ITP - 023: LGBTQ Identity, Japan Teaching Life, and Cultural Adaptation

Greg: Welcome to the International Teacher Podcast with your host, Greg the single guy and Matt the family guy. We’re recording episodes from around the globe to tell you about the best-kept secret in education. That’s right—it’s teaching overseas. We’re glad to have you.

Greg: All right, our guest today is Andy Niemoller, and he’s coming to us from Japan. Welcome to the show, Andy.

Andy: Hi, thanks for having me.

Greg: Good, good. And you’re coming to us from Japan—is it, are you inside of a main city or are you outside of the main city? We’ve had guests before from the outskirts.

Andy: Yes, I’m actually in Tokyo right now, and I’ve been living in Tokyo for almost 14 years now, so quite a bit—yeah, right in the center of the city.

Greg: And Tokyo is like millions and millions—it’s huge, right?

Andy: Yeah. So, like, you know how New York City has five boroughs? Imagine that, but like times another four and then plus three. So Tokyo has 23 wards, is what they’re called. So it’s not as big as a borough of New York City, but it’s huge. And that’s just part of Tokyo Metropolis. There’s also the rest of Tokyo prefecture, which goes out more west, and that’s still included in Tokyo, but it’s not like Tokyo the city. But it’s huge.

Greg: And you’re teaching at a school right now. Tell us about that.

Andy: Sure. Yes, I’m teaching at an international school, but we’re a multi-age, multi-language international school. So it’s very interesting because we have a lot of multis happening. So I teach in English because that’s my native language, and I teach mathematics for middle and high school.

Andy: The school is pretty cool because in every class there’s an English-speaking teacher and also a Japanese-speaking teacher. So it’s a really interesting setup. It’s hard to explain—I could go on and explain this school forever.

Greg: Are you team teaching in one class with a Japanese speaker and an English speaker at the same time, or are you trading off day after day?

Andy: It’s at the exact same time. So it depends on the day, depends on the class, how we’re doing the co-teaching. But me and my main co-teaching partner, we have things worked out so that some days I may be doing main teaching, sometimes he might be doing main teaching, or sometimes we might split the class into different groups.

Greg: Okay. Now let’s go back a second here because I jumped right into the teaching mode. I think it’s interesting to find out a little bit about your background—what got you to Japan. Are you from like a little town in Nebraska with four people and a horse, or you mentioned New York—where did you come from? How did you get into international teaching?

Andy: So I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania called Bethlehem. I went to university at Boston University, and I planned on just becoming a math teacher at a public school.

Andy: But when I was in about the beginning of my senior year of college, I found out about this thing called the JET Program. It showed up on some Boston University job posting website, like on LinkedIn or something. And I was like, oh, Japan—I’ve wanted to go there before.

Andy: So I applied for this JET Program, which was teaching English in Japan, and I didn’t really think anything of it, but I managed to get the job. And I thought that I was going to end up being placed—because some people on this program get placed out in the countryside where they’re the only foreigner for hundreds of miles—but I was really fortunate and I got placed in Tokyo, which I think is pretty, pretty fortunate.

Greg: Pennsylvania to Tokyo, right? Did everybody in your family just go, “What are you doing?” Like, you were in Boston and now you’re in Tokyo?

Andy: Yeah, my parents thought it was absolutely crazy, but they’ve always been really supportive of me. Fortunately, they were like, “Andy’s going to Tokyo—okay, we’ll see what happens.” But I was really only planning on staying there for a year or two.

Andy: But I met my partner here, and so he and I were talking. I was like, well, I don’t want to go back to America yet. And he was like, yeah, I want you to stay in Japan. He was like, have you thought about teaching at international schools? And I was like, oh, I’ve never really thought about that before.

Andy: So I applied directly to a few school websites in the Tokyo area, and I guess it was because this was right when the pandemic started—so right around March 2020 when I started applying to these schools—I happened to get a job. I was really fortunate.

Greg: Okay, so two real quick questions, and I’m being nosy. Is your partner Japanese or is he from somewhere else?

Andy: He’s Japanese.

Greg: Yeah, I’m a single guy, so I like to talk to the other singles about staying local. It sounds terrible, but I just enjoy talking about that side of it because sometimes when I’ve been in other countries, I’ve been with women that are from the country that I’m in or mixed in with other internationals—sometimes other expats. It’s a colorful history, and we don’t have to go into that anymore.

Greg: What was the other question I had? Oh yes—when you’re with the JET Program, are you sort of a free agent and you get to apply for other schools in the area, or did you leave JET and sort of carry on and do your own thing?

Andy: So it’s not a free agent thing at all. For JET, they give you a placement and it’s kind of like you have to go to that school that they assign you to. I got really fortunate in my placement.

Andy: I had actually re-contracted for a third year for the JET Program, but before I started that third year, I had gotten this job at my current international school that I work at in Tokyo. So I kind of just said, okay, bye JET Program, I’m canceling this contract, and I started my current job.

Greg: Yeah, that’s pretty much how it goes sometimes. And you got certified at BU—you were in the teaching program, right? You were looking at local schools and thinking you’d get hired like everybody else. I went through that too, and I didn’t expect to be overseas. I found out about international teaching kind of randomly and jumped on it right away because I didn’t want to be that teacher in the States who doesn’t get a lot of respect and is at the same school for like 40 years without a lot of experiences outside of school.

Greg: And just to impress our listeners out there, I know a little bit about Boston University. Isn’t that the one that’s mentioned in the R.E.M. song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”?

Andy: I honestly have no idea.

Greg: I feel like I’m right, but I could be wrong.

Andy: I’m just going to say yes so that you sound right.

Greg: I appreciate that. That’s what we need on this podcast—just agreement, whether it’s true or not.

Greg: And how long does it take to get to Japan?

Andy: Usually I fly out of Newark, New Jersey, and it’s not as long as you think. I think it’s about a 13-hour direct flight from New Jersey to Tokyo, so not too bad.

Greg: Have you ever flown over the dateline?

Andy: Yeah, that’s the way that I go every time. You kind of go over the north.

Greg: If only people could see what we’re doing with our hands right now trying to map this out. Sometimes Matt jumps in and saves me, but he’s not here today. He’s out in the desert right now looking for shark’s teeth with his kids. I can’t imagine being stuck in an apartment with four boys during COVID.

Greg: So I apologize for that. Matt the family guy will be back with us a little bit later. I usually do the interviews solo if it’s easier to do this kind of connection because right now in Japan it’s about evening for you, right? It’s like 5:30, and for me it’s just before noon.

Andy: Yeah, we deal with time zones all the time with family and friends. It’s always a bit tricky.

Greg: Yeah, time zones mess with everyone. Even as a math teacher, it’s still annoying to calculate sometimes.

Andy: Yeah, definitely.

Greg: All right, let’s go back to the school a little bit because I’m really interested in this setup.

Greg: How big is your school right now? Your student body.

Andy: We’re K to 12, and I think we’re about like 200, maybe 300 students. We’re not huge. It’s not super big.

Greg: Yeah, 200 to 300 students, K–12. That’s normal around the world, actually, for some schools. We talk about how every school is different, every package is different. Our school in Venezuela was like that. We had about 200 people. That’s how I met Matt and Stacy, my co-host, and his family—we met there.

Greg: We had one teacher for every grade level. I was a specialist for all the grade levels. But think about 200 kids—you know every one of them.

Andy: Yeah, which is great. It’s awesome.

Andy: Because I can make a connection with all the students, which is really nice. It’s such a small family within such a big community.

Greg: And are they coming from all over Tokyo to be at that school?

Andy: Yeah. There’s a prefecture just north of my school called Saitama, and some students come from there. Then there’s the prefecture south of Tokyo, Kanagawa, and some students come up from there as well. We have students commuting like an hour and a half on the trains to get to our school.

Greg: I’m not sure why, but—so I saw the movie Lost in Translation years and years ago. Does everybody ask you that question all the time?

Andy: Yeah, all the time.

Greg: I’ve got a ton of questions I could ask you, but I was just wondering because it’s Japan, and Japan is a whole different culture. You go through culture shock, you get used to it, and when you come back home you’re in culture shock again.

Andy: Yeah. The craziest thing was I was so fortunate to be able to go home during the winter break for the first time in like three years to see my family. In Japan, mask-wearing was never required by the government—it’s just societally expected. So everybody wears masks here.

Andy: But going to America—I went to Florida first to visit my grandma—even in convenience stores, no one was wearing a mask. That was my biggest culture shock going back to the States.

Greg: Yeah, the COVID thing right now is a big culture shock.

Greg: What about pollution? Is it really polluted in Tokyo?

Andy: Not at all. I know cities like Seoul get a lot of pollution from China depending on how the air moves, but Tokyo has almost none. I think it’s because it’s a very clean city, and being surrounded by water helps too.

Greg: Let me ask you the question that other international teachers bring up—student respect. I’ve seen more respect overseas than I’ve ever seen in the States, depending on the school. What do you think?

Andy: I think there’s a lot of respect in Japanese culture for people in authority positions. For a lot of my Japanese students, that’s just ingrained.

Andy: But even for international students, since our school is small, there’s a strong ability to build relationships. Students really care about those relationships, especially because many of them don’t have many adults outside school who speak English natively.

Andy: So I notice more camaraderie between students and teachers. You earn respect, but I haven’t had to work as hard for it as I’ve heard teachers do in the States.

Greg: That’s interesting. And in small schools, you get to know families really well. They kind of become your support system.

Andy: Yeah, I think so. Although since I came during COVID, we haven’t had as many big school-wide events, so I haven’t built those connections as much as teachers who were there before.

Greg: One other thing about small schools—you get to know leadership really well. Like the superintendent isn’t just some distant person.

Andy: Yeah, exactly. We don’t call him superintendent—we call him the founder. But I had a conversation with him today. He just came into the lunchroom and talked with me for 20 minutes.

Greg: That’s great. I worked with a superintendent in Cambodia who was very intense at first, but once you got to know him, he’d invite you over for dinner with his family. That’s what small schools are like.

Andy: Yeah, it’s really nice. And we have an open-door policy, so I can talk to leadership regularly. It’s great mentorship, especially as a younger teacher.

Greg: Every school is different around the world—even within Tokyo.

Andy: Yeah, definitely.

Greg: What’s your staff like? Is it pretty international?

Andy: Yeah. Since we use a Scottish curriculum, we have some British and Scottish teachers, some American teachers, a teacher from South America, and Japanese teachers for each class.

Greg: I love that mix. That’s one of the best parts of international teaching.

Greg: Are you learning Japanese?

Andy: Yeah. My Japanese is good enough now to work at a convenience store, officially. I passed the N3 level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which is the minimum for that.

Greg: That’s awesome.

Andy: I can read, listen, and speak, but writing is harder. I can type, but handwriting is tough.

Greg: I’m fascinated by language.

Greg: Do you have any police stories?

Andy: I do. I’ve been waiting for you to ask that.

Andy: When I was on the JET Program, about two weeks after arriving in Japan, I was riding my bike with one headphone in—not even playing music—just directions. Two police officers stopped me and asked who I was, where I came from, why I had the bike, and for my resident card.

Andy: They thought I might have stolen the bike. The younger officer questioned me while the older one laughed. They scanned my card, saw I was fine, and just told me no headphones next time.

Greg: That’s great. In Cambodia, I would’ve had to pay a bribe.

Greg: I got pulled over in Venezuela once. First question—do you have a firearm? Then papers. Then money. It was basically a shakedown.

Greg: I love police stories.

Greg: All right, let’s take a quick break.

Greg: Are there any topics you want to share—challenges or successes of teaching overseas?

Andy: Yeah. Something important to me is being an LGBT international teacher. A lot of people worry about that when moving overseas—whether it’s safe, whether their partner can come.

Greg: Did that come up in your interview?

Andy: No, not at all. But I found out later that my head of school is gay, which made me feel safe.

Andy: My school is very progressive, so I can talk about my partner openly and students react normally.

Greg: Is there a community in Tokyo?

Andy: Yeah, a huge one. There’s a district in Shinjuku called Ni-chome with a massive concentration of gay bars.

Greg: Any challenges traveling as a couple?

Andy: Sometimes hotels can be tricky, but it’s less common now.

Greg: What about students?

Andy: Even students from conservative backgrounds have been respectful.

Greg: That’s great.

Andy: My advice is to find a school that supports you—you don’t need extra stress about identity.

Greg: That’s important.

Greg: Let’s talk about pronouns.

Andy: I use they/them pronouns. For me, it just fits my identity better.

Andy: I don’t get upset if people make mistakes—it’s part of learning. As a teacher, I see mistakes as growth.

Greg: That makes sense.

Andy: Something simple like adding pronouns to an email signature can make students feel safer.

Greg: That’s interesting. I might try that.

Andy: Even small actions can have a big impact for students.

Greg: That’s a good perspective.

Greg: Any final thoughts?

Andy: Stay curious, be kind, and try to understand others.

Greg: I love that.

Greg: Let me share one quick story. I had a former student call me recently—from years ago—just to say I made an impact. That’s what keeps you going as a teacher.

Greg: Andy, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Andy: Thanks for having me.

Greg: And for our listeners, you can reach us at [internationalteacherpodcast@gmail.com](mailto:internationalteacherpodcast@gmail.com). We’re also on Instagram at ITPexpats. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.