To English Teachers in Japan who are Indian

31 comments

1. [deleted]

2. In your case you need to show that you have a native accent. Make a short video introduction, like a minute long to show your “genki” personality and native English accent (preferably American).

   Also gathering from your post you don’t have any actual teaching experience? That’s a big “minus” too. Lots of places don’t have the resources/motivation to train people, so you’re stuck with the bigger/shitty chains like nova/aeon etc. If you have actual teaching experience smaller eikaiwas are more likely to hire you.

3. No Indian nationals so far, but we’ve had one from a different country in the Indian Subcontinent, and another with a passport from one of the English speaking countries you mentioned, but with Indian heritage. Also a couple of people from different Southeast Asian countries. We’re a fairly small eikaiwa.

   Not me personally, just some data for you.

4. The other ALT at my school is Indian, but he was born in Okinawa when it was under American occupation so he may have either a Japanese or American passport.

5. Unfortunately I can’t speak to experience, but my son in 3rd grade has had 2 east Asian esl teachers in the past 2 years at his school (Bangladesh and India), so I know they exist.

6. [deleted]

7. One of my fellow direct hire ALTs is an Indian national. Pretty sure he has PR because he moved here with his family when he was really young and went to ES here. He went to JHS-College back in India and then came back here for work. Worked part time as a sub in Osaka for a year and then moved to this position. It’s not impossible, but you’ve got to put in a lot of work or the stars need to align as they did for my colleague. Lol

8. Your biggest hurdle is to find a company willing to go through all the trouble of sponsoring your humanities visa. You might get “lucky” with the bigger chains like Aeon, yaruki switch, etc.

   The reality is that the typical eikaiwa/alt market is completely saturated and you’ll be competing with a lot of people from highly desired places (from a jp perspective) like US, UK, NZ, AU etc. Check this subreddit, there are thousands of people desperate to come here for one reason or another (it’s usually their dream).

   If you really want to have a shot with a proper salary/career then start looking into becoming a real teacher. Visit the international teachers subreddit, check IB courses, seek teaching licenses available to you etc etc. Getting one or more of these, coupled with a few years of experience might give you a proper shot here in Japan. Then you’ll be looking to teach in a proper international school/university and the salaries should be at least 5m+/year.

   Is 250k/m ok? Depends enterily on you. After taxes/pension/health insurance etc it should be around 200k/m and if you know how to budget you might be able to save anywhere from 0-100k/m. Now if you have debts, or you wanna buy a lot of expensive things, each out often, travel often etc, it might not be enough.

   Final point, have you ever visited Japan? I’ll be assuming here, but just food for thought. Being dark/brown skinned in Japan can be tough. The experience varies greatly from people to people, and you can find many posts on reddit and other places showcasing the whole spectrum. I’m not trying to discourage you, but just trying to make sure you know this is something important to consider.

   Bonus point, if you have the financial means, you could come here as a student and eventually find part time work. This would be the best experience in my opinion. You’ll be learning the language/culture with a lot of free time to explore the country. Part time work will expose you to all the good/bad of working in Japan and then it’ll be much easier to make a final decision if Japan is the right country for you. Being here helps tremendously and going from part time > full time should be a bit easier than being hired/sponsored from overseas (in your specific situation).

9. There are several private schools in the wider Tokyo area that cater to the southern Asian community

10. I once met an Indian ALT (likely direct-hire) over a decade ago, so it’s definitely possible. That said, it will be **very** challenging to actually get in. Having some teaching experience and at least some basic knowledge of Japanese will greatly boost your chances – but that still doesn’t mean that the odds for success will be great. If faced with the choice between a native English speaker with no experience and an “officially” non-native English speaker (read: not the “right” passport) who has some qualifications in teaching, many employers will still pick the native speaker, if only because it’s easier to get the visa.

    One of your best bets to get in might be GABA, though honestly, I’m not sure I can recommend them for various reasons (relatively low pay and some other shenanigans). Potentially usable as a foot in the door, though.

    Other than that, 250K a month is definitely liveable (depending on where you live, you might even be able to save some money), but the starting salary for many ALTs and even Eikaiwa teachers has dropped to 200-220K yen, regularly even going lower for non-native teachers (mostly people from the Philippines) because companies can get away with it. I knew someone who earned just between 140-160K yen a month for a while. They lived in the countryside (and inflation wasn’t so bad at the time), so they could make ends meet, but it certainly wasn’t great for saving money.

    Depending on where you live and how wisely you spend your money, you can certainly survive on just 200K yen a month, but it might not be very comfortably, especially starting your second year (when you have to start paying taxes).

    Edit: Just for the record, the chance of you actually landing a job/visa is relatively slim, so don’t put all your eggs in the Japan basket. Don’t put 100% of your effort into it; keep an eye open for other opportunities (either in other fields or other countries) as well. Japan isn’t going anywhere, so there’s no need to rush. Worst case scenario you can try to visit as a tourist in the future.

11. If you’re a native speaker and you apply to 20 different companies, at least one of them WILL hire you. Will you get 250k is another story.

    But why Japan? You seemed indifferent between here and South Korea. Do you just want to work in Asia?

    It gets said over and over on this sub but it’s true. The teaching market here sucks unless you’ve graduated from a Japanese university and are fluent in Japanese. And even then you’d be lucky to find good working conditions/hours.

12. I’ve worked with people from India, Lithuania, Columbia, Mexico, and Cuba. But all of them had spouse visas before getting their ALT job.

13. I’m a direct hire ALT, and we have a Sri Lankan and a Nepali among a fair few other diverse nationalities in our education authority. There must be other such places if you can find them. Pretty sure we won’t be looking for anyone next year, but there’ll be an open application procedure in December probably so you can DM me if you like and I’ll shoot you the details in a month or two (I think you can anyway… I’m new to Reddit so I’m not sure if DMs are actually a thing here!). They have only hired once from out of the country in the seventeen years I’ve worked for them though, so even if I could guarantee anything, I can’t guarantee anything!

14. At JALT events, I met some South Asian educators. At one of the events, the talk was headlined by a South Asian academic who experienced difficulties – universities assuming she was non-native despite the fact that all her education including PhD in her country was in English.

    At a recent event, the South Asian teachers attending seemed to be licensed subject teachers (not ALT, not eikawa staff). I didn’t pry, but from talking to some of them, they intimated their partners are Japanese nationals.

15. I’ve only worked with Indians who had Canadian and South African passports. However, in the eikaiwa company I work for I’ve met teachers from Ghana, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Kenya, Botswana, Cameroon, Trinidad & Tobago, Korea, China, Indonesia… probably even more I’ve forgotten over the years. So I don’t think it’s impossible for someone to come here from India.

    I do know sometimes applicants are rejected if their accent is too thick, but that seems pretty rare these days. I’ve worked with teachers who have very strong Filipino or Chinese accents, and one teacher who seemed to only speak Singlish. And at least two Scotsmen. It feels like companies are slowly understanding that there’s more than one way to speak English.

    If you’re willing to give eikaiwa a try just to get your foot in the door, it could be a way to get in, do your one year and then find something better?

16. there are Indian schools in Japan, and the English teachers are Indians, teaching literature and whatnot, as well as ESL.

17. If you go the ALT route, it should be doable. I know a couple of Indian teachers and Nepali teachers as well. Good luck!

18. Thanks for asking this here , I’m Indian and still studying and tfleing is the route I want to take in the future, all these inputs really help me a lot

19. I know someone that gave up being a JET applicant from india for pursuing teaching elsewhere. In 2017/2018 the Japanese embassy opened up 3 JET positions in india for schools in Japan. Since then nothing. Before that also nothing. My advice to you is, don’t be an ALT. Don’t do the minimum wage job. The reason that not many Indians exist in Japanese eikawa market (apart from preference for white folks)is cause they are busy making way more in IT companies in Japan. Highly educated Indians with degrees from the US / UK, they didn’t spend 50k USD in education to get a minimum wage job in Japan. Hence they don’t exist.

20. I can’t give details as it’s not me but I know quite a few Indians with Indian passports who work in Japan teaching English..

21. Funny story. My daughter met an Indian ALT recently on a flight to France for the summer break. Unfortunately his passport was stolen during his travels, he was sent back to India, then wasn’t allowed on a flight back to Japan due to not having a re-entry permit on his emergency-issued passport. His employers weren’t able to help him, so he reached out to the girl he met on the plane. My daughter spent a day at the immigrations office getting the papers he needed to re-enter Japan. So long story short, yes I know of at least 1 Indian ALT (hopefully) in Japan.

22. I’m unfortunately not the best to talk about this, but I am originally from India (born and raised and all) but I moved to Canada at 20 and became a citizen there before coming here last year at 34.

    I only ended up in English teaching because my other plan (language school) didn’t end up working out. It also helps that my immediate supervisors are not Japanese, plus my passport is Canadian, and I basically have no Indian accent at all when I speak English not only because I’ve lived in Canada long enough, but because I was a weirdo in India who devoured western media from a young age.

    My personal suggestion would be trying to get in the country on something else first – like language school, unless you’re already N2 or such, then taking the time and whatever resources you have within the system to find something that works for you. It’s not particularly expensive, especially if it’s not Tokyo (I’m in Fukuoka myself). If you can coast through that for the first six months to a year, you’ll then be able to find something.

23. there are somany non-native english speaking teachers in japan, but personally ive tried a couple a tries but they somehow wanted native speaker, so it depends.

24. Hi there, I am Indian and an ALT 🙂 Coincidentally I also lived in the U.A.E (for 9 years).

    I moved to Japan with my family at a really young age and have PR. Moved to Dubai for uni and then back to Japan with my husband and we live here now.

    I’ve met loads of Indian ALT’s so rest assured, we do exist 🤣

    I have a super neutral accent so getting hired wasn’t a problem for me. I think it honestly depends on your visa status more than your accent because I cannot tell you how many Filipino ALT’s I’ve met over the years with really thick accents and they still get hired.

    I think it’s mainly the sponsorship that’s the difficult part. Feel free to message me if there is anything I can do to help 💗

25. >*Also is 250,000 yen livable amount in Japan?*

    It may seem like a lot, but depending on where you live and how much your rent is, taking out the health insurance, pension, tax, travel expenses, bills and others, its not enough. The 1st year would be cool, but once the man starts taking tax and all that, you’ll see that all that glitters isn’t gold.

26. Hey, there are a quite a few Indian English teachers in Japan! You could probably get a higher paying position at a University since you have a certificate. Many can get jobs at eikaiwas without prior teaching experience or licenses. Employers are biased against other nationalities ability to speak English (or biased against those who don’t have a British or American accent) so maybe emphasize your schooling and time lived abroad in your resume. 250,000 yen is a livable amount but most likely after taxes and benefits deductions, it’ll end up being 200,000 (which is also doable).

27. Just remember, it’s nothing personal about you, your qualifications, or your worth. You’re awesome! It’s your passport. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a chance. I have a U.S. passport, MA, and TESOL cert., already in Japan, but NO experience, and I was rejected by probably 80% of the places I applied to.

    Don’t give up! I know of Filipino and German friends who have the same qualifications as you who were able to get eikaiwa jobs. Of course, they had to search near and far for their jobs.

28. I would recommend that you try teaching in China with your qualifications! China pays a lot better than Japan and Korea and teachers from non Native English speaking countries can find jobs there… They have Lithuanians, Russians, Africans… all kinds of ESL teachers there!

    But if you’re absolutely set on teaching in Japan or Korea… Japan is better as you’d have some chance, even if tiny, to get in and work, especially with your schooling qualifications!

    South Korea, I’m sorry to say, is extremely discriminatory and all they want only those from the 7 English speaking countries as Native English Teachers.

29. My kid has English classes with a teacher from the Philippines in their kindergarten so there are definitely opportunities. Not much more help than that I’m afraid but at least it’s possible 🙂

30. I know a few ALTs from places like Mexico, Jamaica, Zimbabwe, and the Philippines, so it is certainly still possible for you.

    250K a month is definitely livable if you live in a small country town like I do, but it might be hard if you live in a major city.

31. There are gonna be quite a lot of Indian Alt in the coming months because i saw a post of Alt training specifically for Japan in the start of September in out city where i think i saw around more than 50 applicants. It will be quite competitive because its a government programme where they will pay for all the travel and dispatching process but the applicants had to pay for the fee for studying Japanese which is quite costly if you ask me . I already know that some of my teacher’s friends already work in Japan as a teacher… So yes there are Indian Alt in japan