June Cultural Salon and Hello Work

June 20, 2013

Does this photo have anything to do with this post? No.

On June 9^th I held my fourth Cultural Exchange Salon at the Tomiura Genki Club. The circumstances kind of sucked because we had to have it on a Sunday morning to match up everyone's schedules, so not only did I have to go to work on a day off, but I had to miss riding school that morning as well. The presentation however, was really interesting. It was actually done by a friend of mine who I met through a local international association. She's really awesome because she has traveled and lived in several different countries and learned something new in each place that she's been to. Not only that, but she uses these experiences in the work that she does now as she runs a yoga class and makes jewelry out of natural materials and handbags from textiles that she learned to make abroad.

If you're interested, you can check out her website here: http://www.ocao.biz/about-us/

Also my city blog post is here: http://civil.mboso-etoko.jp/news/detail.asp?id=1265&group=120&bk=-1

６月９日は４番目の文化交流サロンをとみうら元気クラブで行いました。みんなの都合がいいときは日曜日の朝しかなかったので乗馬学校から休まなきゃいけなくなったし、休みの日に仕事をやらなきゃいけなくったし、ちょっと大変な事情だった。でも、プレゼンはすごく面白かった。実はプレゼンをやった人は地域の国際交流協会で知り合った友達なんだ。その友達はいろんな国に行って、住んでいたことがあって、それぞれの新しい場所でなにか新しく学んでいて、私はその子を本当に尊敬している。それだけではなく、現在の仕事でヨガのレッスンとか自然な材料でジューリーつくりや海外で作り方を学んだ繊維株でかばんを作って売り上げのようなことで海外での経験を全部使っている。

もし、興味があればウェブサイトはこちらです：http://www.ocao.biz/about-us/

みんみんネットのブログはこちらです：http://civil.mboso-etoko.jp/news/detail.asp?id=1265&group=120&bk=-1

Afterward we all had a cup of chai and chatted for a little bit. The chai itself has its own special story because I actually had to go to Chiba city to purchase some. Since I was there over the weekend for riding anyway, I just decided to stop in at the Kaldi inside Ario next to the otaku mall in Soga. (I call this place the otaku mall because it literally just has remote control car race tracks, anime goods shops, game centers, and a movie theatre inside.) At first the only chai I could find was this powdered version that you just add milk to and heat up. But I wanted to have legitimate bags of chai, so after asking an employee I was directed to these tins of tea from France (French chai!? Whatever. As long as it tastes legit.) So I brought it to the event the next morning only to have a co-worker look at the tin and go, “you bought loose leaf!?” Shit. I love that other people can tell these things just by glancing at the box from across the room. I totally just assumed that it would be tea bags inside. Anyway we managed to find some tea pots with straining pour spouts so it all worked out in the end.

その後、雑談しながらチャイティーをいっぱい飲んだ。このチャイを買うには千葉市まで行けなくてはいけなかったのでちょっと特別なストリーがある。週末はもう乗馬クラブのためにもうそこにいたので蘇我のオタクモールの側にあるアリオの中のカルディーに寄ってた。（オタクモールはリモコン車走路、アニメ商品のお店、ゲーセン、と映画館しかないからその名を付けた。）当初は粉末のミルクを加えて暖めるだけのチャイしか見つけられなかった。でも、バッグに入っている本物のチャイが欲しくて、店員さんにきって見たら、フランスから（チャイが？フランスから！？まあいいや。味が本物であれば）の容器に入っているチャイへ誘導された。次の朝、イベント場に持っていたら、同じ職場の人が「っへ！ルースリーフを買ったの！？」やばい。なんで私が気づかないことを向こうから簡単に気づくの？マジで普通のバッグだと思っていた。結局、茶漉しを見つけて作ることができた。

There was also a bit of an issue trying to get the presentation to run, because it kept freezing on my computer, but that totally wasn't my fault! It turns out the file was huge so we had trouble running it on another computer as well. Luckily we got it up and running almost exactly on time for the start of the event.

Also, as I'm currently job searching myself, I want to talk a little bit about Hello Work. If you don't know, Hello Work is a government run program to help people find jobs. I had always thought of it as geared towards Japanese people only. However, two weeks ago, a huge packet was passed around the office stating that Hello Work needs to have equal opportunity employment, so they would be opening a window for foreign job seekers. In addition, a co-worker notified me that if you go to a local office, you can apply for jobs anywhere in the country! Up until now, I had assumed that you could only search for jobs locally.

So after finding out these two pieces of information, I decided to take a trip to their office two Fridays ago. As it turns out, the office is open the exact same hours as my office, so I had to wait until a Friday when I get off early from work. When I got there, I was informed that I could register myself as a job seeker, but the registration would only be for local positions. If I wanted to search for jobs in other cities/prefectures then I could use one of the computers to search, and then print out any jobs that I found. There was a 30 minute time limit on the computers, however, as there were only two other people using about 20 computers, no one came to kick me off when my time ran out. After printing out several interesting looking jobs, I was told that if I want to apply, I do have to register. I decided to hold off at the time though because I had come straight from work and was pretty starving.

As I said before, there are also consultation windows where you can get help in your job search. However, I'm not positive as to whether there are any English speakers available or not. In any case, if you're looking for a job in Japan you need to be able to speak Japanese well enough to at least be able to job search on your own anyway, so I suppose an English speaker isn't really necessary. If anyone else is job searching as well, I'd be interested to hear your comments, or if you have any questions about my experience at Hello Work then feel free to drop me a message below!