August 1, 2007

My efforts for having friends:

Since I came here, I’ve tried to have friends. It seems easy, but it’s difficult in fact. It’s not only because of the language barrier. Even in Seika-cho, it took time for me to have friends. The main difference from Seika-cho and here, I can’t go to visit my friends easily. Even I didn’t have friends in Seika-cho, I could go to see my old friends. I’m a Kansai-jin, so I have many friends in Kansai area.

I have to do something for finding friends. The easiest way may be to find Japanese friends here. The second one is to utilise my Japanese and join the society here. If I were in London, it would be easier. Here there’re not so many Japanese as in London.

For a starter, I applied for a volunteer Japanese teacher for the International society. I received their reply email and the society asked me to come and arrange the Japanese class. I was half anxious because I had no experience to teach Japanese before, but the other half was very excited. I borrowed Japanese conversation text books at library and went to the society. However, the person in charge was absent because of illness. I know his illness isn’t his fault. What I am disappointed with is that he didn’t tell about the appointment with me to anyone of his colleagues, though I received my appointment email on the day before my coming. His colleague apologised to me for him and told me if I could come again, it’s better to call him before my coming. The next day, I sent an email to him and asked his health condition, and if he could arrange another appointment I would come. However, he didn’t reply. I should have called him, but I held back. Maybe I didn’t have enough confidence as a Japanese teacher.

As my second trial, I found a Japanese supermarket and found a job offer there. I applied it by email. I received their reply email that said:

“We are planning to interview you soon. Now our Internet doesn’t work well. So, we will call you.”

Since then, I’ve not received any call from the store. I may have needed to email or call them again, but I didn’t. I gave up using my Japanese and started to apply a job from newspaper.

I posted three positions. The first one is a receptionist at a hospital. As I described before, the customer service at the surgery was not good. I thought I could do it better than native speakers so I applied it. However, I was not asked to come to interview.

The second one is International Marketing Officer. “International” sounds a good chance for non-native speakers, doesn’t it? The last one is a nursery assistant. My friend told me I am suited to a nursery. The latter two, I posted application forms and am now waiting the replies.

In case I can’t get a job, I have searched something I can do.

There’s a language exchange program. If I can find a partner who is wishing to learn Japanese, I can learn English in exchange. However, I’m not brave enough to post my information to the web site, so I’m waiting someone’s posting for searching a Japanese.

Also I check some courses to learn here. I looked at the course “Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults”. The course from August and September has already been full. If I will take this course, I need to wait till November.

I also check local community information. I’ve got most of information from netsurfing. I will try not to be swallowed in information. I am wishing to have friends soon.