Hello everyone. I’m an American with several years of English teaching experience at a university in China, and I’ve considered maybe relocating to Japan, but I don’t know too much about the Japanese system. I’ve done some googling and searching around on this subreddit and have some questions.
If possible, I would be interested in working at a university in Japan too. Currently, my position is officially “waijiao” (外教), literally “foreign teacher”. I’m a part of the foreign language department and teach anywhere from 6-12, 1.5 hour classes a week. From what I’ve seen, it looks like the Japanese equivalent might be an ALT? However it also looks like most teaching positions in Japanese universities are not just teaching but also research positions, and you are expected to be publishing as well. Is this correct? As a waijiao, I am not expected to publish, which is nice. Also I’m not expected to be at school except when I have class, unlike the other teachers who are there for the entire work day. It seems I would not get such a cushy position in Japan. I don’t have a master’s degree in TESL, so I would be largely relying on my experience to get hired. (I do have a master’s degree in anthropology from the university I’m currently teaching at so I do have some graduate level experience.) Is having that master’s degree that important? I do speak fluent Chinese and conversational Japanese, so hopefully that would show my cultural adaptability to a degree. As for pay, I’ve heard it’s generally higher in Japan than in China, but the cost of living is higher. I personally wouldn’t want to live in a major city like Tokyo or Osaka, so I don’t know if that would change anything. I wouldn’t mind living in a more rural locale. When converted to USD, I don’t make a lot of money here, but I’m able to save the majority of it. I’ve heard saving money in Japan can be tough. Is that generally true?
Also, I am a practicing Catholic. I don’t intend to discuss religion, I just bring this up because I know there are Catholic schools in Japan as well. I’ve heard their religion is more so just “window dressing”, but I was wondering if being Catholic can help in finding a job at such an institution.
Any and all help/advice would be appreciated.
9 comments
ALT is primarily for elementary through high school. At university, a lot of professors are used as English teachers, but they’re not ALTs.
To my understanding, those positions are hard to get, and masters is an effective minimum requirement.
ALT pay is alright in ideal circumstances, but decreasing. By contrast, I’m told that foreign teachers in China are paid an obscene amount for the position, though I can’t say one way or the other personally.
That said, at least being in the countryside makes saving more financially viable than in the cities, but life will be more restrictive.
As for hours, not sure about uni, but I’m not sure you’d get away with just 18 hours a week at work. You’ll be working a bit less than full time, and though they won’t all be close hours, for the ‘expected’ work hours, they’ll have you there, even if only as a desk warmer.
For ALT at least, your conversational Japanese won’t mean much, and your fluent Chinese will mean basically nothing. Those skills aren’t particularly useful for jobs that expect you to use almost exclusively English, which is true of both ALT and uni.
Maybe University is different, but from what I’ve seen pay is more in China. I had shorter working hours and more disposable income (by far) in China. China wore me down, as it seems to with a lot of people. Japan does the same. Quality of life here is good, it’s clean and safe. The work culture sucks.
Have you given any thought to Taiwan? It a nice mid point between what is good and bad about China and japan. I really enjoyed it there, besides the heat.
You should be trying r/movingtoJapan.
From what you describe of your background, you have zero chance of getting a regular university job in Japan: you need a relevant advanced degree—you might be able to slid with an MA in some schools or fields, but I doubt an MA in an unrelated field from China will cut it—and, for most places, fluent Japanese, as most of the work of university teachers is in Japanese. You will also need to have published, as for most schools teachers contributing to the field is a requirement for accreditation.
You might be able to wrangle a limited-term job, but it’ll be limited to a set number of years and usually will not be an in to any effectively tenured positions that come up at that institution.
Salaries for language specialists are reasonable for regular faculty members, but for temporary positions they’re not very good; for part-time teachers they’re apparently not high at all: I have a part-time appointment I got 25 years ago and, apparently, new hires for the same position are being paid about 33% of the wage I get.
As for the religion bit, some religious schools are more religious than others: I know of one that still requires daily chapel attendance for first- and second-year students and another ostensibly Christian institution from which I have never knowingly encountered a single Christian. (I don’t mean to imply they’re not there, but one would never realize it’s a Christian school without looking at literature produced by the university.)
In Japan, universities have three types of jobs for teachers.
1. Part time lecturers (非常勤) – These are paid by the class. You aren’t given an office, facility, or anything. Basically, you come in, teach your class and leave. A typical hijoukin gets 1-3 classes, but can get 8+ in rare cases. I forget, but it’s only like 100,000-150,000 JPY per class, per semester. So, not really enough to live on. Also, I am not sure if these jobs can directly sponsor visas. The typical hijoukin person either strings many different hijoukin jobs at different universities together or they are a spouse of someone who works. A part time employee can’t work part time for more than 5 years by law (8 with extension? I’m not sure). So, this is really temporary work. There is no research requirement, but unless the person wants to be stuck in a dead end job will still research on the side.
2. Full time lecturers (常勤) – These are normally salary like faculty, but sometimes by the class. This is somewhere in between hijoukin and faculty. You normally get a full load of 7-10 classes. There is no research requirement, but again many do research on the side.
3. Faculty – This is your normal assistant, associate, and full professor job. You only get 1-4 classes. Research, grant applications, student guidance, administration duties, meetings, etc. is expected and takes up most of your time. Private schools typically have more classes but less research. 3.b. Technically, there is another type of job including post doc and researchers. But, these aren’t full faculty and they focus on research and not teaching.
Now, about some of your questions.
I heard for academia, pay is more in China than Japan. In Japan, at public universities, the pay is standardized across all departments and all schools. Maybe it’s because I teach computer science, but when I see job postings for China, they are way more money than I make and they normally include huge joining bonuses and housing allowances.
My university moved toward a requirement of needing a PhD or equivalent to teach. This includes language teachers. But, smaller or not as high universities, Masters is okay. For hijoukin, the subject you have your Masters in isn’t as important as being a faculty member. If you want to be a faculty member and teach language, you should be a linguistics major.
I don’t think knowing fluent Chinese will help much. Chinese classes are taught in Japanese and there are plenty of Chinese teachers that are fluent in Japanese already living in Japan. Chinese obviously won’t help teaching English. Knowing Japanese will obviously help, but unless you are fluent, maybe not that much.
I don’t have anything new to add about ALT work, university work, or anything related to that, so I’ll stay out of that. As far as Catholic schools go, though, at least here in Okinawa there are several, and all the kids I know from there are at least marginally Catholic. IDK if that’d help you get a job, but private schools generally want more experienced teachers, and you seem to be experienced. The only thing that might hold you back is your Japanese level, because these aren’t “international” schools, virtually everyone there is from Okinawa or has ties to Okinawa (some overseas Okinawans attend that school). Couldn’t hurt to ask, but it may he difficult to communicate with a low Japanese level. Here’s some links, idk if they even have email tho. There may be contact info on the diocesan website (Diocese of Naha) but idk.
Kaisei Elementary (Ishigaki): http://uminohoshi.com/
Okinawa Catholic Elementary (Ginowan): https://oces.catholic-okinawa.ed.jp/
Okinawa Catholic Junior/Senior HS: https://ocjs.catholic-okinawa.ed.jp/
There’s a kindergarten at basically every church, but at least at the one I go to, the nun who is from the Philippines teaches them so you’re probably overqualified/not needed.
Honestly? You wouldn’t make it at any Japanese universities. Minimum qualifications include an MA and degree in the field you will be teaching in.. so if you teach English it should be something related to English teaching not anthropology..
I recommend staying in China or going to Taiwan or maybe Korea. I knew of a few guys who got jobs at a university in Korea (countryside) teaching English. Eye roll. They were not very qualified either…
Don’t
Expect quite a lot less money than China
> As for pay, I’ve heard it’s generally higher in Japan than in China, but the cost of living is higher…
> …I wouldn’t mind living in a more rural locale. When converted to USD, I don’t make a lot of money here, but I’m able to save the majority of it. I’ve heard saving money in Japan can be tough. Is that generally true?
1. I’m outta date here but in my day people came over from China because the pay was higher but were shocked by outgoing costs because Japan’s a highly developed country. My developing world experience is restricted to Vietnam (so not China) but my opinion is that Vietnam’s way more expensive than Japan because all the western/Japanese goods are imported for the MEGA rich (there’s lotsa random multi-millionaires working in government). You can slum it up and save but meh. I’m a snob and find Japan to be VERY affordable for the highly developed country that it is. With the caveat… you can’t get the same dirt cheap prices that you can haggle out in the developing world.
2. Personal opinion… I wouldn’t bother trying to save heaps of money on an EFL salary. Dunno how to say this tactfully but I loved my time as an EFL teacher in Japan. I lived in a small town, had a VERY basic gaijin flat on top of a ~50’s shack (which doubled as our school) and earned ~330k a month. As a single dude I saved a little bit of cash for a rainy day. However I shamelessly enjoyed regular piss-ups, went on outings with friends (usually free/cheap as a local would drive a group of us somewhere) and bought cool stuff. In terms of retirement savings and property investments [really trying to be sensitive here]… I’m glad I didn’t scrimp together a large portion of my eikaiwa salary for retirement because it woulda been so insignificant in comparison to even a year worth of my current retirement savings. My current residence would take ~100 years to buy on an eikaiwa salary (it’s a regular family home in a nice suburb, not a palace) and I currently put more than my yearly eikaiwa salary into a retirement fund each year. Don’t wanna be elitist but I encourage people to enjoy themselves while doing EFL in Japan as it’s gonna be virtually impossible to put together more than a sizeable amount of savings on that sort salary. Also the job’s stressful enough… you’ve gotta look after yourself during your downtime rather than stressing about savings!