21. Teaching English in Japan - my origin story

Hello, Patrick Sherriff here for freetalktefl.substack.com.

I'm going to tell you a little story about how we ended up in Japan and teaching English.

Back in the day, 2007, I was living with my family in the UK, in Derby.

I was working for a local newspaper.

My wife was working for a local Japanese company.

and we were just basically making ends meet but we had two daughters and my mother-in-law to look after and we thought how on earth can we make a go of this and we didn't really see much of a future staying in newspapers and the car business we wanted to make a change and

You know, both a good point and a bad point, property was very expensive in England, which meant that we couldn't really see ourselves buying a property.

We thought about doing a B&B or some kind of a business, something different that we could work for ourselves.

We even looked into that fairly seriously, but eventually realised there was no way that we could get a mortgage and we'd just be swapping one meagre existence for another.

What could we do?

Well, the only assets that we really had were in the house, a semi-detached house.

We still owed, I don't know, what was it, 20 years of mortgage on it, but because of the rising house prices and the increasing pound or decreasing yen,

We actually had a bit of, you know, if we could sell our semi-detached, we'd actually have quite a small nest egg that we could use.

We were younger then and perhaps stupider, which is a necessary requirement if you want to do something crazy.

So we did, we sold up in England and with the

With the profits from a rising property market and increasing favorable exchange rates, we were able to outright buy a Showa era house here in Abiko, which is in Chiba on the outskirts of Tokyo

Tokyo area, Kanto.

So, yeah, so we were able to do that, which is just as well because nobody would lend us a mortgage.

We had to do it all by ourselves.

And we did.

So we swapped an indebted existence in Britain with two jobs for a rather uncertain future in Japan with no job

but a paid off house, yes a worn out old house that nobody would lend us money on but a house all the same, a roof over our heads and that was important because it gave us the ability to take a chance because in the back of our mind we thought well I mean the fallback position was if we don't make a go of this I can always get a job in Tokyo

We purposely bought, the house we got was like 20 minutes walk from the station so commutable, not a great location maybe you'd think for an English school.

However, there was an elementary school about 200 meters away.

So there was an obvious source of customers there.

Yeah, things have worked out very well.

It took a long time and it was touch and go for the first, I'd say two years, certainly the first year.

There was a time when we were down to like, I don't know, less than 100,000 yen in the bank, much less.

I think a couple of man, maybe like 30,000 yen was left in the bank.

That's all we had at our lowest level.

But we were able to keep going.

I borrowed a little bit of money from my dad.

Not a lot, like 100,000 yen, just to make it through that month.

and things started to pick up and so anyway you don't want to hear about all of that but just to say that you know when you start a business there isn't a cash flow there isn't any money coming in the only thing you can do is cut your expenses I think I became like a monk for about three months didn't have a car couldn't even afford bicycles I stopped drinking completely for three months we ate rice and

Didn't eat out.

You know, we were really on lowest of the low expenditure.

But anyway, that was 16 years ago.

Fortuitous things happened though.

NOVA went bust.

Suddenly there were people looking for lessons.

and I guess we were just in the right place at the right time things started to pick up and after a couple of months we started to get a cash flow coming in and I think it took us one year before we were able to buy bicycles and another two years I think and then we were able to buy a second-hand car and things went on from there

Yeah, so, yeah, I guess, why am I telling you all this stuff?

Just to say that it's a long journey, but a possible one, and it's something that you can do.

You know, when we came here I was, what, 30, 35?

Ready for a change, but still young, young enough to put in the extra energy that you need, the sweat equity, to take the place of lack of money.

But things worked out anyway and you know six years on we were ready to move out of this house move the business out of this house because as I wrote about in the last blog post we'd sort of reached a maximum capacity

for the neighborhoods, you know, there were no car places, places for students to park, we were not close enough to a station to get people, commuters coming back to pop in, so it meant we were really rooted in the neighborhood, which is good, good for security, you know, we taught all the neighbors, kids and the local school, as I say, but it was kind of limiting and that was all we had and so

You know, there was a natural, the natural growth area was just a couple of students a year, really.

Maybe more, but you know, it was hard to see us ever expanding rapidly or doing something different with our lives.

And, you know, we are in a residential area.

There's only so much business we can do.

We can't be teaching too late at night with cars coming and going.

And, you know, the more popular we'd get, the more unpopular we'd get with the neighbours.

It wasn't really their fault, the neighbours' fault that we had a thriving business.

So, yeah, there came a time when it was time to move on.

And, yeah, that time came after about six or seven years, I think, of working here.

perhaps a bit slower than most people.

I think most people get to this point maybe in two or three years maybe when you outgrow your home office.

Anyway, that's where we found ourselves and I'm going to talk about that next week, about how we thought about where to go next and how to do it and do we rent or do we buy

This might be useful for you if you find yourself in the same situation, or you're thinking, what's the progression?

I guess that's one of the hardest things, actually, when you teach for yourself, or any kind of self-employment.

It's hard to see a promotion prospect, or how you can improve.

If you're working for a company, there's usually an obvious

way up the greasy ladder so that you can see yourself as the head of the department or whatever in the future when you're self-employed there isn't that path for you or at least there's no obvious path if you want to do more or do something different you have to figure out how you're going to do it so that's part of the stress but also part of the enjoyment of being self-employed anyway that's what i'll talk about next week

As you know every Monday there's a free lesson and every Wednesday is the newsletter and every Friday is this, what do you call it, podcast where I just talk about what's going on and maybe get behind the Bulletin which comes out on Wednesday.

Please leave a comment if you can.

I have finally turned on the comments and it's really nice to hear from you.

It's nice that I'm not just speaking into a void.

So even just a little like is much appreciated.

And if you've got anything that you'd like me to talk about let me know in the comments.

I'll see what I can do.

OK.

Have a good week.

Enjoy your weekend.

Don't work too hard.