I was looking through other ALTs’ and older worksheets/powerpoints, and I mean in the best way possible, but some include the ugliest eye-jarring blurry stretched out PNG watermarked cursed images.
For current ALTs not in the know and for future incoming ALTs, please bookbark https://www.irasutoya.com/ and use it as your source for images! All are PNGs already so with no background and easy to edit in!
There is an English word search function but it doesn’t work as well. I suggest finding the Japanese word if you don’t know it on jisho.org and then typing it in that way.
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They blocked irasutoya last year on all my school computers lol
I used it all the time before they did that 🙁
Aw, man… this is the source of all those overused images that the Japanese can’t seem to get enough of?
Burn it with fire. Thanks for being helpful to newcomers, but I’m so done with these standard images used for everything because “Japanese teachers are busy.” They just don’t use Google (or Yahoo, even) because loading up this website and using the same images forever for eternity is easier.
Lots of JETs seem to have a passion for graphic design.
These are so cute but all I do is deskwarm so I never get to make anything 😂
I used irasutoya or make sure to find good, clear images without watermarks off google search. It’s not hard to find.
I mean it’s fine I guess.
But isn’t everything Japanese?
As a person of color I like to have pictures with different races. I know it’s something little, but my whole job is to show the students a world outside of Japan. So copy and paste the same Japanese pictures that are used on literally everything else in Japan? It’s really not hard to find decent pictures on google. If you are truly in a rush, this is a great resource, but it is not the absolute best option imo.
Google works as well when you can’t find what you need.
イラスト+(もの) usually works well and can give you more variety if needed.
You can also use word/PowerPoint’s “remove background” function to remove backgrounds from pictures that don’t already have the nice transparent background like Irasutoya.
I also use it on Irasutoya images to edit them and arrange them into various situations. I actually made an entire PowerPoint primarily from Irasutoya images today, for ES 3rd graders who don’t even know the alphabet haha. I got a bunch of “sugoiii” and “jouzu” s from the JTE who was observing me 😎
I love irasutoya when I’m making picture cards or slideshows, but I find some of them don’t translate very well when making worksheets in black and white.
So whenever I’m making worksheets for class, I’ll usually google 白黒 イラスト（image name). Most of the time you can find transparent line art of whatever you need from various free clipart sites. I highly suggest trying out this method in addition to irasutoya!
This bro spitting facts
Counter-argument. Don’t use it. Every motherfucker in Japan uses it for literally everything and it prints terribly on Risograph printers because of the lack of contrast. If you are doing digital only, maybe use them. Still, Irosutoya is the lazy Microsoft Clipart of Japan. Useful, uninspiring and ubiquitous.
My suggestion – go with black and white line icons from somewhere like [Flaticon](https://www.flaticon.com/). Clean, simple, stands out well, prints clearly no matter what.
I really enjoyed irasutoya because you can find tons of good images to use as-is and you can easily put them together to make your own cohesive things due to the uniform stylization. .
For young children repetition is incredibly important so I made sure to use irasutoya with them because it was already familiar.
There seems to be an opinion that using irasutoya is lazy or inherently worse because it’s already commonly used.
Why reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to?