A Japan Guy Review: My First Year Teaching As An ALT In Japan (Part 1)

John Smith says:

My wife worked as an English (ALT) teacher for Interac in Ibaraki, Japan. During the March 11th 2011 earthquake, the interac Hitachi office contacted her embassy (the British embassy) to tell them that she was missing during the earthquake. Interac did this even though my wife was emailing and calling them almost every day after the earthquake to give them updates on her status. When interac told the British embassy that she was missing, the embassy contacted her father, and her father had a heart attack upon hearing this untrue information. Luckily her father survived. My wife delayed contacting her father because her parents were divorced and not living with each other. Her father was traveling on business in a part of Asia where there was no cellular reception. But the embassy managed to contact him before she could. My wife was stranded in Mito City (The capital of Ibaraki prefecture), sleeping at the train station on the floor with no bedding, food and water. She had no food for 4 days, and no water for 2 days. Interac had done nothing to assist her and their other teachers in Ibaraki. She had gone to Mito City, 150km from her school to do work for interac. Interac did nothing at all to help her situation, in fact they gave her wrong information about the disaster centers that were available, leading to my wife travelling on foot for long distances unnecessarily. Eventually some American friends rescued her with food and water. Interac then allowed her corrupt Japanese landlord (Mr. Kobayashi from Daigo Machi, Ibaraki, Japan) to illegally keep a 500USD rental deposit when she vacated her apartment a month later. Phillip Knight (From Mount Maunganui beach in New Zealand), was an interac managing consultant in the Hitachi Office. He was solely responsible for lying to my wife’s embassy and allowing her criminal landlord to keep her 500USD deposit. Now he still works for interac in the Tokyo head office. He is well known in Ibaraki to be very racist in nature (especially towards Asian people who aren’t Japanese in origin). Ask all of the teachers who worked under him in Ibaraki and they will all tell you that he is grossly incompetent in his job. He has a degree in psychology but is known to have mental issues himself. Phillip Knight is still employed by interac because he kisses a lot of a** with his Japanese colleagues, and this guarantees his job with the company. He is kiwi, but talks with a fake British accent. During heated conversations his strong kiwi accent becomes apparent. He’s quite a fake person indeed. My wife tells me that all 22 teachers working under him in Ibaraki prefecture hated him. Avoid interac like the plague!