I'm back!! Sorry I was gone for so long, but now I am back and ready to rock your pathetic world with all my pathetic words, and occassionally my pathetic pictures or videos. To maintain the illusion I give a crap I suppose I should ask you all how are you. Be warned though, this is simply polite nicities and by no means requires any form of answer. And now that you ask, I am good!
Here is something to take your mind off the myriad of problems you undoubtedly have that I couldn't even begin to contemplate...
Holy crap! I am currently in the process of looking for a place to live in Tokyo and the numbers are bloody astronomical. I have lived in Dublin before so I am used to exorbitant prices but it is the initial outlay that makes Tokyo so expensive. The rents themselves, in the area I am looking at, are comparible to Dublin city centre but there is one deplorable factor extra in the Japanese market. Key. Money.
Key money is a custom that originated after WW2 when a lot of properties were destroyed and tenants paid their landlord this extra bit to help them rebuild their ruined properties. However for some reason it is a practice still continued today. Key monwey is basically a 'gift' of typically two months rent that one must give to the landlord upon moving in. A gift one can not refuse to give, is not a gift, it is a levy. Japanese people, because of their sheep like mentality, dont seem to care about this blatant rip off and simply say shouganai, which means 'It can't be helped'. This is a phrase the japanese often use when they are basically taking it up the ass and havent got the cajones to fight against something, which is pretty much all the time. That is one of the things I love the most about my girlfriend, when she knows she is in the right she has no qualms about speaking out. It is endlessly frustrating to be a foreigner here and not be able to speak up against things that are just plain wrong.
Anyway, back to renting. Other initial costs that one is typically looking at is 2 months rent deposit (heard horror stories about how hard this is to get back), 1 month agents fee, probably one month rent up front as well as insurance and monthly apartment maintenence cost. All this adds up fast and you are looking at an initial outlay of about 6 times your monthly rent (and all this only includes 1 actual months rent!) So, for example, on a Eur1000 place, you must pay c.6000 up front!!
And then there is a further 1 months "renewal fee". If one is kind enough to renew their lease with the landlord, saving them the hassle of having to find new tenants, they thank you by charging you an extra months rent! So, with all these costs collated this translates to (minus the deposit) a realistic 1,500 pm for a years rent! 50% more than the advertised cost.
Now, there are a number of places being quite Jack saavy about this and realising that a lot of people resent all these charges and so are incorporating these into the monthly rent and advertising "No key money" etc. Perhaps surprisingly, I have no problem with this as it is displaying the actual cost up front instead of trying to bone you with hidden costs.
For those of you out there thinking, "just live with it, it is the way it is done over there, Tokyo is an expensive place", well perhaps you are right. I may well just have to go with it. We will see however how it turns out. For now, I have a lot of serious thinking to do. Plus for those of you thinking of visiting me in Tokyo, don't worry, I may not charge you the full two months key money...
For the next month or so I am still a teacher. Though it is a matter of debate exactly what my teacher role is as specified in this school pertaining to myself as a JET Programme participant, I think the word 'teacher' is not too presumptuous for now. Most of us can recall a good teacher we had during our school days and I also think most would agree that at least a part of why we classify these people we have in mind as good teachers is that we actually learned from them. We can also recall the bad teachers. It is not an easy thing to pass on knowledge and not everyone is comfortable doing it. I freely admit I am still learning this process but strive to do my best.
When I was in university I studied Theoretical Physics for 4 long years. I had good lecturers and bad ones, but the difference between these individuals and teachers in school, is that no one seemed willing to stand up and be counted as saying 'He is a bad teacher', if the case was so. An example is a man who taught a course to my class and I about something to do with Electricity & Magnetism. Now before taking this course I was well aware of this particular lecturers reputation; he is a genius, brings in so much money to the university, a brilliant man. I know he was all these things, but one thing I can say with confidence that he is not is, he is not a good teacher. In fact, he is not even an average teacher, this man was a terrible teacher. You see, things were so easy for him in this area that he couldn't seem to fathom why other failed to grasp these 'simple' concepts. It was a theoretical class and he frequently would jump forward 2,3,4 or more steps in a calculation, stating simply that they were 'self evident'. They weren't to me or the poor souls either side of me who I questioned about them. This man was a great physicist but a lousy lecturer.
One of the 20th Century's greatest physicists is Richard Feynman. He is a Noble Prize recipient and well known to the majority of physics university students as, in some sense at least, he literally wrote the book about undergrad physics. However, in my opinion, the reason he is so highly regarded is that he could impart this knowledge on the lay person. He was a fantastic teacher and can explain such complicated concepts succinctly with grace and ease. Don't believe me? Check him out for yourself:
