Nagoya International Junior High School/Nagoya International Senior High School

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		Getting Settled in Nagoya Living Cheaply in Japan Social Conventions, Etiquette and Culture Mission Vision Philosophy Objectives Frontier Spirit Profile of Our School The Traits of an Ideal Teacher at Our School Teaching English in the Junior High School Teaching in the Senior High School Faculty Duties Permitted Leaves and Absences Classroom Management Suggestions Creating a Positive School Environment The Teacher Appraisal Process The Components of Professional Practice Student Discipline Teaching Essential Study Skills Character and Leadership Education Homework Policies Teaching English as a Second Language Internet Project Based Learning Information Technology Literacy Standards Conclusion Foreign Faculty Oral Testing Rubric Homeroom Duties

With a population exceeding two million, Nagoya is the fourth largest city in Japan. Its central location and easy access to destinations all over the country make this a convenient place to work and live. The roads are broad, the pace is relaxed, salaries are the second highest in Japan and the cost of living is moderate in comparison to other cities.

Nagoya is not a popular tourist destination. The city was almost completely leveled during World War II. This past year, however, Aichi Prefecture hosted the World Expo, which brought millions of visitors to this area for the first time. The Expo brought many improvements to the city’s infrastructure. The City built new subway stations and completed a circle line that reduces commuting time for many passengers, and it also built a new airport. Nearly all road signs, subway signs and such are in both Japanese and English.

The city offers all of the amenities one finds in very large cities, including very good museums, excellent restaurants, a vibrant nightlife, ample parks and a thriving downtown shopping area. The public transportation system is excellent.
The city also offers plenty of worthwhile sightseeing destinations, including Atsuta Shrine, the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Toyota Automobile Museum and Nagoya Castle.

Though Nagoya is a very industrial town with an active port, it has close connections with the countryside, which is only a short distance away. The city is conservative politically, but the people are quite friendly and make foreign residents feel welcome.

• Finding Housing

he first order of business after arriving is finding appropriate housing. Teachers should expect to pay between ¥50,000 and ¥80,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.

Teachers who speak Japanese may wish simply to go to a neighborhood where they would like to live and consult with a local real estate agent. Many of our teachers prefer to live close to school in order to avoid having to commute from a distance. Our school’s neighborhood is conveniently located, has subway service and has abundant affordable housing.

Teachers who do not speak Japanese may wish to call Will Keating at Interlink. This company specializes in helping foreigners relocate to Japan. They will pick you up at the airport, help you find apartments that require no payment of key money and can even lease furniture to you. They will also help you get your registration card and personal seal, help you open a bank account and help you get a phone and utility services. Many of our teachers have used this service and have been satisfied with the results. You can visit their website at www.interlinknagoya.com.

Others may wish to negotiate directly with Freebell, an apartment complex that houses foreigners. There is no key money, deposit or realtor fee required and teachers can choose between furnished or unfurnished apartments. English cable channels are available and high speed Internet access is available. The one downside is that with renters who are almost all young and foreign, the place has the reputation as being something of a glorified fraternity house. You can visit their website at www.freebell.co.jp.

Nagoya University of Commerce and Business will serve as guarantor for your lease if this is required. If it does so, it will require a deposit of one month’s rent. The university will refund this in full if the apartment is not damaged at the end of the lease period.

• Furnishing Your Apartment

There are various ways to go about this. You can elect to rent a furnished apartment and have done with the matter. You can lease furniture from a service like Interlink. Or you can furnish it yourself.

Near our school, there are a number of used furniture shops. Many of our teachers buy only the essentials new—futon, a few plates, glasses and utensils. They then take their time accumulating cheap furniture as it becomes available.

One good way to furnish your apartment is to check the Japanzine magazine (we have copies at school) for announcements of “sayonara” sales in the area. When foreign residents move home at the end of their stint here, they tend to unload all of their furniture in a hurry at very reasonable prices.

For smaller items like kitchenware, check out the one hundred yen shops. There are several of these shops near our school.

• Introducing Yourself to Your Neighbors

It is customary among Japanese for newcomers to introduce themselves to neighbors and take them a bowl of hot noodles. You can dispense with the noodles, but it is polite to say a brief hello to your nearest neighbors, tell them where you come from, where you will be working and how long you plan to be here.

• Getting a Personal Seal

Go to a shop specializing in personal seals and get one with your last name written in katakana script. This seal will serve in lieu of your signature for all official documents.

• Getting Your “Gaijin” Card

Every new foreign resident must obtain an alien registration card. To get this card, you must go to the ward office of the ward in which you live. These are usually conveniently located near subway stops. Take an official application for the registration card and fill it out. You will need two photographs (4.5 by 3.5 cm) of your face and neck only. You must look directly into the lens. There is a photograph machine in front of the Seiyu store, near the school, where you can obtain these photos. You will also need to show the authorities your passport.

You must apply for the card within 90 days of arrival. Once you receive it, you must carry it on your person at all times that you are outside of your residence. You must surrender the card when you return to your country for good. It behooves you to do this right away since there are many things you cannot do without your car. You cannot open a bank account, rent a video and so forth.

Once you get your card, register your personal seal at the appropriate window in the same ward office.

• Opening a Bank Account

Once you have your card, open a bank account. Aichi Bank has an office near our school, but many people prefer UFJ because they have more branches around town. If you want to have both a U.S. dollar denominated account and a Japanese yen denominated account so that you play the exchange rates or easily wire money back to the states, you should open accounts with City Bank in Sakae. Once you have an account, notify the school of your wire transfer account number so that we can wire your salary to you electronically every month.

• Getting a Phone

If you have a tendency to chatter away on the phone, you might want to consider getting a landline rather than a mobile phone. The latter are great in terms of convenience, but costs mount quickly if you are a phone junky. There are shops near the school where you can sign a mobile phone contract, though you will need to go there with a friend who can speak Japanese if you cannot.

Many teachers recommend Yahoo BB for Internet long distance and Internet access. The connection is clean and fast and the phone calls (especially to the USA) are very cheap. If you call someone anywhere in Japan who also has Yahoo BB, the phone call is free.

To get landline service, call NTT. They provide English language customer service in the menu of options.

• National Health Insurance

Most teachers choose to enroll in the National Health Insurance Plan (Kokumin Hoken). To do so, you should go to your Ward Office and apply. You will need your Alien Registration Card.
Please be advised that if you do not enroll but decide to enroll a year later or two years later, you will have to back-pay premiums until the time that you entered the country.

• NHK

In Japan there is a law on the books that requires people who own a television to pay \2000 a month for access to the NHK channel (national public television). You are supposed to pay, even if you do not watch the channel.
In theory, though, you can refuse to make this payment because there is no enforcement mechanism in the law. The NHK representative will merely harass you by knocking frequently on your door.

• The International Center

The Nagoya International Center is a place that provides a variety of services for foreigners living here. There is a lending library of English books, for instance, and bulletin boards where you can find of variety of notices—people looking for English teachers and friends, people wanting to sell household goods and so forth. The Center also holds a “Foreign Artists Exhibition” each November. The Center is located near the subway stop of the same name.

• Driver License

Most foreign teachers choose not to drive in Nagoya because it is very expensive to maintain a car here and because most desirable destinations are accessible by efficient public transportation.
If you choose to drive, you can use an International Driver’s License for the first six months. After your first six months here, Americans and Canadians are required to take a driver’s test and obtain a Japanese license. Citizens from countries where drivers drive on the left hand side of the road do not have to take the test.

Please be advised that bi-annual automobile inspections are very expensive (they are actually a kind of tax). Also you will have to prove that you have a parking space in order to purchase a car.

• Recycling

Nagoya is very strict about recycling garbage. You must buy designated red, blue and green plastic bags at the supermarket. Red is for burnable trash, mainly kitchen waste. Blue is for recyclables—plastic (pet) bottles, steel cans, aluminum cans and food trays, all of which must be disposed of separately. Glass, which is also recyclable, is placed in a blue bin placed at the curbside on the day that blue bags are collected. The green bags are for non-burnable, non-recyclable items like plastic wrap, Styrofoam, clothes hangers and such. Inquire of your neighbors when you introduce yourself to them or ask your landlord where the designated collection spot is and on which days you throw out the different types of bags. If you want to throw out items larger than the bags—such as a small refrigerator—you need to call and arrange to have it picked up. There is a fee for this service.

• Driver’s License

Please be advised that bi-annual automobile inspections are very expensive (they are actually a kind of tax). Also you will have to prove that you have a parking space in order to purchase a car.

• Miscellaneous

·	You can find a good selection of new English-language books at Maruzen, halfway between Sakae and Fushimi stations.
·	Supermarkets with a wide selection of Western foods include Meidiya in Sakae, Pare Marche in Ikeshita and Frante in Kakuouzan.
·	You can pay almost all of your bills for utilities and various services at most convenience stores.
·	If you order cable television (Star Cat) or satellite television (Sky Perfect), you can choose to watch most programs and movies in either Japanese or English.
·	New teachers will not have to pay income tax for their first two years. After that, income tax is phased in. Teachers will have to pay the full tax at the end of their fourth year here.
·	A five percent consumption tax is levied on all goods and services. The rate will likely increase in the near future.
·	The electrical current is 100v, 60Hz AC in Nagoya. Japanese plugs have two flat pins and, although they are identical to North American plugs, you’ll need a transformer to use any foreign appliances safely.
·	Most Japanese washing machines use only cold water. Driers are rare. The vast majority of Japanese hang their clothes on the verandah to dry.
·	Although Japan uses the Western calendar, it also uses its own imperial system. This calculates the number of the year from the accession of the last Emperor. The current Emperor, Akihito, began ruling in 1989. Thus, 2006 is Heisei (the era name) 18.
·	All of Japan is nine hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. Japan is fourteen hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time in the United States. There is no daylight saving time in Japan.
·	The most notable exceptions to Japan's use of the metric system are is its measurement of rooms (by number of straw mats that fit in them) and its measurement of real estate (one unit or "tsubo"is 3.3 square meters).
·	Unlike in the West ATMs are not always 24 hours. Be aware that you can often only withdraw money from your bank, or an ATM that specifically displays your bank's name. Many convenience stores have ATMs, but again be aware that they may not service your particular bank. You will incur no charge at your bank during business hours but after that you will be charged a small transaction fee (about 105 yen). The same fee applies at all times at convenience stores.
·	Note that 3G phones are usable abroad, but normal Japanese phones are not. Also, when you use your phone to send mail, it can be a little complex. If you are on the same network you can mail to the phone number, if not you must use the phone's mail address. Older people in Japan associate tattoos with Yakuza and other criminals. If you show them in public you may well be on the end of some stares. Generally, at school they are frowned upon and you should cover them up. The same applies to nose rings and excessive numbers of ear rings.
·	Japanese society and companies still very much push the teamwork ethic. In fact, they push it to the point where individuality is often frowned upon. As such, you will see that everyone dresses and acts the same. To westerners this might appear odd. Here, though, "The nail that sticks out will get hammered back in". This is not always the case, but in general Japan can seem a very homogenous place.
·	It's illegal to cross streets against the pedestrian stop/go signal. Most Japanese wait patiently until the light changes, even if there are no cars around.
·	In Japan, addresses seem to make little sense. As such, getting an address from someone and then finding the place is more a dream than a reality. Also, asking people will often be no help at all as they often do not know. Using a map of town is easy in the first few months, and then using landmarks is a good idea. It's also a good idea to learn simple directions, so that if you take a taxi home at night you don't have to get out at the nearest landmark to your home.
·	Japanese style is to use your family name. At school, you will be called by your first name followed by sensei (teacher). For example, Chris-sensei. The foreign teachers call students by their first name, but you should be aware that Japanese teachers call students by their family name. Make sure you are talking about the same students.
·	Japan, as everyone will tell you, has four distinct seasons. In Nagoya, winters are very cold and sometimes there is snow. Spring is very pleasant (and the time of cherry blossoms) but rapidly gives way to a very hot and extremely humid summer. Umbrellas are essential, especially during the rainy season in June. Autumn is pleasant again, although it is typhoon season in Nagoya, which often results in lost days. Incidentally, the weather forecast is pretty reliable, be it from TV or your cell phone.
·	Small earthquakes are fairly common, but the area around Nagoya is a potential hot-zone for the big one that Japan is expecting. You should be aware of what to do in an earthquake, and where to go from your apartment should a big one strike. It's wise to pack an emergency bag with some money, your passport, a battery-operated radio, a flashlight and some water and food. Put it in the entrance foyer to your apartment.
·	There are plenty of nice areas in Nagoya to live. The more central you are, the more expensive it will be. However, consider the center to be Sakae. You can find a place within 10 minutes of Sakae (by bike) without too much hassle or expense.
·	Japan is region 2 DVD and NTSC TV. This is a mix of America (TV) and Europe (DVD region). However, you can buy region free DVD players, so feel free to bring DVDs. Videos will only work from America. There are plenty of rental shops here.

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