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| Shoko | Home | Work | |
Work
| Working in Japan has been good for me. Currently I am a freelance English teacher, translator, web designer, tour guide, and an occasional speech contest judge and tutor. Although I don't get paid, and it is all voluntary, supporting the local Kingdom Hall projects for Jehovah's Witnesses is definitely work too. |
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I've enjoyed teaching many Japanese, not just the English language, but also about a different culture. Not to say that the American way of living is any better or worse, but there are a lot of things we can learn from one another. |
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| One of the perks of this job is arranging tours in February to LA and San Diego, California. Since 1999, Tom's Tour has been a huge success. 1999's 13 members were all from Niigata. Shoko and I spent 10 days taking them around Southern California. |
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At Disneyland, there wasn't a big crowd and we didn't have to wait in any lines for more than 10-15 minutes. Who could take pictures with Tigger and Pooh, ride the Adventures of Indy Jones 3 times and Splash Mountain twice, and watch Honey I Shrunk the Audience 2 times, who could ask for anything more? |
| Off the coast of California you can see the whales en route to Baja de California, when we went whale watching, we could find four in the afternoon. The kids got soaked at Sea World's Shamu Show. We also petted the slimy rays, and fed the seagulls almost as much as we did the sealions, and dolphins. |  |
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Working as part of the Regional Building
Committee |
 But through it all, there are great friends. They continue to teach us how to do better work, keep our spirits up, and continue to humor us. |
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My work list in Japan- I first worked as an English instructor for the Britannica Company for about 5 years. For the past eight winters I have been working with Hokuetsu Shokan's LL Gakko in Niigata city. At their yearly speech contest, I try to find the most promising students of the year. Next, I give special training to the top winners individually, preparing them for the prefectural and national competitions. This year, we were able to place first at the Elementary level, and third at the Junior level in Niigata Prefecture. I also work with a few of the teachers for ECC. I'm the teacher's (Yoko's) teacher and the teacher's teacher's (Kaori's) teacher. I do translations and proof-readings. Kumiko and I have an e-mail student-teacher relationship. I send her articles in Japanese, she translates them into English and sends them back to me. I, in turn, correct them, and then send them back to her so she can learn from the corrections. We both appreciate the freedom to work together like this. Now I am concentrating on making Japanese-English web pages AND TRANSLATING. The computer market is booming in Japan, and more and more businesses are realizing the need to get onto the web. I also think there is a great need for bilingual pages, especially with the web being more than 70% English, while Japanese speakers comprise only about 1% the world's population If you are interested in an having us translate or proofread, in English or Japanese, or would like a bilingual homepage, please contact us.
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