English Village Breakdown

Hello friends, family, and followers! My first real post from Japan is dedicated to my workplace, where I naturally spend the majority of my time.

The Osaka English Village is located in Expocity, Suita, Osaka, Japan. All of the teachers are all English speakers from the United States and Canada. The facility is not an actual village with separate buildings as you might imagine, but a large building composed of 23 situation rooms and our own Times Square. Each situation room presents a different location and scenario. The two rooms that I work most frequently, for example, are the Cooking Studio and Clothing Store.

The Cooking Studio is a functioning kitchen and where I teach the students to make different foods. So far we’ve stuck to the basic level- peanut butter and jelly sandwiches- but offered special holiday-themed food lessons for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The Clothing Store has racks of clothes, two dressing rooms, a cash register, and a small stage. The lessons range from learning the names of the clothes, to the color/ size/ pattern, to making your own outfits, to roleplaying and dialogue, to fashion shows! Other situation rooms include Gold Rush, Dinosaur Park, Restaurant, Airlines, Gym, Science, Native American Village, Farm, Police Station, Post Office, Bank, Library, Transportation, News Room, White House, Travel Agency, and more.

Our students are generally elementary-aged, but we do get regular smatterings of middle and high school students, as well as parents who choose to take the classes with their children. There are night classes held that are aimed primarily at adults, and there are plans to offer lessons and activities at a higher level to cater to a more mature age-group.

The OEV is the first English Village in Japan. It’s exciting to be part of a company that’s just starting up 🙂 My coworkers are awesome and the kids are adorable. I am really enjoying it so far. The weeks are whizzing by!