Are there any ALT dispatch or eikaiwa companies that don’t require a coat, tie, slacks, and dark socks? Who wants to iron all that clothing? 🙂
More seriously, the best teachers I ever had dressed more casually than the worst. There should be a happy medium between shorts and a t-shirt and slacks and a tie.
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While some do wear a suit, many of the Japanese staff wear tracksuits or polo shirts and slacks, so probably nobody will give a shit if you did the same. Just come formally for a few days until you get a lay of the land, then dress as the others do. Shorts and jeans are a no go, and usually shirts would need a collar (no t-shirts).
Fwiw I often wear suit pants and just a shirt, or a knit jersey in winter, with no tie. I never need to iron anything since I’m careful about how I hang clothes to dry. I use [something like this](https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B071JDBQ3R/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_navT_g_D2YWBT33WRWM725BJ0BV) for the trousers and just hang from the ankles.
If your concern is about ironing, just pickup a couple of low maintenance “non-iron” type of shirts and you should be good.
I’ve found [Uniqlo’s “semi-order-made” shirts](https://www.uniqlo.com/jp/ja/spl/semi-order-made/men/shirts) great, and recommend them. The range is limited (only white, or light blue), and you might like to check out the rest of their [“non-iron” (ノンアイãƒãƒ³) series of shirts](https://www.uniqlo.com/jp/ja/search?q=%E3%83%8E%E3%83%B3%E3%82%A2%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AD%E3%83%B3).
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As for pants, just hang them up by the ankles and you shouldn’t need to iron them much.
I love to suit up.
I’ve been wearing suits every day teaching for more than 30 years and have never once ironed anything. I only buy permanent press shirts and hang them immediately after washing them and hang up suit coats and suit pants immediately after wearing them. Neckties I just roll up and put in the back of the line.
I buy eleven identical white shirts every 7 or 8 years and make sure I have 6 or more dark gray suits at any time so I can wear them in rotation but not be known as the guy who always wears the same suit on the same day. Neckties of any color go with gray suits, so I never have to worry about matching.
I sold my iron at a flea market in the mid-90s for 30 yen.
Dress codes are never really that strict or well-enforced from what I’ve seen
If you break the rules what will happen? I always wore what I wanted and the company never fired me. My coworkers were the ones to ask me to not wear a suit in the first place.
The entire time I lived in Japan, I’ve never owned an iron. Most of my big city apartments were so small that storing even a small, fold-up ironing board would have been a challenge. Only when I was on JET could I have an apartment with a dryer in it, so most of my laundry was washed and then hung somewhere to air-dry, which was fairly good at keeping the wrinkles away.
As for suits, my big national chain employer insisted we all must wear full suits, which all of us at our branch diligently wore from the door of our apartments to the storage closet at our school, then we hung up our jackets there and spent the day without them unless we had visiting VIPs from central. Most rules in Japan are written strongly on paper and then relaxed when no one important is looking. But of course, YMMV. Now I’m at a private school and there are teachers who insist doing the whole *shacho* cosplay, complete with French cuffs and monograms every damn day, no matter what the weather or plan for the day is. Luckily at this level, we are free to have *some* autonomy and make decisions for ourselves.
If you want to be taken seriously, look the part.
My (alt) company told me its up to the school I work at. If they wear sweats then I can and if they dress nice then I would have to as well. Thankfully, teachers at my school wear sportswear! Super casual.
I suggest that you learn how to dress professionally if you are working in a professional industry as a professional.
Hahaha! See what I did there? 😉
I always wore sports wear. Only time I wore a suit was when I visited City Hall.
It all depends on where and who you work for now
Male here, assume OP is. My dispatch has a strict dress code. But the company I work for only has 3 ALTs total (and a large amount of eikaiwa, my boss has never come directly to my school after the first day to introduce me) and is very hands off with me. I keep a jacket and tie in a work locker to throw on when the other teachers do.
If I know ahead of time that I’m “warming the bench” (prep days where I’m still expected to commute for an hour but have no classes) then I can wear basically anything. And in summer time especially, I think nobody cares at all.
The only time i have EVER been told about the dress code was because of one school that just really hated having an ALT at all. They made my life hell in every regard possible – an easy one was taking jabs at every article of clothing i wore. Including having skirts just below the knee -they wanted full on pioneer clothes from me (down to the calf at least and no colors) despite their staff sometimes wearing skirts so short that they would be inappropriate in american offices. Also see through tops – i could see one of the JETS bras regularly
Other than them I haven’t ever gotten told anything about my clothes. If you’re getting bitched at- its just a detour way of making you miserable on purpose – they don’t actually care.
I wear windbreakers over dress shirts with a pair of slacks almost every day. Therefore no ironing needed. For special events I wear a suit or just put on a sports jacket.
Wearing suits to teach kids is so incredibly stupid and I don’t understand why it’s required. The only situation I can imagine wearing a suit for teaching would make sense is if you’re teaching business English at a company’s office.
was told by my company i should follow what the other teachers are wearing. the female teachers at my school wear modest dresses, long skirts and since it’s winter now, knits galore. no jeans of course. i also see some subtle nail art on the younger teachers. only time everyone wore a suit was when the BOE was visiting
Remember, you work for the dispatch company, NOT the school. The company tells you to dress according a code, you follow what they say. Otherwise, expect your contract to be terminated (or at least, not renewed)… and then good luck finding another method of supporting yourself in Japan, especially if you don’t speak much Japanese.
The only person I know who is an ALT and dresses as casually as as the other teachers is someone who’s leaving at the end of the school year anyways, so he DGAF.
I’d heard that work dress in Japan was more conservative from where I’d thitherto worked (the United States and central Europe), so I went to a Salvation Army in the US and bought a few US$10 suits before moving here.
After I got a job at an *eikaiwa* I wore the suits each day while every other teacher dressed neatly but far more casually than I did. Eventually, the suits started wearing out, so I planned to start dressing more casually and comfortably.
Meanwhile, I was happy and flattered because my classes were more popular than the other teachers’. At times there were even people waiting for a slot to open in one of my classes rather than join one of the other teachers’ classes.
A week or so before my planned casual-clothing-buying excursion, I overheard some students discussing why they chose my classes over others’: it was because I showed I respected the students by always wearing a suit.
I went shopping for suits instead.