at my school and I run one location and the other teacher (the owner) runs the other. The owners wife communicates with the parents through messages and then tells me when the kids are coming in for kengakus and taikens.
My Japanese is pretty average and while I speak a lot of Japanese at home, my keigo is pretty bad.
Use a bit of charm and don’t make too big of a deal about your Japanese ability.
If they have further questions I tell them to inquire via email.
My first priority is the children for kengakus. If the children don’t feel good about their English, they won’t join.
Lots of praise to the child and to the parent about their English.
Everyone is learning so don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Use English if you can too!
I work in actual customer service with Japanese customers in an actual Japanese environment unrelated to teaching (but I’ve done ALT and Kinder in the past) and all I can really say is that you only really need to be able to do your teaching job well enough.
Learn some basic keigo like です ます いただく いたす and some basic 専用語 related to your field and as long as you are punctual most Japanese will be perfectly happy to work with you.
What you want are a few hours of lessons targeting specific situations.
Try this school: [https://www.nichibei.ac.jp/jli/](https://www.nichibei.ac.jp/jli/)
Explain your use case, they can help. It’s an excellent school that will work with you on what you need. One of the best interpreters / translators I’ve ever known studied with these guys for a bit – and he was a professor at a very famous university teaching interpreting, and he now interprets for the UN, IMF, World Bank etc.
My Japanese is *really really* good, but when I changed jobs and had to do more formal presentations in Japanese to Very Important People, I worked with these guys for three months to work specifically on that, and it was fantastic. Highly recommended. I’d recommend the private lessons, since they can really tailor the lesson to your use-case.
I suspect that a couple of lessons a month would be sufficient.
And these lessons will be useful literally for the rest of your career in Japan. Well worth the time and money spent. Want to learn good phrases on the phone? Want to learn how to ask questions politely? Want to learn how to ask for people or how to reply when people ask you things?
It’s not like these situations will only come up at work.
Good luck!