Teaching English in Japan

TIME for a look at what being an English teacher in Today's Japan is like. I want to dispel the myths still surrounding this business.

When considering this path there are a few things that you must know:
1 - Teaching English does not pay well.
2 - Teaching English will not be easy.
3 - Getting a job teaching English will be hard and require a lot of work.

If you're not ready to deal with teaching English in Japan with this mindset, stay home. If you're ready and can believe this instead of what you've read and been told elsewhere, then read on.

There are 3 major kinds of English teaching jobs available out there:
1 - Institutions
2 - English schools/companies
3 - Private students

To make by, almost all English teachers teach at no 1 or 2, AND have to teach at no 3. What does this mean? It means that you're going to be teaching many hours a day, with little time to yourself, no paid vacations and you'll have to budget very carefully and be thrifty if you want to survive.

If you're good with working hard and often, budgeting, and being creative with what you have, read on.

With this said, there are some pretty good paying jobs out there teaching English, they are the ones where you work in institutions, read government schools, the prerequisites:

What you need to have to land a cushy (3000/month) English job:
1 - BA in education, psychology, ESL, or earl childhood teaching.
2 - Master degrees in the same fields if you want to teach students older than elementary (2-12).
3 - At least a year or two experience teaching English to students in institutions.
4 - Be comfortable living in a more remote place, up to 1hour to 6hours outside Tokyo.
5 - Knowing Japanese would be a big plus.

Then there are the jobs for people who want to live in the cites, see no 2 and 3. for this:
1 - Associate degree or BA in any field.
2 - Be already living in Japan (i.e. get your own VISA to live in Japan).
3 - Be ready to work Monday to Friday from 7am to 10pm and Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 8pm.
4 - Know business Japanese if you want a higher/decent pay (JLPT level 2 or 1. Japanese learned from watching anime is not near good enough).

Does this sound good to you? If so keep on reading.

Good jobs are open for application 3 to 6 months before the job starts, if you want to go to Japan right away, you're out of luck. All jobs have a very high number of applicants. For these kinds of jobs expect 2000 other people to be applying. There are perhaps 5000 jobs like this in all of Japan every yearn, and that if there's only one opening for all of those, many many people won't get this kind of job. If you manage to land one, congratulations, they will take care of the paperwork and you can sit back and relax. You'll be teaching English in Japan in 3-6 months.

English Schools and Private students require you to already be in Japan. So if you think you can get a job, better go overseas now.
Before you do this though consider these conditions if you want to make it there and back:
1 - You need an airplane ticket there and back.
2 - You need to get a VISA which will allow you to work, no one hires people on holiday VISAS anymore, even the Working Holiday VISA is not great.
3 - You need about $4000-$5000 saved up in a bank account which you will use while you're trying to get a job.
4 - You must have a plan B in case you're there, run out of money and have to go back from where you came (i.e. if you're broke, how will you be able to find a job, food and apartment when you come back?).

I'll probably be adding to this as more things come to mind but it's a pretty good start. If you're in Japan and want to find work. Looking at Gaijinpot and Googling English schools in areas you'll be willing to work in is the best bet.

NOTES:
- You'll be paying up to $10-$20/day out of your own pocket for train/travel expenses (think $300-$600 less than your calculated paycheck).
- You'll have to budget in the price of fruits and vegetables as well as meat, which are about 2-3 times what you'd pay for wherever you live.
- You will be taxed 5% on your paycheck too.
- Learn Japanese customs and stick to them! You are the minority foreigner here.
- Enjoy Japan, it's a great place!

Persimmons

THE other day I finally worked up the courage to try a pretty strange looking fruit which Japanese people seem to love. They're in season right now so their price is (relatively) cheap.

Persimmons come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from egg shapes (popular in China) to a flat tomato-ish shape (popular in Japan).

I've tried Persimmon in two different conditions, just under-ripe and very ripe.

When it was under-ripe the taste and texture was very close to that of a peach or apricot.
But the real flavour of this fruit is revealed when it's ripe, it tastes and the inside texture feel like a very ripe mango! Pretty interesting fruit, two different textures and flavours which are both good but would not normally be thought of as similar.

Kleenex

ONE of the more interesting marketing gimmicks here is the giving away of little pocket sized pouches of tissues. Almost anywhere you go near some large intersection, shopping center or train entrance, you will find someone standing at the corner of the street or inside, handing out little pouches of tissues . The marketing gimmick is that in each pouch of kleenexes the top and bottom paper is replaced by a company logo, picture, advertisement or coupon. It didn't really appeal to me at first but now with the cold season coming on, and people having colds, flus and such (including myself for the last few days) it comes in pretty handy. Need a tissue? Just wait a bit and someone will give you a couple!

Okinawa

OKINAWA was great. It's small island off the coast of Japan, and it's been influenced by the Chinese. Okinawa is a blend of both Japanese and Chinese architecture and traditions.

Any trip to Okinawa is very expensive. The one we took for 5 days, including air fare, car rental, hotel and breakfast was US$1100/person. The hotel was very nice with a bunch of swimming pools and a great view of the ocean.

The flight was pretty quick and uneventful. It takes 1 1/2 hours to fly there. The train ride to the airport was as long as the flight!

When we got there we went to the car rental company and I got a small (actually the smallest car they have) Vitz, a nice little car, very small and with what seems like a 60-70 Hp engine. Of course this wasn't really a problem since the top speed anywhere in Japan is 80 km/h. The road I took however was quite a bit slower, maxing out at a breakneck 60 km/h... I think that when Japanese people come to other countries it must make them very nervous to be driving at 100 km/h, they're not used to it! I was pretty nervous at first because I was driving on the other side of the road, but I got used to it pretty quickly.



Getting to the hotel took 3 hours because we thought we'd take the "scenic" route. It was a mistake, we didn't see much "scenic" anything except for other cars and buildings.

The hotel was very nice and had very good staff. The view from the room was great. And the room itself was pretty amazing. Some pretty fancy furniture and decorations there.

Okinawa has it's own kind of citrus, it's small and green, very sour and makes an excellent juice. It was our drink of preference while we were there.

We went and spent some time in the ocean just swimming and relaxing, reading books.


We also went and visited the Okinawa Churaumi aquarium, it's the world's second largest and has whale sharks, manta rays and many, many more things to see in their aquariums. There was a big tank with thousands of fish, small big, huge and also sharks and eels. We also saw turtles and a dolphin exhibition. It was amazing to see even the large dolphins jump up into the air 6-8 meters(20 feet)!

A little south of the hotel is a place famous for it's cliffs and beautiful views. We went and explored this of course. :)

On the way back to the airport we took the expressway ($10) and this time we trotted along at 80 km/h. The trip back took only 1 hour.

Since our flight was at 8:30pm we spent the day in the city. We first visited Shuri Castle. Shuri Castle is a gusuku (Ryūkyūan castle) in Shuri, Okinawa. It was the main palace of the Ryūkyū Dynasty. In 1945, during World War 2 in the Battle of Okinawa, it was almost completely destroyed, with only a few walls standing. In 1992, it was reconstructed on the original site based on photographs, historical records new and ancient, and the memories of people.

Then we went down into the shopping area and walked around for a few hours. There are many items from North America, in fact more than in stores specializing in such in Japan, due to the large USA army/navy base which is a big part of the economy there. But there were also some rather odd souvenirs which I would have (had the price not been ridiculously high) sent to friends.

Our flight back landed at 10pm and we got back home by midnight. Thankfully it was saturday night and we got a chance to relax and rest from our vacation. :)