Prospective ALT and Eikaiwa teachers Salary FYI

10 comments

1. [deleted]

2. >Serious question – what induces you to take these jobs at marginally above minimum wage?

   You know the answer……..

   >!anime!<

3. Who in the hell would work and sell their life’s time for 240,000 yen per month? That’s like what? 1400ish per hour?

   Home Depot back home pays more than that and I can smoke it up behind the dumpster out back lol.

4. I mean, to be fair… Osaka is more expensive than a good part of Japan.

   Also, I doubt many ALTs are trying to make a go of it on only their ALT salary.

   I know I wasn’t, when I was in that boat. I made more during the evenings than I did during the day. I also worked harder teaching in the evenings.

   Thankfully, I moved on to a private school. I work a lot harder, but… everything else is much better, too.

5. Okay okay, serious response just so that I’m not trolling.

   You could make 240,000 work for sure but it won’t be comfortable. Share house living plus not needing a car helps a lot. You’ll have to watch your monthly costs though and the second year health insurance is gonna suck for fresh ALTs. If you have debts back home, you’re gonna have a bad time. If you’re debt free and can downsize a lot, Japan cost of living is actually pretty good. You’ll need to somehow find a way to save up money and start building wealth ASAP though or you’ll never make any progress. So either cut costs or make more money and invest as much as you reasonably can.

   Don’t knock anybody up and don’t live outside your means until you acquire a better job that pays 300k+ minimum per month. I’d say 350k, but that’s just me. Even with that salary, your SO is gonna need to work if you’re thinking about a family.

   All of this to say though that if people keep wanting to come to Japan and work for such low wages, the companies are gonna just keep lowering and lowering them until they hit a break point.

6. Absolutely in favor of rasing ALT or teachers or anyone’s wages in Japan. The entire system needs to be rearranged and adjusted for inflation and societal change. However, i was stunned when i learned that i made more than most people in the rural area i lived as an ALT. More than if not equal to Japanese teachers, and certainly more than the majority of office workers, mechanics, or really anything. People can attack ALT’s all they want, as far as rural Japan goes, it seems to be a pretty high salary. After insurance and tax/pension, most basic Japanese jobs for many people pay less than 20,000$ a year here.

7. But isn’t 240,000 an appropriate wage given that the vast majority of eikaiwa instructors/ALTs don’t have legit teaching qualifications? That’s actually quite a high salary considering these jobs don’t require any teaching certifications or specific skills.

8. Keep in mind that the general range of starting salaries for people just out of college in Japan is from 210,000-240,000, depending on the industry.

   And a lot of eikaiwa teachers are people who’ve just finished college, so that probably feels like a good starter salary for them.

   And they don’t know what the norm is in Japan, i.e., that companies mitigate their low starting salaries with twice-yearly bonuses, health insurance and pension contributions, and dormitories or rent subsidies for young employees – so they don’t know what they are missing out on. And eikaiwa are *really* good at making the job sound easy and fun, at a livable wage.

   And if you’re out in the countryside of Japan,which is where the most people are sent, your rent and living costs are much lower. It winds up being affordable. So they think, “this isn’t so bad.”

   However, what eikaiwa DON’T tell you is that your salary never really goes up. Sure, you might get a raise every once in a while, but it never outpaces the rising costs of living, and the more you make, the higher your tax bracket. You’ll never really get ahead without taking on a second job, like getting private students or another part-time weekend gig.

   But by then, most of them have already left Japan. The ones who stay start to realize that they will be working two jobs for the rest of their lives, but by then they’ve have married a local and are planning to have kids – and now it’s too late to get out of eikaiwa because they have no other job experience or skills. In fact, they don’t even have teaching skills to get a real teaching job because eikaiwa is not real teaching.

   And we all know that these people will come to Japan regardless of how clearly we spell this out for them. People always have to learn the hard way.

9. >what induces you to take these jobs at marginally above minimum wage?

   Most people who come to Japan:

   1. Don’t know Japanese
   2. Don’t have any teaching qualifications
   3. Have no connections

   How are they supposed to get a job with a decent salary?

10. 24man a month is not terrible for the countryside if you’re blue collar worker who works full work weeks with no summer/winter vacation. It’s a pretty common amount to make if you have no skills and work for the local sanitization company cleaning out septic tanks and cleaning out public toilets. What sucks and should be illegal is dispatch companies being able to hire foreigners with degrees. That’s not a ‘dispatch’ company level of education and normally people with degrees would not and should not have to approach dispatch companies. But it will continue to work in Japan because people fetishize living here.

    BTW interac DOES NOT pay 24 man a month even with the countryside bonus. If you average out even their highest wages it barely scrapes 24man only if you include a high gas reimbursement and inaka bonus.

    As far as supporting a family on low wages, it’s possible if you live in the countryside and already own a home that’s paid for. I suppose it’s possible but miserable if you are renting and raising a family.