Hey guys I was just wondering what the typical schedule of events looks like after the initial landing in japan and orientation and whatnot. When will we start teaching? Will we have time to explore or travel or are we gonna go straight to work?
::EDIT:: In short no real time for travel post arrival. You should expect to get there Sunday, 2 day orientation starts Monday. You leave for your placement Wednesday, where you will have a Prefecture orientation at some point too. The document is pretty comprehensive
ESID but most likely you’ll be busy the first few days at your placement getting stuff like banking, phone, etc. set up.
After that? Most likely deskwarming considering July and most of August is summer vacation time but there are a few lucky folks that don’t have to.
You mean after you arrive in your placement? It’ll be summer break, and for the vast majority of people summer break means desk warming either at your base school or your BOE. This will be time when you’ll be setting up utilities, familiarizing yourself with the textbooks and cirriculum, meeting coworkers, etc. There won’t be any classes until the end of August/early September. Use this time to adjust, study Japanese, prepare material, etc. Depending on your placement you may be asked to help with an English camp or nursery school during this time. If you want to travel you’ll need to use PTO
It depends, my placement had a couple weeks for us to get settled in before we even went to school for the first time. But I know some people started the day/couple days after they arrived. There was also a bunch of events going on (festival season) and my supervisor tried to show /introduce us around town as much as possible.
You won’t have much time to explore/travel in general. Unless it’s on the weekends and/or public holidays.
Hope you like your desk nice and warm.
Other than that. esid.
Obviously EISD, but I arrived in the middle of COVID, so I had 2 weeks of quarantine. The day I got out of quarantine I went to my placement and met with one of the JTE’s that would help me get settled in. Then the very next day I started work and had 4 classes. This was in October so it was already in the middle of the trimester. Since I didn’t get any days off between getting to my placement and starting work my school was cool with my supervisor and I leaving in the middle of the work day to set up stuff up. I also needed to day a couple days of nenkyu as well to furnish my apartment and set up some services
Our schedule looked like this:
Day 0 – Land in Tokyo and check into the Keio hotel. When you get to the hotel, they do a very quick briefing and give you some orientation booklets and papers, explain things, etc. How much time you have in this day will depend on what time your flight lands. We landed in the evening, so we didn’t really have much time to do anything.
Day 1 & 2 – Orientation. Orientation begins in the morning and goes on all day. Around dinnertime, you’re free to do whatever you want.
Day 3 – You leave the Keio and travel to your placements.
Once you get to your placements, I believe the vast majority of us begin working right away. The students are on holiday, though, so you won’t be teaching. However, you’ll likely be busy settling in – getting your apartment in order, registering with city hall, setting up utilities/phone/Internet/banking/maybe a car, unpacking, and learning the ropes of your school(s). Prepare for tons of paperwork.
It’ll also be a good time to get to your know JTEs and start to think about what kinds of activities you’d like to do during your tenure once classes start up again.
There might be events or other things your school might ask you to participate in. For example, I was asked to help our English Club students prepare for a speech competition and then was asked to go to the actual competition. This was around the end of August.
However, there are a minority of ALTs who do not have to show up to work during school holidays but I wouldn’t bank on it. ESID strongly applies.
I arrived during covid so the timeline was a little different, but once I arrived at my placement I spent the first week or two being taken around by my supervisor with the other arrivals to set up all of our things like city hall, bank, phone etc (despite it being during semester). The time between landing in Japan and starting my first class was about 4 weeks for me (2 weeks quarantine, 2 weeks orientation). So while you might not start classes right away, I would say definitely count out any time for travel and exploring before teaching though. Although exploring your new neighbourhood can be just as fun and exciting!
> Will we have time to explore or travel or are we gonna go straight to work?
Some places will take a little while longer to start you at work, but don’t think about travelling right now. You’ll have plenty of time for that later, just focus on getting settled in and sorting your stuff out. I had about a week between arriving at my placement and starting school every day, but those weren’t free days, I was fully occupied getting things set up and sorted.
I landed August 15th, went to my placement August 17th. Once I arrived they said “see ya, show up for work in the 1st”. It was good because I needed to set up an entirely empty apartment; so I had a few weeks to settle in.
Other people had to deskwarm as soon as they got there.
It’s really ESID. The only consistent thing is that there is a 2-3 day orientation.
Expect to be working right away. I had a lot of introductions, a trip to the city to help get set up, and stuff like that and think I was into classes after after 2 days (excluding weekend)
After three days of orientation, I was deskwarming with other ALTs at a place called “the center” for a whole month before teaching my first lesson
Depends if you’re JHS or ES, and how many schools you teach at (ESID basically). But for a month or so when I first got here, I spent my days at the BoE or community center desk warming since it was still summer break. During that time I was busy getting paperwork, bank accounts, etc. set up as well as visiting where my schools were and greeting the few teachers that were in there. I also made a bomb self-intro ppt (for different levels since I had to do 1st-9th grade).
I don’t recommend traveling. Best to get your bearings on your town and the people around you as well as other ALTs in your area, bc they’ll be a lot of help.
First few days were me getting carted around like a doll, for all intents and purposes. In my case trip to city hall and getting resident card and forms filed and updated was done right after I arrived at my placement city, literally on the way to school from the airport. Then there was also, in the next days going to the bank. Going to try and get help figuring out phone plan (which I ended up doing myself anyway). Getting introduced to the other visit schools (I’m a SHS ALT and have a base school, as opposed to meeting at the BoE.)
Especially for the bank and the phone stuff, yeah; getting carted around like a doll – be present, stamp your seal on papers, and pretty much say nothing. (I can speak Japanese relatively well, but for conversations about banking and accounts, I didn’t catch anything.)
If you arrive to Japan at end of July-ish and then the few days in Tokyo, likely you will be arriving to your placement sometime at the beginning of August. For me, high schools were out and pretty much just started their summer break. However, yes, straight to work the very next day. First introduction to desk warming. Classes pretty much did not start for a month after arriving too. So plenty of time to, sit at your desk, plan or begin thinking about what you will teach (self-intro lesson), sit at your desk, chat and become acquainted and friendly with the teachers around you and your JTEs, sit at your desk, and explore your city and area (after work and on weekends). Oh, and sit at your desk.
I’d imagine it’s ESID, but during this time I had several “work from home days” when nobody was apparently at school and everyone is supposed to work from home. There was, in a very wink-wink-nudge-nudge way, a lot of emphasis put on “Nobody is going to check on you” phrase of “You’re supposed to be working at home.”
​
Happy travels and congrats on making it! Generally, ESID pending, your school / JTEs will likely take care of a lot of the complex behind-the-scenes and on-paper stuff of moving. So you can focus on settling in and getting acquainted.
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This has a pretty in-depth rundown of what you can expect. Page 16 beginning from “Arrival in Tokyo”
[https://jetprogramme.org/wp-content/MAIN-PAGE/COMMON/publications/%E2%98%852023GIH_E.pdf](https://jetprogramme.org/wp-content/MAIN-PAGE/COMMON/publications/%E2%98%852023GIH_E.pdf)
::EDIT:: In short no real time for travel post arrival. You should expect to get there Sunday, 2 day orientation starts Monday. You leave for your placement Wednesday, where you will have a Prefecture orientation at some point too. The document is pretty comprehensive
ESID but most likely you’ll be busy the first few days at your placement getting stuff like banking, phone, etc. set up.
After that? Most likely deskwarming considering July and most of August is summer vacation time but there are a few lucky folks that don’t have to.
You mean after you arrive in your placement? It’ll be summer break, and for the vast majority of people summer break means desk warming either at your base school or your BOE. This will be time when you’ll be setting up utilities, familiarizing yourself with the textbooks and cirriculum, meeting coworkers, etc. There won’t be any classes until the end of August/early September. Use this time to adjust, study Japanese, prepare material, etc. Depending on your placement you may be asked to help with an English camp or nursery school during this time. If you want to travel you’ll need to use PTO
It depends, my placement had a couple weeks for us to get settled in before we even went to school for the first time. But I know some people started the day/couple days after they arrived. There was also a bunch of events going on (festival season) and my supervisor tried to show /introduce us around town as much as possible.
You won’t have much time to explore/travel in general. Unless it’s on the weekends and/or public holidays.
Hope you like your desk nice and warm.
Other than that. esid.
Obviously EISD, but I arrived in the middle of COVID, so I had 2 weeks of quarantine. The day I got out of quarantine I went to my placement and met with one of the JTE’s that would help me get settled in. Then the very next day I started work and had 4 classes. This was in October so it was already in the middle of the trimester. Since I didn’t get any days off between getting to my placement and starting work my school was cool with my supervisor and I leaving in the middle of the work day to set up stuff up. I also needed to day a couple days of nenkyu as well to furnish my apartment and set up some services
Our schedule looked like this:
Day 0 – Land in Tokyo and check into the Keio hotel. When you get to the hotel, they do a very quick briefing and give you some orientation booklets and papers, explain things, etc. How much time you have in this day will depend on what time your flight lands. We landed in the evening, so we didn’t really have much time to do anything.
Day 1 & 2 – Orientation. Orientation begins in the morning and goes on all day. Around dinnertime, you’re free to do whatever you want.
Day 3 – You leave the Keio and travel to your placements.
Once you get to your placements, I believe the vast majority of us begin working right away. The students are on holiday, though, so you won’t be teaching. However, you’ll likely be busy settling in – getting your apartment in order, registering with city hall, setting up utilities/phone/Internet/banking/maybe a car, unpacking, and learning the ropes of your school(s). Prepare for tons of paperwork.
It’ll also be a good time to get to your know JTEs and start to think about what kinds of activities you’d like to do during your tenure once classes start up again.
There might be events or other things your school might ask you to participate in. For example, I was asked to help our English Club students prepare for a speech competition and then was asked to go to the actual competition. This was around the end of August.
However, there are a minority of ALTs who do not have to show up to work during school holidays but I wouldn’t bank on it. ESID strongly applies.
I arrived during covid so the timeline was a little different, but once I arrived at my placement I spent the first week or two being taken around by my supervisor with the other arrivals to set up all of our things like city hall, bank, phone etc (despite it being during semester). The time between landing in Japan and starting my first class was about 4 weeks for me (2 weeks quarantine, 2 weeks orientation). So while you might not start classes right away, I would say definitely count out any time for travel and exploring before teaching though. Although exploring your new neighbourhood can be just as fun and exciting!
> Will we have time to explore or travel or are we gonna go straight to work?
Some places will take a little while longer to start you at work, but don’t think about travelling right now. You’ll have plenty of time for that later, just focus on getting settled in and sorting your stuff out. I had about a week between arriving at my placement and starting school every day, but those weren’t free days, I was fully occupied getting things set up and sorted.
I landed August 15th, went to my placement August 17th. Once I arrived they said “see ya, show up for work in the 1st”. It was good because I needed to set up an entirely empty apartment; so I had a few weeks to settle in.
Other people had to deskwarm as soon as they got there.
It’s really ESID. The only consistent thing is that there is a 2-3 day orientation.
Expect to be working right away. I had a lot of introductions, a trip to the city to help get set up, and stuff like that and think I was into classes after after 2 days (excluding weekend)
After three days of orientation, I was deskwarming with other ALTs at a place called “the center” for a whole month before teaching my first lesson
Depends if you’re JHS or ES, and how many schools you teach at (ESID basically). But for a month or so when I first got here, I spent my days at the BoE or community center desk warming since it was still summer break. During that time I was busy getting paperwork, bank accounts, etc. set up as well as visiting where my schools were and greeting the few teachers that were in there. I also made a bomb self-intro ppt (for different levels since I had to do 1st-9th grade).
I don’t recommend traveling. Best to get your bearings on your town and the people around you as well as other ALTs in your area, bc they’ll be a lot of help.
First few days were me getting carted around like a doll, for all intents and purposes. In my case trip to city hall and getting resident card and forms filed and updated was done right after I arrived at my placement city, literally on the way to school from the airport. Then there was also, in the next days going to the bank. Going to try and get help figuring out phone plan (which I ended up doing myself anyway). Getting introduced to the other visit schools (I’m a SHS ALT and have a base school, as opposed to meeting at the BoE.)
Especially for the bank and the phone stuff, yeah; getting carted around like a doll – be present, stamp your seal on papers, and pretty much say nothing. (I can speak Japanese relatively well, but for conversations about banking and accounts, I didn’t catch anything.)
If you arrive to Japan at end of July-ish and then the few days in Tokyo, likely you will be arriving to your placement sometime at the beginning of August. For me, high schools were out and pretty much just started their summer break. However, yes, straight to work the very next day. First introduction to desk warming. Classes pretty much did not start for a month after arriving too. So plenty of time to, sit at your desk, plan or begin thinking about what you will teach (self-intro lesson), sit at your desk, chat and become acquainted and friendly with the teachers around you and your JTEs, sit at your desk, and explore your city and area (after work and on weekends). Oh, and sit at your desk.
I’d imagine it’s ESID, but during this time I had several “work from home days” when nobody was apparently at school and everyone is supposed to work from home. There was, in a very wink-wink-nudge-nudge way, a lot of emphasis put on “Nobody is going to check on you” phrase of “You’re supposed to be working at home.”
​
Happy travels and congrats on making it! Generally, ESID pending, your school / JTEs will likely take care of a lot of the complex behind-the-scenes and on-paper stuff of moving. So you can focus on settling in and getting acquainted.