Hey all,
I’m currently a senior in college and aspire to be a JET for a year. Only thing is I plan to go in 2024, and want to work for a year upon graduation. Although, I’m scared to leave my job after only working a year, and taking a pay cut and job change working as a teacher in Japan being an ALT.
I don’t have much interest in being a teacher, but I love Japanese culture and would love to spend a year here to become immersed.
Do you think I should say YOLO and still join JET if it means leaving a great job in America potentially?
11 comments
Leaving a great job? Hell no, I wouldn’t personally. Especially if I had no interest in teaching. I’d rather take a nice vacation where I can plan where I want to go and what I want to do.
Hmm… what do expect to gain from JET other than “experiencing the culture?” From it seems ur aiming for a long vacation in Japan.
If you don’t see any merits other than experiencing the culture, I’d say stick to ur career and save up for a vacation.
Ur looking at JET through rose colored glasses. Do ur research of the realities of Japan and see if you really want to take the risks. Cuz when the honeymoon phase ends you don’t want to find urself questioning ur decisions.
Take the job, and take a 1-2 week long trip to Japan in the future.
Also, you can apply for JET in the future and take a year off from your career. A lot of people do that esp in the 28-35 year old range. It’s easier to yolo when you have a pile of savings, investments, and a career waiting for you when you get back.
If you feel like its hard to take a break from your career, you can easily just take a 1-2 week long vacation in Japan.
JET is great and I love my time here but financial stability is greater. I would throw away all my JET memories in an instant for a stable career.
Oh hey, I did this! Graduated engineering, worked a mech eng job for about 8 months then left for JET in July 2015 (taking a 50% salary cut in the process). Didn’t plan on staying long, and here I still am, married and a father!
I stayed on JET for 4 years and learned the language enough to get an engineering gig in my partner’s (rural) hometown. Three years later and I’m all set to join an international firm in the semiconductor industry next month as a fully bilingual development engineer. JET led me down a crazy, unexpected path but I wouldn’t change it for the world!
It really, really depends on numerous factors. What are your goals in life? Why Japan/JET? What do you hope to gain from JET? And is it feasible/recommended to leave a career for JET?
For me, I worked as an RN for 12 years prior to JET. It’s a stable job with a good income. Previously, I had also visited Japan 4 times on vacation. I joined JET after a difficult 2+ years working the front lines of the pandemic. I had thought of doing JET before but thought it was too difficult to leave a good job and I worried about finding a job when I returned home. But with my mental health and stress being horrible at work, I decided to YOLO it and apply to JET.
There is a massive nurse shortage, well, everywhere, so I know I’ll have good job security when I return home. I also have a good amount of savings from working for so long, so I get to enjoy living in Japan how I want. I can go and enjoy Disneyland without worrying about paying my bills. I went to Kyoto and, again, didn’t worry about being able to pay for a hotel or the shinkansen. It’s a nice spot to be in. That being said, not everyone has this “luxury.”
There’s no big rush to get to Japan. Work towards kick-starting your career first, then see where life takes you. Japan will still be here, whether you decide to apply to JET or just visit on vacation.
By “Don’t have much interest in teaching” do you mean you’re indifferent and could grow to like it, or that you don’t like it. Because teaching will be your full time job. If that’s not what you want to do, you can probably find another way to experience Japan that won’t involve leaving a good job for one you don’t like.
You might have opportunities to experience japan outside of work things, but the amount and quality of available things might change depending on where they put you. If you’re wanting to experience the Tokyo side of Japan and end up in some small town in Akita, then you might not have a good time.
No…you’ll hate it if that’s your view on the job description and your only reason is the culture. Keep your job, take an extended holiday to japan. And applying doesn’t guarantee acceptance so don’t get ahead of yourself.
I’m sorta doing this rn! I’m on month three now, have no teaching background and only plan on staying a year. Only difference is I made sure to have a job when I get back. I only worked for a year and a half, but I did great and now have a permanent position with them. I talked to my manager and we worked out a year of leave without pay (it’s in our collective agreement, I just never thought to use it). I’ve come to realize that teaching is not my favorite thing and not for me. And the pay cut is about 50%. But, the cultural exchange part of JET is great, telling people others about your country and ethnicity and learning about theirs is such a cool experience. My living expenses are also cheaper here than Canada, so I get to travel on the weekends, join sports, volunteer, and do all sorts of cultural things while interacting with the locals. I don’t know much of the language, but putting myself in an uncomfortable situations and forcing myself to live alone in a place I don’t know has taught me so much about myself and taught me great skills like being adaptable and better communication.
Things to consider though:
– I only left cause I know I have a job when I come back
– Every placement is different, if you get put in Tokyo or near a city it’s gonna be more expensive
– I have been to Japan before for two weeks, and that’s what made me realize I want to actually live here and experience it more
– I don’t really like classroom time or teaching, but the students are precious and teaching them on lunch break or after school is so much more rewarding than classroom
– Being here for three months has made me realize I don’t like Japan as a living country, but more as a visiting country. I love the scenery, the people, the food, the culture. But the customs, the etiquette, the language barrier and the loneliness that sometimes comes with being a foreigner are things you can avoid by just visiting. I’m happy with my choice and have no regrets, it’s just made me change my views on Japan a bit. But, I’m not someone who’d be happy with someone telling me, I had to experience it myself. So ultimately it’s up to you and how serious you are about experiencing it!
I don’t want to repeat what others have already said, so I’ll add something that I don’t think anyone said:
You say you love the culture, but is it the famous culture you love (temples, shrines, the big city, the exciting foods, etc.) or is it the less obvious culture you love (how people interact, the language, the foods people cook at home, living in a Japanese house/apartment, etc.)?
Because if you get sent to an area next to a big city or an interesting cultural or historical hub, then you will have cool cultural adventures galore. But say you get sent, for instance, to the little village in Akita where I am working as a CIR. The closest city is an hour away by car (Akita city, pop. 315k) and there is nothing in the village but an overpriced and very limited supermarket, one convenience store, and a tiny hardware store. If you do not get a car, you will need to spend up towards two hours just to go to Akita, on one of the seven buses that come by every day. The town is completely dead after dark, there are no interesting landmarks, and the next village is 10 miles away. There are no wonderful mountains to look at, only rice fields, which are very nice in the summer, but otherwise offer only a very bleak scenery for the rest of the year. The only other foreigner in the village would be me, so unless you speak Japanese, I’d basically be the only person you can really talk to.
And there are places that are even more remote and desolate than here.
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The point I am trying to get at, is that there is a very real chance that you might only be able to go and enjoy the famous cultural things a few times in a year, and that you will need to pay a good deal of money to even get there.
Anyway, like so many others, I strongly suggest that you go on a trip to Japan first, before making a decision like this. It might be the adventure of a lifetime if you go as an ALT without ever having gone before, but it might also give you a lot of stress and break you in all kinds of ways.
*Disclaimer: I have lived in Japan for three years before coming as a CIR, so I already knew what I was in for, but I would have never gone for ALT because I don’t want to teach English. Did it once before and NEVER want to do it again xD
It depends on your career path and degree, although ultimately neither choice is necessarily detrimental. The main thing to remember is that once you sign up for a year, you’re here for a year. Breaking contract will leave you with less than what you came with. Another disclaimer is that if you’re not interested in teaching and are vague about the job expectations, you won’t even get to the interview stage (The top two types weeded out of the application process are 1) people who say they love kids w/o understanding that this sentiment alone is not enough and 2) people who say they want to experience Japanese culture mostly, with no fleshed-out ideas to engage in a classroom.)
If your career is not focused on education, I would say the JET program is unnecessary, with a variety of uncontrollable factors, including work environment and living conditions. Upon first starting your position, you may find yourself dissatisfied and held back in your career. Depending on where you’re placed, you may also find your expectations disappointed, and realize that cultural immersion and exploration takes a backseat to the day-to-day reality of commuting to work and fulfilling your job expectations. Even then, a year is not that long and you might come out of it with a better perspective of your goals, a more realistic view of Japan, and the competence that comes with living alone in a foreign country.
It also depends on your job, its type, and your satisfaction with it. If you have a great job, why leave it? Although going on a work-program excursion for a year is an acceptable excuse on your resume, why not just stay at your job, develop your career and save money, then visit Japan on vacation? The worst case scenario is that you put your career on hold for a year, become disenchanted, grin and bear it, then come back with a better focus and appreciation for your intended career path. Although here’s the gamechanger: if you have any kind of dissatisfaction with your birth country, travel as much as you can to as many countries as you can and get a wider taste of the world.
Practically speaking, you’ll be spending a majority of your time at work, doing work that you don’t have real interest in (although if you like working with kids you may end up loving it), and trying to fill your time when stuck at work with nothing to do, and with a fraction of your time spent going on excursions (which takes some organization and proactivity as your work days change month-to-month.) Although it is called a cultural exchange program, a lot of that is up to your own initiative to prepare relevant material without any hands-on, preliminary training or guidelines, and to engage with students outside of the class; in class the priority is to improve their English, with some chances to exchange cultural ideas (depending on your relationship with teachers and classroom expectations. You might find some teachers have barely any use for you, or you might very well find a perfect niche for your duties. It depends on your personal initiative and it can be draining/troublesome at first coming up with relevant classroom ideas without foresight or proactivity towards the curriculum.) You may also find your Japanese skills coming to a plateau as your exchanges are limited outside and in work, depending on your study commitment (you’re expected to speak English.)
So my short answer is no, focus on a job that you enjoy since that’s how you spend the majority of your time in Japan anyway, then reconsider after two years of work, in the summer/fall of your second year at your career of choice. I will say though that the experience varies wildly depending on placement: some people absolutely love it and renew like my college peer who got placed in Kumamoto, some people are very blasé about it but ultimately come away with more competence, better career focus, and some good experiences and unique hobbies mixed in. Overall you *have* to like teaching at some level.
The best advice I’d give anyone thinking of applying to JET is to get a couple years experience working in their home country first. Japan isn’t going anywhere and neither is JET.
I would say it might even be more important to get some practical work experience, relevant to your intended career, if your focus isn’t going to be teaching. Your resume and experience will be pretty much exclusively teaching if you come here right after graduation.
I applied to JET after being burnt out by the pandemic, with a decade of work experience. It has secured me a job waiting for me in my home country, meanwhile being constantly offered jobs here in Japan.
It’s a security that I’m really grateful to have, while I have friends here scrambling to pass the JLPT because they’re realising they have no marketable skills after coming here straight out of school.