Day 17 - Interviews in Japan and expensive clothes!!

Well, I'm past the 2 week point now and I'm definitely starting to feel better in general.
Those two interviews are now over and Berlitz has invited me back for the 2nd(last) interview this Thursday.

The interview process here is very different to what I'm used to back home in the UK. You are sat in a room with at least 5-6 other applicants, you're given forms to fill in and are given some kind of questionnaire/task to complete.
They apparently use these to filter out the undesirables (people who obviously don't understand English too well,) after which each applicant will be taken into a separate room where you will be interviewed privately.
They ask relatively normal questions; probably things that you won't feel comfortable sharing with everybody else, like visa status and past education etc.

In the Berlitz interview I was the only person without a degree and I had no previous teaching experience.
I was actually surprised they invited me back for another interview knowing this, but I do think my location helped a lot as I had applied for a job at the Shinjuku branch and my nearest train station is on the Seibu Shinjuku line, which is about 4 stops from Shinjuku.

The Gaba interview was similar, in that we all sat in a room whilst we were told everything about the company and had to fill out forms etc. then taken to a separate room to be interviewed. It was a lot shorter and I'm not sure I did so well in this interview. The 'task' you're given is quite difficult unless you studied English at university or something and you're VERY good at grammar.
You have to give examples of past tense, present tense and future tense and tense perfect (past and future) for the word 'Teach.'  My English isn't bad but I am pretty sure I failed this part, as I'm sure most people probably would!

I also had to give an example of a 40 minute lesson plan for a fictional client based on his hobbies and what he wants out of an English lesson. This was quite straightforward, but I kept everything short and used bullet points. I noticed a lot of people write up entire essays which is okay, I guess, but from my experience of teaching (so far) the more convoluted your explanation of something is the more difficult it is for your student to understand.

Anyway, all in all it wasn't as daunting and scary as I initially thought it would be.

Not sure if I'd mentioned it already but, about a week ago I bought a pair of really nice shorts from GAP which set me back about 8,000 yen.. now, that's a lot of bloody money for a pair of shorts! but what has really got my goat about these shorts, is they can only be dry cleaned!!? I've bought a few items of clothing since being here and even in places like Uniqlo things are quite expensive, at least compared to what I'm used to.
I guess I should just get used to this. ^^

At the weekend I went out with Take again. We went to Ebisu and drank in a pub called ''What's the Dickens'' which was nice, and they had live music! That's another thing that's expensive here, the alcohol! I should stop moaning, lol!

I should really keep track of everything that happens on a day to day basis, 'cause I'm sure I leave a lot out..

Oh, I don't know if he'll be okay with me mentioning it here, but me and Take have started dating. He's a lovely guy!

Okay, enough rambling and I'm hungry... (I need to stop using ellipsis!)