Mr. Steve Perkins Japan Interview

     

                                                      Mr. Steve Perkins Japan Interview

      Steve Perkins is a well liked Human Geography teacher at Roosevelt High School in Iowa. For a year, he wasn't teaching in the USA, instead an English teacher on the other side of the world for a two Japanese middle schools.

Steve Perkins obtained this opportunity by hearing about a Des Moines/Kofu(a district in Japan) exchange program. Through this program he would be teaching English to the middle-school students for a whole year.

"I never had actually a super amazing desire for Japan specifically, I mean I'm interested in traveling um I just wanted to uh have a quick change..."

He sent in his application for the job and got called in for an interview. His information got sent to the two middle-schools and he was accepted.

However, he did know living in Kofu would be difficult considering he did not have much experience speaking Japanese. However he did have assistance from an English-speaking woman for the duration of the trip.

He describes his first weeks in Japan not as hard, but weird. Mr.Steve Perkins had a tough time settling into the culture, but once he had a routine going, he started to mx in a lot of adventure into his day, which he says was always fun.

After school you could often find him trying new food at a restaurant, or going jogging through the country-side. Perkins says, "I just wanted to pick up as much about the culture as possible to be honest".

When I asked him how the people treated him he says, "For the most part they were curious as well they're like, in Kofu there weren't as much non-Japanese people so little kids would point and stare which was kind of funny, but otherwise they're all pretty nice people."

At the schools he would teach on a year-round schedule.

According to him none of the students there aren't really trouble makers and that they're really taught to conform. He liked this at first, but they really didn't express their personalities as much as American students do, so this could cause him some boring school-days.

Late into his months in Kofu he would start to go crazy because nobody really spoke English, meaning that he couldn't socialize as much as he'd like to.

 "I would be riding my bike and see someone with a shirt and say, 'Hey! your shirt looks pretty weird over there!' He wouldn't know what I said but I just NEEDED to speak English."

In joy but also sad, he headed back to America after his year was up. He expresses that he definitely had a good time and would like to visit again.

"To be honest more like the fun stuff and like the best that I brought back with me are the memories and experiences."