Shakai Hoken Card

Is everyone enjoying there break? I’m doing Ok i guess! I have got a really bad cough that just doesn’t want to go away.  But not to worry I have got my shakai hoken card. Don’t forget to take it with you whereever you go in Japan. I just walked into a clinic in Tokyo and preceeded to the consultation room. Shakai Hoken is so much better than the travel insurance I used to have. I had to pay it all up front and then wait for the company to process it, and after all the waiting they always deducted some kind of fee. Some reception staff even used to give me a lecture about not having shakai hoken.

Anyway all is well, the doctor spoke beautiful english and now I have a lot of medicine!

Summer Vacation

Summer vacation is finally here! I just hope that the weather is good for the next 13 days. I am going to Tokyo from thursday. It should be cool. Anyway I have to make the most of the break because 5 of the days are fixed paid annual leave days. What does this mean?

At ECC I have 20 annual leave days. 10 ALPs and ECC fixes another 10 days and basically the business shuts down and everyone has these days off. There are five days in summer and winter. A lot of teachers are happy with this system. Me personally I would like to use my annual leave days when I want to.  The ECC breaks are typically in peak season.

So just in case you didn’t know you the following days are designated as fixed ALPs (unless they are your regular day off).  Thursday (August 7), Friday (August 8), Saturday (August 9), Sunday (August 10), Monday (August 11), Tuesday (August 12), Wednesday (August 13) and Sunday (August 17).

The remaining days are company designated holidays. 

The Japanese school management staff who are not part-time also enjoy a paid 13 day summer vacation!

Casual Week

One of the best things about the last teaching week before the summer break is that a lot of the smaller schools have casual week. So far in the past week I have had blue day, white day, polo shirts today and red tomorrow. Unfortunately one of my schools didn’t celebrate casual week this year! The bigger schools are worried about looking unprofessional. 

A few years ago the staff at Tennoji Station Plaza school had a yukata day. You would never believe this but the management of the building were really annoyed, and went as far as too say that ECC is an educational institution and that wearing yukata was far from appropriate. Does this mean that students who occasionally wear yukata or kimono should be asked to quit and have their tuition refunded? Who knows, but one thing is for certain it would be nice if the building management maintained the building temperature a little better- freezing in summer and boiling in winter.

Enjoy the summer!

Summer break Coming Soon!

The summer break is nearly here. I’ve only got three shifts left, and better still wednesday is an adjustment day. So that means only 6 kids’ lessons left!