Well there's been a sort of breakthrough on the employment front. About a month ago I had a phone interview with a company in Kofu called Unitas. After not hearing from them for a week after that I emailed them to be told that the person who had interviewed me had finished their contract and left the country. I've been emailing them on and off over the past month without really hearing much back, so I called them this past Monday to see what I could find out. They asked if I wanted to interview on Tuesday, so the next day I took the train two stops west and found their office.
It went fairly well and about half way through the woman doing the interview said the principal of the conversation school was going to come in and sit in on the interview. No sooner had she said it than he came in. They spoke to each other in Japanese for a while, but were speaking too quickly for me to really understand everything. However, I did get the impression that they liked me but might not actually be able to hire anyone new. It turned out that the Board of Education here is looking for an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) for one of the public schools and they asked Unitas to find someone so they requested that I come back on Thursday and teach a demo lesson to see if they wanted me for that. The lesson was to be for seven or eight year old kids, be 20 minutes long, and focus on colors but also use animals.
It went pretty well. After I finished the three people I presented it to began to discuss me in front of me in Japanese. The first words said after it was over were tanoshi sensei which means fun teacher, but again it was too fast for me to really follow all of it. However, it was clear from what I could make out that they liked me but probably wouldn't have a spot for me. No sooner had I gotten back before I received a call saying that they wanted to hire me, but it turned out not to be as straightforward as they had made it sound. After I got back to their office they told me that the Board of Education had made the offer to several companies in the region and they had all put candidates forward. Unitas doesn't want me for the ALT position but they did offer me the job of the person they put forward should he or she be selected.
So on the up side, I received my first job offer today. On the down side, the job I was offered may or may not actually be available. The BoE makes its decision on the 13th, so I should know around then.
Guess that's all for now.
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