Anyone here who switched career from teaching English to something else?

English teaching jobs are everywhere here in Japan. So I wanna know if anyone who has changed career can share his/her story? What’s your job now?

7 comments
  1. I switched into IT (my background) as a permanent employee at a mid-sized corporation. I was mostly a system engineer but also developed and updated/modernized various internal software based on IE (yikes!)

    I liked the work a lot, and at first was barely managed and had high work output, but got a new dickhead manager who knew nothing about IT and kept interrupting my work to tell jokes or talk gossip, and he was really unprofessional. Beyond that, it was a black company and I was not looking at seeing a huge increase in salary anytime soon.

    I decided I didn’t like corporate bs and the hierarchy so quit and started looking for new work, knowing I could moonlight teaching English until I found something better.

    Got *immediately* hired at a small eikaiwa and after a few months they asked me about my IT background and ended up offering me a hybrid teacher/IT permanent employee position on about the same money I had been making prior, but without any of the bullshit unpaid overtime. I loved this job, manager was great, owner was hands off, but again I felt like I was probably not gonna be able to grow my salary since it was a small operation.

    An opportunity to purchase a privately owned eikaiwa from the owner who was retiring and moving back to his home country came my way and I took the chance to be my own boss. I still dabble in IT/webdev a bit but mostly just chill, enjoying a zero stress job that pays a lot better than before. It will be hard to grow much unless I land some government contracts or start moonlighting as my own IT/web services, but at the moment I am content.

  2. I put my degree to work. I majored in Biomed, so I found a native checker position with a company that specializes in editing Japanese scientists’ research papers. Been doing that for 15 years now, probably going to switch to media translation soon, as I’m finding it more enjoyable on the freelance side, so I’d like to do it full time going forward.

  3. I taught English for the first couple of years I lived in Japan and then left that to became a partner in an international trading company. I was offered that opportunity through contacts I made at a local Buddhist temple I joined shortly after I started living here.

  4. I switched from teaching English on JET to working in City Hall as basically a direct hire CIR (coordinator for International Relations). It’s very similar to a JET CIR position but I’m no longer affiliated with the JET Program.

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