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July 12, 2008
Cost of Living
Hello again. One huge difference between my current job versus the last one is that is more representative of a typical Japanese workplace. At least it's typical in the sense that I spend more time at work but less time actually working. Ironically, I do have Internet access at work and am able to post but for the most part I keep myself busy during time that I'm not actually teaching classes, which I think has made most of the teachers happy. Despite the incident that I mentioned in the last post things have gone fairly well. For a multitude of reasons teaching is not a career for me, but at the same time I enjoy what I'm doing right now and I've been able to improve my Japanese (in terms of speaking, listening, reading, and writing...somewhat) much more than my previous job. On top of all of that, today is the first day of my summer vacation! This is double what I had before, so I'm looking forward to a long break.
One thing that has been a pain since starting this new job is the cost factor. The salary I took on was less than what I was earning before, and while I have taken steps to deal with it, current events haven't helped much. Living costs have gone up this year in Japan, as they have everywhere else in the world. While I am lucky in that the gasoline price spikes don't affect me directly, the cost of food has gone up, and that has affected everyone. In fact, if I compare myself to about 6 months ago, I am working more, spending more, and earning less than what I used to.
When I think about it that way it makes me wonder why I went to the trouble to change jobs in the first place. The one thing that keeps me going is what I mentioned above about Japanese usage. In a broader sense, it means that I'm able to develop skills that will be more useful in the future. A few years ago for Christmas I received a financial advice book from my mother which was fairly popular at the time. I don't particularly recommend the book to anyone (which is why I'm not going to mention the name of the book here), but one thing the book did point out that I agree with wholeheartedly is that in the end, skills are more important than job security or seniority.
As a foreigner in Japan, I am arguably one of the more disposable commodities around. Not the most disposable (English ability is still a very valuable skill and I milk it for what it's worth), but I hardly enjoy the job security that the teachers at my school have. So with that in mind, I do the most to make the best of my situation and improve my lot in life. For the time being, that means studying Japanese. If I have any hope of doing proofreading or translating work in the near future, this is a must.
Posted by paul.koehler at July 12, 2008 1:40 AM