The Dark Side of ALT

I made a mistake.

I contracted with a private company who dispatches English teachers to schools in the middle of Japan. There have been substantial differences between this situation and the JET program, of which I was a member until August of this year. I am now located in Saku City, on the middle-east side of Nagano prefecture. While the location of this place is prime to get around Japan, there have been several hindrances with this company that prevent me from getting used to life here. And it's frustrating.

Most boards of education pay the same amount for English teachers, no matter where they come from. In JET, you get this base salary (minus insurance, pension, etc.), as well as flights to and from your location, and transportation fees, moving in money, etc. It's a good deal. Where I am now, the company receives the full of that base salary, tells the teacher to bear the transportation fees, and takes out some of the salary for profit. In the end it saves the board of education a lot of money, and the company is happy. But not necessarily a good deal for the teacher.

There are a few things that are particularly bugging me right now:
- Paying for transportation to training events
Being in Nagano, it takes the longest and costs the most for me to get to training (in Yorii, Saitama). The one day I went in August, I spent 8000 yen (~$80.00) to get there and back, only to spend the day listening to things I already knew.
- Jumping through hoops to get things done
In JET, I could just talk to my board of education, or even just the head teacher at my school if I needed to leave to go to the bank or the post office. Now, I need to call the company, who calls the board of ed., who calls the school, then repeat backwards. The reason this is done is because if I leave without permission before my time is done, the board of ed. will fight to withhold money from the company, and it becomes one big clusterf***. All over maybe 30 minutes where I'll be doing nothing anyway.
- Paid-holiday-screwed
With this company, I get school holidays off. Normally, this is good, as I'd get a ton for summer break. But, since I started in August, I don't get them. Quick background - teachers usually get 20 days paid leave. Hence, I should get 10, since its a half year. However, with the current plan, I get around 7. Since it would be better for me to have 10 and be able to choose, I asked the company about this, to which they responded, "You can't have paid holiday with that plan for 6 months, and you only get to choose 5 of those days, we get to choose the other 5." Ugh.
- Pay delay
Payday used to be the 21st of each month for the month that I was in (so, August's pay in August), but here, I get paid for this month at the end of NEXT month. Which means that since I started in August, I haven't gotten paid yet. And since all of the moving fees have been taken out, and I have to pay next month's rent this month, I get a pretty paltry paycheck. I know that I'll get a good chunk back at the end of my time, but since I want to do things now, and not later, I've had to dig into what I had saved up. And I'm not happy about that. It's causing me to be more frugal and not take off on an impulse, when I really want to (for example, I had the chance to meet a friend in Tokyo today, and I didn't take it - sorry mate, I regret not coming).

Yes, I'm only in this until midway through March, but I feel like it's time I could have better spent doing something else. And yeah, good things are coming from this, like really bearing down on what and where graduate school will be. But when the situation is not ideal and emotions run high, it's easier to make rash decisions. 注意してください。

I have to learn to get around this. Time to focus on finding squirming room between rocks and hard places.

Rant over.

~コッチ