They are referring to the working holiday visa which is granted under certain conditions to those between the ages of 18 & 30 from CERTAIN and SPECIFIC countries. No that doesn't include the USA.
English teaching in Japan. Great time or Complete Nightmare???
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I am surprise that they let an Asian to be an English teacher , doesn't matter that you're born here in canada/the states, have perfect accent and have a BEd or something
, they all want Caucasian looking people even if you are a white trash, high school dropped out, druggies , etc What?
I know plenty of asians working as English teachers in Japan (and elsewhere in Asia). I even know American-born Japanese who don't speak a lick of Japanese and are doing just fine as English teachers. And plenty of other asians who do speak fluent Japanese (as well as English) who have no problem getting jobs as English teachers.
Having an international (ie: non-Japanese) background is what most companies are looking for, not whether you're white or yellow. But in a country where the population is 93%+ ethnic Japanese, it just so happens that the people who have any background outside of Japan are mostly caucasian. But those statistics don't mean that being caucasian is the only qualification necessary, or that being ethnically asian hurts every employment opportunity as an English teacher.
I am a retired American, age 63, with a master's degree and 21 years of experience teaching English in high school and 12 years teaching mythology courses (which require writing essays in English) at the university level. But my retirement income is only about $2,000 US a month, so I would need to teach part time to help cover the rent.
Would my age prevent me from becoming a long-term resident in Japan? And is it easier to find part-time employment teaching English if I do not expect any benefits, such as housing assistance, free transportation to Japan, etc.
Senior Idol
Would my age prevent me from becoming a long-term resident in Japan? And is it easier to find part-time employment teaching English if I do not expect any benefits, such as housing assistance, free transportation to Japan, etc.
Senior Idol
Sorry to say but yep. Age is a big issue here with most companies so unless you are a stellar teacher, your age can easily hold you back. As for expecting or not, it doesn't make a lick of difference.
As an american, your number one issue will be to find a company willing on sponsoring you for a visa which could certainly be a tough thing especially since you aren't in Japan. Remeber, teaching English as a subject and teaching English as a language are completely different ballgames.
As an american, your number one issue will be to find a company willing on sponsoring you for a visa which could certainly be a tough thing especially since you aren't in Japan. Remeber, teaching English as a subject and teaching English as a language are completely different ballgames.
dont where in Japan u stayed but my experience was more like "u asian/chinese? lol gtfo".
most chinese at my school had to work at udon shops or gyoza shops from 8pm to 8am in order to cover the school fees.
only white ones where giving private lessons and making a fortune. same goes for Nova etc
tbh though I'd rather prefer to do shit jobs then whore myself out to those companies. and they cut back on employess recently I heard.
there was a documentation about that on youtube I think.
If you mean Chinese by nationality then sure, I wouldn't be surprised. Chinese that are born and raised in China have little qualification (or desire, even) to work in education, and it stands that caucasians (who are almost all born and educated in western countries where English is a primary language) would be preferrable.
But there are plenty of people who are ethnically Chinese but are American/European by nationality (born and raised in English speaking countries, thus are basically fully qualified) that have no significant disadvantages compared to their caucasian colleagues in the field of English education in Japan.
There are certain ways in which the race card is true in Japan, but it's usually only in a specific context (in this case, ethnicity vs nationality).
I also wouldn't be surprised that most students get turned down, period, for English teaching jobs. Student visas (in Japan) prohibit any kind of full-time work, so you would be limited to grunt work. Unless you've interviewed every Chinese and caucasian at your school, it's difficult to know for sure exactly what kinds of visas everyone had (plus, if Japan is more lenient in giving work visas to American passport holders vs Chinese passport holders). The simple answer is to just say they're being racist against Chinese, but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence against that anyway.
I would also be wary of documentaries. Most are good for a basic source of information, but most also exaggerate their claims for ratings. JapanProbe covers these kinds of documentaries from time to time, and you'll notice that the interviews typically consist only of 2 or 3 people, even though they claim everyone is affected in the exact same way. You should also look for cherry-picked interviewees, clever editing, suggestive questions (badgering), and so on.
I'm not saying Chinese people in Japan have never been on the receiving end of race-related antagonism (it does happen), but that doesn't automatically mean that every Japanese is racist against Chinese, no matter what context you put it in.
But there are plenty of people who are ethnically Chinese but are American/European by nationality (born and raised in English speaking countries, thus are basically fully qualified) that have no significant disadvantages compared to their caucasian colleagues in the field of English education in Japan.
There are certain ways in which the race card is true in Japan, but it's usually only in a specific context (in this case, ethnicity vs nationality).
I also wouldn't be surprised that most students get turned down, period, for English teaching jobs. Student visas (in Japan) prohibit any kind of full-time work, so you would be limited to grunt work. Unless you've interviewed every Chinese and caucasian at your school, it's difficult to know for sure exactly what kinds of visas everyone had (plus, if Japan is more lenient in giving work visas to American passport holders vs Chinese passport holders). The simple answer is to just say they're being racist against Chinese, but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence against that anyway.
I would also be wary of documentaries. Most are good for a basic source of information, but most also exaggerate their claims for ratings. JapanProbe covers these kinds of documentaries from time to time, and you'll notice that the interviews typically consist only of 2 or 3 people, even though they claim everyone is affected in the exact same way. You should also look for cherry-picked interviewees, clever editing, suggestive questions (badgering), and so on.
I'm not saying Chinese people in Japan have never been on the receiving end of race-related antagonism (it does happen), but that doesn't automatically mean that every Japanese is racist against Chinese, no matter what context you put it in.
It doesn’t matter if you are under or over 30, you can still get a job as an English teacher in Japan.
There is no money in teaching and in comparison to most countries being a teacher isn’t really seen as a career. Even if you are able to get a job at a school or university you will have to get a few other part-time jobs just to survived. Unless you are happy living in a small box sized room and having not savings.
I would seriously recommend thinking twice before becoming an English teacher in Japan. Don’t get me wrong, if you are a teenager or student on a gap year, teaching in Japan can be a wonderful experience. You can learn lots of different things about the Japanese culture and study some of the language. However if you are looking for a permanent job for the future teaching in Japan isn’t suitable in my opinion.
Hope this helps ^-^
Not if you have no degree. Especially if you are American.
I say this because.....
If you are American without a degree, you are pretty well fucked. Americans don't get the Working Holiday Visas that other countries get (for various reasons).
If you are in a country that has an agreement regarding Working Holiday Visas, then you still must be under 30 to get said visa. If you are over 30, you can NOT get it so say the agreement rules.
HOWEVER
If you have a degree and find an English company to sponsor you, then good and groovy. Come on over, just don't bother making teaching a career. Use that style of job as a stepping stone. Lord knows I did.
Now is a bad time honestly. You'll barely be able to save and the market is flooded with desperate teachers for 2 reasons. 1, the eikaiwa jobs are dwindling and the starting ALT jobs keep paying lower and lower so people look to escape as soon as they get here, and 2, the economies are bad in the US and UK, so people in those areas are looking for any job they can, including teaching overseas. It's not that bad of a short term career compared to what you may end up doing in the US with a similar degree (managing a Barnes and Noble bookstore or something), but your opportunities will be extremely narrow. You can get an MA or PhD and increase your chances working at a university, which I think is a respectable career, though the universities sometimes don't treat foreign English professors like Japanese ones. Really learning Japanese to break into their world is a major commitment that seems harder for English teachers to accomplish. Also, the Japanese work world is pretty bleak. Long hours, lower pay pay hour in comparison, fewer holidays. The people who I think have the most fun here are college students and, well, young, rich long-term travelers. Which reminds me, if you're an English teacher in Tokyo, get used to being stuck in an English teacher bubble. The foreign college/rich kids and the younger/cooler Japanese people who can speak English tend to stick together, the "professionals" love rubbing their awesomeness in English teachers' faces and tend to stick around other foreign professionals. There may not be such weird social cliques in other cities with fewer English speaking foreigners.
Just wanted to add, the reason many come and stay here is the women (or men). It certainly becomes harder to leave if you're into Japanese and you live somewhere where you're constantly surrounded by them. Even if you had no preference, the fact most Japanese dress really well and aren't overweight makes them more attractive than the average person in many western countries. However, the reality is the 7+ star women often don't speak any English nor have a real desire to leave Japan, so you'll constantly see these cute/beautiful people you can't really date unless you have low standards or your Japanese ability is quite good and you're a player. But chances are, the not so good looking ones you glance over are more likely to speak English, and tend to be the ones you'll see most foreigners with. Again, your odds finding the better looking younger women substantially increase if you come here as a student rather than a teacher.
Just wanted to add, the reason many come and stay here is the women (or men). It certainly becomes harder to leave if you're into Japanese and you live somewhere where you're constantly surrounded by them. Even if you had no preference, the fact most Japanese dress really well and aren't overweight makes them more attractive than the average person in many western countries. However, the reality is the 7+ star women often don't speak any English nor have a real desire to leave Japan, so you'll constantly see these cute/beautiful people you can't really date unless you have low standards or your Japanese ability is quite good and you're a player. But chances are, the not so good looking ones you glance over are more likely to speak English, and tend to be the ones you'll see most foreigners with. Again, your odds finding the better looking younger women substantially increase if you come here as a student rather than a teacher.
I think this is quite risky to try to pull off when you first come here. The standard starting fee for private teaching, at least in Tokyo, is 3000-4000 yen unless you have a lot of experience already and start getting higher paying customers. Also, competition is much higher in Tokyo. Most people I know who have tried to string together privates around here complain it's hard to find people and then they don't show up etc. Perhaps if you've made the right connections over time or are extremely ambitious about finding privates, you can pull off a solid, reliable schedule full of 6000/hour lessons. I haven't met anyone who has gotten anything near that yet.
3-4000? Wow, you certainly have been under-charging. Here in Yokohama (read: Tokyo), every time I've done a private (along with any of the other folks I know who moonlight as English teachers), 6000 is the average going rate.
You should work a little more outside of your comfort zone if you're having trouble finding privates. There's not enough people to teach out in Yokohama, same with Kawasaki especially with the kaboodles of immigrants (Chinese and Koreans mostly close to Kawasaki station and Noborito). There's also a lot of work to be had in Chiba. Get out of "The" city and look around, if you're having trouble finding privates, you won't for long.
As for being ambitious, I have a positive personality. I'm business fluent and I know how to teach a proper lesson, not just tell someone I'm going to charge them 3000 yen to sit in a coffee shop for an hour and talk about my hometown. What kind of people are you teaching? What are you teaching them? Are you basically going on a paid buddy-date for an hour or actually teaching a lesson?
Think about those before you answer. I don't mean that as an insult, but if you're not getting many clients, maybe you should re-think the way you (or your friends) teach.
You should work a little more outside of your comfort zone if you're having trouble finding privates. There's not enough people to teach out in Yokohama, same with Kawasaki especially with the kaboodles of immigrants (Chinese and Koreans mostly close to Kawasaki station and Noborito). There's also a lot of work to be had in Chiba. Get out of "The" city and look around, if you're having trouble finding privates, you won't for long.
As for being ambitious, I have a positive personality. I'm business fluent and I know how to teach a proper lesson, not just tell someone I'm going to charge them 3000 yen to sit in a coffee shop for an hour and talk about my hometown. What kind of people are you teaching? What are you teaching them? Are you basically going on a paid buddy-date for an hour or actually teaching a lesson?
Think about those before you answer. I don't mean that as an insult, but if you're not getting many clients, maybe you should re-think the way you (or your friends) teach.
Right, most people who do private lessons don't know what they're doing, hence the average starting rate being lower than what you charge. I imagine your friends in this field are experienced like you are as well. But look at the rates on findateacher.net. I admit I am not trained/experienced in this myself and would not get away with charging 6000 yen per lesson for very long. You could explain how you gained this experience. The way you make it sound however, just about any educated bloke can hop on over here and starting raking in 6000 yen per hour on private lessons left and right, and those who can't are lazy and/or idiots.
It's not really "experience", it's just having common sense.
If you were to pay someone ￥6000/hr for Japanese lessons, you would expect there to be some goal at the end of your lessons (whether it be passing JLPT, being able to read some book, having completed a specific text, etc), and that your teacher would be able to lay out the steps that would help you achieve that goal.
Taking that from the teacher's perspective, that means you should have a goal for the student (eg: a series of conversations that the student will be able to have), and the accompanying lesson plans and exercises (eg: vocabulary drills, sentence completions, what have you).
That doesn't mean that you need to be a professional and publish your own textbooks (there are plenty out there you could just make your students buy), but that is the bare minimum one would expect from paying for language lessons. It is not (quite literally) just meeting with your student at Starbucks and randomly droning in English until they finally understand what you're saying.
As long as you can conduct a structured lesson plan (set a goal for a lesson, set exercises that will help the student practice that goal, and review that lesson's practice), that's all the "expertise" that you would need.
Any "experience" beyond that is just people-skills: knowing how to read students when they're struggling, identifying their weak spots, changing lesson plans on-the-fly to address those weak spots, recognizing what types of exercises the student is successful with and exploiting that mode of thinking to make better/more effective exercises, custom-tailoring goals to meet individual students' abilities/needs, etc.
Given the nature of this site, I want to dispel one ridiculous myth that can save many a lot of money and trouble if it is their primary motivation for coming here. Women do not flock to foreigners like magnets in Tokyo (excluding 30+ year old less attractive women in Roppongi bars), and this includes school girls. Most are afraid to talk to boys their own age. That said, there are many nice looking women here, and like I said before, this becomes one reason men find it hard to leave once over here, not really the fact they're getting laid left and right (as I have found that is rarely the case, except with friends with very lower standards into older women). I honestly think it takes more work to really get with nice looking women over here than it is in the west. If you're lazy and not outgoing, you may find yourself being one of the foreigners who are perpetually single (I've met/know quite a few).
Got it. I've never bothered to venture into private teaching, aside from a few quick cafe-type meetings. What you say is common sense of course. Anyway, another issue with only doing private lessons is the visa. I don't think you can do this unless you're lucky enough to have a working holiday visa.
If you ONLY teach private lessons, you CAN get a work visa. However for the sake of keeping little wii-tards out of this country, I'm not going to publicly announce how, that said, I think Guy knows what I'm talking about along with the rest of the people who have any amount of experience outside of the Eikawa
Hmm.. come to think of it, I should charge for this information. I accept PayPal donations of $50 for the information on how you can stay here in Japan with no company to sponsor you!
Hmm.. come to think of it, I should charge for this information. I accept PayPal donations of $50 for the information on how you can stay here in Japan with no company to sponsor you!
If you ONLY teach private lessons, you CAN get a work visa. However for the sake of keeping little wii-tards out of this country, I'm not going to publicly announce how, that said, I think Guy knows what I'm talking about along with the rest of the people who have any amount of experience outside of the Eikawa
Interesting. Well, you let the cat out of the bag.
I don't do eikaiwa or ALT either, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Then you too know how you can stay here without a company sponsoring you and without a university degree. You can explain then as I charge $50 for the info.