**EDIT EDIT *** of course while everyone’s allowed to post whatever they like, I’m all for freedom of speech, I think a few people misunderstood the ethos and sentiment of this post. It was basically so that people teaching in whatever capacity in Japan could look at the positives. For example yes higher wages in China, but can you have access to certain rentals via your work visa the same way you can in Japan?
[Can’t help but laugh at those who thought this post was a green light to go ‘no you’re shit, you’re all shit’ 🙄 ]
I’m laughing at the othe thread about how this became survival in Japan rather than teaching in Japan, so let’s look at positives
1) if you teach in Japan your visa allows you access to very reasonaby priced accommodation that usually only Japanese citizens can access. Remote workers, content creators, people on tourist visas, people who just want to ‘live ‘ in Japan either cannot rent apartments or if they can , they have to pay through the nose for somewhere like Sakura housing. Lots of foreigners actually do this , so teaching kind of connects you
2) teaching in Japan has consistency. I’ve worked in high pressured sales jobs, in finance and even hospitality . High pay but also high turnover of people. Think of teaching as a ‘tortoise and the hare’ type scenario. It’s sustainable work. The longer you do it, the more you begin reaping returns and dividends.
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I’m from the UK. Having just watched a Channel 4 piece about the rental crisis there I really feel like I’ve taken the housing situation here for granted. I mean when i was a student there a lot of younger people were starting to consider that they might never be able to buy but now its at the point where people aren’t even able to rent a place.
There’s a lot of cope here. Look, if you want to teach because it’s low-stress and easy and you don’t care about money, then that’s fine. But don’t lie about “financial positives” lol
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>It’s sustainable work. The longer you do it, the more you begin reaping returns and dividends.
What are you talking about?? You’re currently an ALT. So if you’re still an ALT in 5 years, you will still be making the same low salary. No bonuses, raises etc. No stock options. So what returns and dividends will you begin reaping exactly? A normal “career” will see salary icnreases the more experience you get. This is not true with ALT/Eikawa.
If you stay in Japan and actually teach, as opposed to do a working holiday and the McDonalds style “training” ALT and Eikaiwa give, you can do just fine.
I own a medium house, run a private classroom, and make a fine living.
Keep in mind, a place like Aeon has a target of around ¥30,000 per lesson (five students at ¥6000). That pays for the teacher, manager, rent, and half of that is sent to the head office to pay for their office in Ginza or wherever, and for advertising.
I can’t make ¥30,000 an hour, but I aim for around ¥5,000 average (I charge ¥4,000 for an adult one hour lesson, ¥3500 for a kids two-person 30-minute lesson, to set low and high examples). Both deeply undercut competition, but also pay me near double what I’d make working for a company.
A lot of teachers set university as their dream teaching job, but getting a proper degree, decent fluency in Japanese, and just cutting out the middle man is the best (for me). No stress, no administration, and I live and die by my skills.
1. This is true of *every* residence visa. I’m on a student visa, so I can rent a property. Someone on a business owner’s visa or a visa in a high-demand field can also obviously rent a property. Though they’re more likely to buy a property since, unlike ALT or eikaiwa, they’re likely making a *lot* more money. This is not a financial positive of teaching, it’s a financial positive of *any residence visa*.
2. Teaching in Japan has what now? As a licensed teacher for a regular school, sure, that might be true, but a lot of ALTs and eikaiwa teachers are on contracts that don’t need to be renewed. That’s not secure. And that’s not even mentioning the existence of zero-hour contracts.
3. ‘The longer you do it the more you begin reaping returns and dividends.’ Again, what? Forget ‘returns and dividends’, salaries in a chunk of the industry are going *down* in the middle of the most inflation Japan has seen in a couple of decades. This is the ‘tortoise and the hare’ scenario if while the hare is having a nap, the tortoise got lost and went the wrong way.
LOLz weird post…
Hey everybody… the upshot of eikaiwa is that you can work a stressful day job with the goal of treating your crappy YouTube vlog about Japan as your main job. It’s a long game… one day you’ll be Mr Beast if you keep sharing your cynical views about life in Japan 😛
There’s also the small detail of whether you’re actually good at teaching, qualified to do so, and accept the pros and cons of the profession which are roughly similar in most countries. If you’re qualified and working on a permanent basis at a school/uni you like, it’s not a bad career for someone who likes living in Japan. Private tutoring is also a good option. If you decided to become a teacher to earn 6 figures (US) then you may want to rethink things
This post is kinda trash. 1) You can rent apartments here without teaching English 2) There’s not a whole lot of “reward”. It’s mostly garbage wages for 90% of people.. I’m sure some dumb college kid in a different country is gonna read this and do the math.. and be like yeah! I can survive on 200,000 yen a month! Not if you’re married. Not if you have kids. Not if you want to travel. Not if you want any respectable adult life. Now some guys can pull it off, but they are not working basic eikawa jobs.
The whiplash of this post is amazing. Let’s get our facts straight.
1)Teaching in JP is unskilled labor.
2) Most “teachers” here wont learn Japanese.
3) Most jobs here won’t renew you.
4) Starting your “private” business is supersaturated and not realistic.
5) Most expats here “teach” because they have to (due to visa limitations.)
6) Teaching salaries are in the decline and ever closer to minimum wage.
7) You will never be Japanese. You will be asked “When are you going home?” until the day you croak.
8) Teaching here will crater your resume. Teaching here is NOT considered real experience in the eyes of most employers.
9) Most foreigners here are runaways who for one reason or another cant make it back home. Japan knows it so they exploit these poor souls.
10) Teaching is like smoking. It’s cool when you’re young but miserable when you’re old. You’ll one day wake up weak, gray, and unable to quit.
>The longer you do it, the more you begin reaping returns and dividends.
That depends. Are you working towards getting out of ALT/eikaiwa? Are you working towards getting a degree or qualification so that you can teach in a academic context?
If not, the longer you stay the worse off you will be in the future since the only thing you will be qualified for is to be an ALT/eikiawa teacher in Japan. What if you want to leave Japan one day? What if you want to have a family on your 230,000/month salary, that will never, ever go up, and in fact, is more likely to go down over the years?
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>teaching in Japan has consistency.
No, it doesn’t. Thanks to the 2013 labor law limiting giving FT status after five years, you’re more likely to have contracts limited to 3 years (or less) or be asked to quit at 4 years (illegal) and be hired back after six months of no pay so they can pretend you are a new hire and avoid the law altogether. This means job hunting and starting all over again at the bottom of the hierarchy and the low end of the salary range.
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>High pay but also high turnover of people.
I can’t tell what you mean by this, but ALT/eikaiwa have around 80% turnover. Hardly anyone stays longer than 2 years, and if you are in it more than 5 years, without moving towards getting teaching qualifications, well, you’re stuck in a low-paying job.
Let’s be honest, if it’s about money, don’t teach in Japan. Go to China or Korea. I’m in Korea working 5 hours a day for almost double the salary of a dispatch company ALT. (Roughly 380,000 jpy) and in China you can almost double that again if you find a good job (though obviously have to deal with the negatives of it being China with their government and all).
Japan is really only a half decent deal financially if you go on JET and get the full JET salary and subsidised housing and if you get a decent amount of vacation/ desk warming time to enjoy your life, explore japan and learn japanese. If you’re an alt for another company with reduced salary and / or vacation it sucks.
I’ve never seen an industry that seems to hate itself, and everyone involved quite as much as Japanese English Teaching.
I’m glad someone decided to be very positive about teaching in Japan .
I do teach in Japan and I do love my job. But let’s face it, without my other ventures , as a single parent , I won’t afford our yearly one month holiday abroad and all our trips domestically. And our lifestyle basically.
Won’t afford = in terms of money,in terms of time.
I love teaching but I don’t want to work 40 hours a week and be a slave and watch the best strong years of my life go by while I get paid peanuts. I love sports that require physical strength like surfing and climbing up mountains, I cannot wait until I’m 60 to do these things . For now this is the way to get a visa in Japan .
You are asking for financial positives to working in an industry that is notorious for underpaying it’s workers. That’s ridiculous. Your edit doesn’t fix the problem with your premise.
There may be other benefits to ALT/part time/dispatch work. For example, I find myself quite envious of part time teachers’ reduced schedule. But that’s not a “*financial* positive”, and trying to call it such suggests you don’t want to discuss problems in our field honestly.
If you work in eikaiwa or ALT the longer you teach, the less you make? They are basically just hiring people on yearly contracts, so there aren’t the benefits of regular employees. I don’t know what returns and dividends you’re talking about.
I really have to remind myself sometimes to take what I read here with a pinch of salt. There’s some wonderfully useful information, but so, so much toxicity. Toxicity not just aimed at low salaries and exploitation, which I can get, but aimed at teachers themselves, as being kind of perennial losers who are deserving of contempt. There’s a real classism here, and it seems to come from a place of “I’ve got mine and I’m better than you”. I’ve only seen this on reddit, and specifically Japanese forums.
My man forgot all the extra financial positives of teaching English. 1) You get access to public parks. 2) You can go inside Japanese supermarkets with their incredibly priced food. 3) you can use D-points 4) if you find a homeless cat, you can keep it! Does any of this relate to teaching English?! Yes, no. Maybe.
This….is an OUTRAGE
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I have been an ALT for 10 years and I have yet to see any DIVIDENDS being REAPED
>teaching in Japan has consistency. I’ve worked in high pressured sales jobs, in finance and even hospitality . High pay but also high turnover of people. Think of teaching as a ‘tortoise and the hare’ type scenario. It’s sustainable work. The longer you do it, the more you begin reaping returns and dividends.
?????
The turnover rates are so high that teachers have looked at me like I was a ghost when I stayed a second year. Even if you do try to stay, most companies will kick you out very quickly. AEON actually has rules that they can’t rehire the same teachers after one or two years, forget which. Even a mom-and-pop eikaiwa I worked at said, during an interview, that the max was 3 years before they would kick me out. *Even if you work at a uni*, almost every job listing you’ll see says something like “one year contract, renewable 3-4 times”.
It is not consistent. It is not sustainable. There are no raises (in fact, the yen has been nose-diving, so most people are actually taking reduced pay).
What “returns” and “dividends” should we be getting? What consistency is there other than ease of finding another low-paying job in Tokyo when your current contract isn’t renewed?
The longer you do the more you reap rewards???
My salary went from 360man a year to 300 to 280 to 240 and finally 210 before I shook off English teaching. Now I’m back at 420 as a translator.
Long term?
None. Zero.
It’s not been that bad financially in my own experience. My first job sucked but was easy I was making like 280,000 a month. Then ALT work, less money but was able to make it up with side gigs. Now uni work which is, in my opinion, good money and benefits, good work-life balance.
It’s alright as long as you keep on building and developing .