Now Ye're Talking - to an English language teacher in Japan

Boards.ie: Niamh

Today's AMA is with one of our members who has been teaching English as a foreign language for ten years in Japan. He has experience and qualifications in this area and can answer your questions about how to become a teacher of English as a foreign language, how to find a position, adjusting to life in Japan and the cultural differences he experienced there.

R.D. aka MR.D

Hello!

Fellow English teacher in Japan here. I've been living in Chiba for almost 6 months at this stage.

My question: Where are all the Irish people?

I lived in Seoul for a year and a half and it was really easy to meet people and have a good time. There was even a meet up group especially for Irish people!

I'm here with my OH (American), we're late twenties. We're obviously not here to pick up Japanese women (which seem like 65% of the people I've met, the other 30% are married with kids and work a lot!!) We're too old for nightclubs and aren't into comic books, role playing or anything. We do like a bit of nintendo though!

Clearlier

I was in Japan for 10 days a year ago and had a fantastic time. I tried a whole load of food that I still don't know the name of. For one meal a side dish seemed to be a raw egg on top of a pile of raw vegetables. Is that a common dish as far as you know?

Do you like Sushi? Any strange (to Irish eyes) food that you love?

What do you miss most about Ireland?

Have you learned Japanese?

GLaDOS

Why Japan?

What qualifications did you have going over? Did you gain any since moving over?

Did you intend to stay long term or did it just happen?

I've heard Japan can be pretty unaccepting of foreigners, is this something you would agree with?

Do you ever plan on coming home?

Lots of questions sorry

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

First of all, I'd better point out that I actually moved back to Ireland a couple of months ago. I decided that I needed a better qualification to get a better job (better means tenured, basically), and it is easier to do that in Ireland. Certainly, a return to Japan is something that could very well happen in the future.

R.D. aka MR.D wrote: »

Hello!

Fellow English teacher in Japan here. I've been living in Chiba for almost 6 months at this stage.

My question: Where are all the Irish people?

I lived in Seoul for a year and a half and it was really easy to meet people and have a good time. There was even a meet up group especially for Irish people!

I think that there are just not that many Irish people in the country - I remember that when I first moved there, I got some information from the embassy after I registered with them, and they said that there were only 900 Irish people in the country at the time. I've no idea what the number is now, but that low number was certainly a surprise to me.

I agree that there is no place to get together with other Irish people, although there are St. Patrick's Day parades and a few Irish pubs around the place. There is an Irish Network in Japan that gets together every now and then, if that's your thing.

I didn't really have any interest in joining myself.

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

Clearlier wrote: »

I was in Japan for 10 days a year ago and had a fantastic time. I tried a whole load of food that I still don't know the name of. For one meal a side dish seemed to be a raw egg on top of a pile of raw vegetables. Is that a common dish as far as you know?

Do you like Sushi? Any strange (to Irish eyes) food that you love?

What do you miss most about Ireland?

Have you learned Japanese?

Raw egg is a part of lots of Japanese food, and something that I treated with a bit of suspicion (in a 'isn't that actually kind of dangerous to eat raw?' way). Even after I wasn't suspicious of it any more, I still didn't like the taste and texture of it.

It's quite common to see people dipping their noodles or grilled/fried beef into raw egg, or pouring raw egg over a bowl of rice. It is assumed that you want one if you order something like sukiyaki. I'm not sure I know the particular dish with raw vegetables that you are talking about though.

I love most kinds of sushi. Again, there was a bit of suspicion at the start, but when I go over that I really did like almost everything I ate. There seem to be plenty of foreigners who never get over that first hurdle though. Sushi is usually different kinds of fish and rice, and there is none of that which I don't like. I'm not a big fan of the raw squid sushi as it is quite chewy, the fish roe as it is quite salty, or the sea urchin, again because of the texture.

I've eaten horse in Japan (knowingly) and it tasted lovely. I've also eaten whale, both raw and cooked. In those cases, it's more a mental hurdle that you are eating something strange, and once you've cleared that it tastes surprisingly normal. Deep-fried whale in particular is tasty.

Adzuki, which is a red bean paste, makes up a lot of traditional Japanese sweets, and is quite nice once you get used to it.

From their perspective, the idea that anybody would eat rabbit filled them with horror (I took gleeful pleasure in mentioning this whenever I could), as it is simply not something to be eaten in Japan.

EDIT: Missed a question. When i lived there, what I missed most was certain foods like brown bread, good cheese, milk, sausage. The dairy there is of poor quality unless you are willing to pay a fortune. As well as that, long summer evenings (it's dark by 8 even in summer) and open green space, as things are so built up. I once took a shinkansen from Tokyo to Hamamatsu and there wasn't any moment when, looking out of the train window, I couldn't see apartment blocks. Even though the two cities are hundreds of kilometres apart. There is more space in the northern half of the country though, especially Hokkaido, but I never lived there.

I've learned lots of Japanese, but my written Japanese is nowhere near as good as it really should be. I was thinking about this the other day - the subjects in which i can communicate well and confidently reflect my roles and interests in Japan - I can talk up a storm in a bar, but would find it quite difficult in a doctor's office for example, as I went to a doctor no more than a handful of times. I can talk about education and teaching and so on, but wouldn't be able to have much of a conversation in physics (nor would I in English, for that matter).

Once you've picked up some circumlocution techniques to compensate for unknown vocabulary, things get a lot easier.

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

ScienceNerd wrote: »

Why Japan?

What qualifications did you have going over? Did you gain any since moving over?

Did you intend to stay long term or did it just happen?

I've heard Japan can be pretty unaccepting of foreigners, is this something you would agree with?

Do you ever plan on coming home?

Lots of questions sorry

To answer your last question first - I am in fact back home now, wife and kids in tow. Whether or not we move back there in the future we do not know yet. Certainly, it is something we will be considering.

Why Japan - because the world cup was held there in 2002 and I wanted to move there to watch it. If Ireland had been based in Korea, I'd probably have gone there instead. I didn't plan to stick around beyond the end of the tournament, or beyond the end of my contract, but I was enjoying myself enough to give it another year. Then I met a local lass and that was that. It turned into more than 6 years.

Going over I had no qualifications. Things are stricter now in some schools, but there are places that will accept people with no qualifications. Don't expect to get well paid in those places though, as a general rule. I did a CELTA while I was there, which I would recommend to anybody looking to teach English, and then got a Master's degree in TEFL which helped me to get university jobs (only contract, not tenure).

The Japanese attitude to foreigners is a complex one. In some ways they are uncritically welcoming to foreigners, which can be abused horribly by the kind of people R.D aka Mr.D mentioned earlier. Plenty of girls still waiting for Mr Navy guy or English teacher who promised he'd call her as soon as he was settled back in his home country.

In other ways, they can be quite suspicious of foreigners in that they might wonder what the foreigner is doing there in the first place, and what is in it for them. Japan was effectively shut off from the rest of the real world until the middle of the 19th century, and there are a lot of very conservative folk around the place who'd like to go back to something similar to that. There is certainly an attitude of exceptionalism among some politicians, say. It might have something to do with all that.

With (I would say rare) exceptions like above, the more you attempt to integrate, the more effort you make to get involved in the local area/community, the more accepted you will be.

irishrepeat2

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

Today's AMA is with one of our members who has been teaching English as a foreign language for ten years in Japan. He has experience and qualifications in this area and can answer your questions about how to become a teacher of English as a foreign language, how to find a position, adjusting to life in Japan and the cultural differences he experienced there.

would you advise a gap year or a summer trip to do it?

Mr. CooL ICE

As an Irish person who lives and works in Ireland, how difficult would it be to suddenly up sticks and move to Japan to teach English? What kind of hurdles are there, e.g. visa and work permits, etc? Is there any complicated bureaucracy behind moving into accommodation, etc (I've heard of Germany being a nightmare for this)?

ancapailldorcha

The AMA I didn't know I wanted most!

I spent a fortnight in Japan recently and absolutely loved it.

How long did it take from you applying to getting everything sorted and waiting for flights, etc? Is it a huge hassle?

Do you get much time off over there? I read once that annual leave there is 5 days though that may not be true. If so, did you just have to cope without heading home at all?

Would you recommend it? I'm thinking of doing it myself as I'm on a 3 year contract which is nearly halfway through.

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

irishrepeat2 wrote: »

would you advise a gap year or a summer trip to do it?

If a gap year means a whole year, or at least 6 months, then sure, go for it, in Japan or elsewhere.

You will be doing yourself and your students a big favour if you get some kind of training first. That training will most likely be a CELTA, and these are available in different schools/institutions around Ireland. One of the best (in terms of name at least) is the Cambridge CELTA. This means that Cambridge have endorsed the training and standards of the course. I am not sure how seriously Cambridge take that, but they do seem to pay some attention to it. If you are interested in doing that, try to avoid a cheap online course if you are actually interested in learning how to teach.

For a summer trip, you would find it hard to get a visa. There are companies like Westgate that sometimes have short-term positions to fill, but otherwise, you'll have trouble getting a company to go to the effort of sorting out a visa just for a couple of months.

Links234

Now that you're back in Ireland, what do you miss most about Japan?

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

Nicolas Cage wrote: »

As an Irish person who lives and works in Ireland, how difficult would it be to suddenly up sticks and move to Japan to teach English? What kind of hurdles are there, e.g. visa and work permits, etc? Is there any complicated bureaucracy behind moving into accommodation, etc (I've heard of Germany being a nightmare for this)?

There are basically three parts to this.

Getting a job: look for one of the companies which hire outside Japan, as many do not. NOVA still do, and don't need teaching qualifications either. They have an office in London. Other companies like Westgate might be worth looking at, as they also hire from outside Japan. Shane English school also, although I'm not sure if they hire Irish English speakers. In many cases though, schools only want to hire from inside Japan.

Getting a visa: this is really linked to getting a job. If you get a job offer from a company, they will send you a certificate to indicate that employment is waiting for you, which allows you to get a visa you otherwise would not get. Not every company is willing to do this either, so search carefully. It's almost impossible to get a work visa otherwise.
EDIT: Thanks to Konata, who highlighted the possibility of a working holiday visa, which I had somehow forgotten about, and which is a great option - mentioned in later posts.


Getting an apartment: getting an apartment by yourself will be difficult and expensive. You'll need somebody to agree to be a guarantor for you, so - in the event that you take off suddenly, they'll be left with the outstanding bills and so on. So these people will, obviously, be hard to find. The expense is significant too - apartments generally come empty, and that means completely empty - no washing machine, cooker, lights, nothing. Combine this with a couple of months' deposit, a months' rent worth of commission to the estate agent, the first month's rent up front, and even the horrible 'key money' ( a gift of a month's rent you have to give to the landlord for the honour lof living there) and it's prohibitively expensive, even if you could sort it all out.

But there are other options - companies like Leo Palace 21 can organise furnished apartments for you and sort out a lof of the paperwork. There are 'gaijin houses' (called because 'gaijin', or 'foreigner', as foreigners are the majority of those living there) where you can get a private bedroom but share kitchen, living, and bathroom space. Also, the company you work for might also have accomodation for you, and save you all the hassle.

In all cases, you're avoiding the trouble of doing it all by yourself, but you'll probably pay for the convenience.

One option which is worth looking up is the JET programme, which is a kind of effort between the Irish and Japanese governments to get teachers into Japanese schools. Teachers on this programme (which is not just between Japan and Ireland, but between Japan and many countries) seem to be well looked after.

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

The AMA I didn't know I wanted most!

I spent a fortnight in Japan recently and absolutely loved it.

How long did it take from you applying to getting everything sorted and waiting for flights, etc? Is it a huge hassle?

Do you get much time off over there? I read once that annual leave there is 5 days though that may not be true. If so, did you just have to cope without heading home at all?

Would you recommend it? I'm thinking of doing it myself as I'm on a 3 year contract which is nearly halfway through.

It was a long time ago, but I'd say something like 3-4 months. The hardest part might be actually finding a company that hire from outside Japan. Many don't any more, and simply wait for teachers to quit working for the companies who helped them get a visa. (There are also plenty of teachers who pretend to want to work for a company just to get a visa, and quit shortly after arriving in Japan, once they have their visa)

I wouldn't say it's a huge hassle, but you will have to go to the embassy and organise your own flights, I would guess.

In terms of those companies who hire outside Japan, the bigger the better, as it means more turnover, and positions come available more regularly. You may have little to no control over where you end up being placed though, but that is something each company will have its own policy on.

Leave in my first company was 10 days a year, as well as regular days off (2 a week, usually, but not always consecutive), and holidays like New Year and maybe Golden Week. It depends on each company. For each year you stayed, you got an extra day added to those 10. Some companies allow informal day swaps, where you agree that another teacher will cover you on that day (their regular day off), and you will cover for them some other time on one of your regular days off. This way, you can get time off without actually using holidays. I am not sure if the practice of allowing informal swaps is as prevalent as it used to be though.

Japan is famous for staff, mainly men, not taking all the leave they are entitled to, as a sign of their loyalty to their company. It wasn't a sentiment I ever saw a foreign teacher express though!

If you want to see Japan (or another country, you could head to another Asian country, South America, or a growing EFL business in places like Bahrain, where the pay is apparently quite good), then why not just go for it.

Again, get some training so you actually know what you are doing (there may well be a council run language class somewhere that you could volunteer for to get some practice), and enjoy it.

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

Links234 wrote: »

Now that you're back in Ireland, what do you miss most about Japan?

The train system, the cheap beer, the clean streets, the sushi, the safety and complete absence of scumbags, the politeness of the people, the abundance of beautiful Japanese women, the food stalls, the old man who lived across from us and couldn't speak a word of English but always said 'Hello', the service in shops and restaurants, the pride people had in their local community, the buskers on the street who aren't even looking for money, the Tokyo skyline at night, fresh Japanese pears in the summer, my colleagues, the zoo a 5 minute train ride away, the no-smoking signs on the streets...for starters.

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

It's worth explaining that there are different places English is taught:

In public and private schools (elementary, junior high, high school):

A company called Interac has a big stake in this market. I've never ever heard anybody say a good word about them as an employer, but they do hire outside Japan, and probably deserve to be exploited by teachers for a change.



In public and private universities:

There are two types of positions here:full time contract positions, or part-time positions. For full-time contract, they may hire from outside Japan but you are talking a Master's in TEFL, publications, working Japanese, as a minimum. For part-time positions, these universities either hire directly or through placement/recruitment companies. To the best of my knowledge, these companies hire from inside Japan only - they don't really 'hire' at all, actually - you sign up with them, and if a part-time position (one day a week, usually) becomes available, they put your name forward to the university, and take a fine chunk of your wages if you get the job.



In private language schools, or 'eikaiwa'.

As mentioned above, these companies have very different standards on who they will hire, and from where.



Lessons offered by government bodies/NGOs/companies:

Some government bodies/NGOs/companies (Japan Steel is the only one I can think of offhand) allow/force their employees to take free English lessons weekly. Most of the time though, these teachers are simply contracted through the same recruitment companies that work with universities.

Konata

I'm an English language teacher, AMA wrote: »

For a summer trip, you would find it hard to get a visa. There are companies like Westgate that sometimes have short-term positions to fill, but otherwise, you'll have trouble getting a company to go to the effort of sorting out a visa just for a couple of months.

Just to add a shorter term option to all your advice for getting a job as you may have missed it but Japan and Ireland have a working holiday visa agreement. So anyone looking to go over to work for a shorter period (max 1 year) could apply for a Working Holiday Visa, head over to Japan and then get a job. My boyfriend did it last year while I was studying in university there and he got an eikaiwa job. It's a fab option if you only want to go over for a year or less and also gives you access to all those companies/schools you mentioned who aren't bothered doing the visa process and only hire inside Japan.

*****

Anyway, all that aside I have some questions myself

What part of Japan did you live in? Were you in a city or more rural? What were the advantages/disadvantages of living in that particular part of Japan?

Did you just die every Summer? I was there for the last two Summers and jesus but I struggled with that humidity. Did it ever get any easier for you compared to your first year?

Are your kids fluent in Japanese and English? How did you manage that, if so? I lived next door to and babysat for a Japanese/Irish family for the year and was constantly amazed by their kids who were almost fluent in both (their Japanese was stronger but their English was fantastic too). I'm just amazed by bilingual people and I find the process of bringing up kids as bilingual absolutely fascinating so I'd love to hear your experience (assuming your kids are bilingual!).

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

Konata wrote: »

Just to add a shorter term option to all your advice for getting a job as you may have missed it but Japan and Ireland have a working holiday visa agreement. So anyone looking to go over to work for a shorter period (max 1 year) could apply for a Working Holiday Visa, head over to Japan and then get a job. My boyfriend did it last year while I was studying in university there and he got an eikaiwa job. It's a fab option if you only want to go over for a year or less and also gives you access to all those companies/schools you mentioned who aren't bothered doing the visa process and only hire inside Japan.

Yes!!

I had completely overlooked this, and it is a very important point. You can get a working holiday visa and use it to get into Japan, and try to find work from there. It's actually a sweet deal, as long as you are between 18 and 30.

I never actually met an Irish person who used a working holiday visa, and I know that for other countries the conditions might be different, such as restrictions on the hours you can work.

But what you've said is really important, and somehow slipped my mind. I think you need about 3 grand in your account, and there are only something like 500 available a year, but it is definitely another avenue to get into the country.

Konata wrote: »

What part of Japan did you live in? Were you in a city or more rural? What were the advantages/disadvantages of living in that particular part of Japan?

I've lived in Yokosuka, Yokohama, Matsumoto, and Tokyo. All cities, although Yokosuka is small at only half a million, and Matsumoto is a mere village at about 200,000. We actually lived a bit outside Matsumoto in a real village of just a few hundred people, but the city centre was only 20 minutes away.

There's not much to say about Yokosuka (it used to have half a page in Lonely Planet, but they deleted it!) apart from the fact that there are about 20,000 US Navy there. They stopped bombing it late in WW2 as they'd already identified it as a base once they won the war. So there are a couple of streets of bars that are unlike anywhere else in Japan - a really western feel to the place.

Matsumoto was definitely my favourite place to live in Japan. The city itself is quite beautiful, and it is surrounded by some wonderful scenery like Kamikochi, Hakuba, Norikura, and other mountainous places. In winter it is just incredible. I remember coming home from work one time in the middle of February and our heater (which gave the target temperature and the actual temperature) read the current temperature as -2 in our living room. I'd love to live there again.

Tokyo is obviously an incredibly convenient place to live, and some great sightseeing to be done. In my other guise in boards, I've mentioned before that I seem to be the only person in the world who doesn't think there is much to do besides sightseeing, but just sitting on the Yamanote line for 37 minutes or whaever time it takes to do a full circle of the line would be a great thing for a visitor to do.

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

Konata wrote: »

Did you just die every Summer? I was there for the last two Summers and jesus but I struggled with that humidity. Did it ever get any easier for you compared to your first year?

Are your kids fluent in Japanese and English? How did you manage that, if so? I lived next door to and babysat for a Japanese/Irish family for the year and was constantly amazed by their kids who were almost fluent in both (their Japanese was stronger but their English was fantastic too). I'm just amazed by bilingual people and I find the process of bringing up kids as bilingual absolutely fascinating so I'd love to hear your experience (assuming your kids are bilingual!).

Summer is the yearly nightmare. I hated it, hated it, hated it. Irish people, like my family, always made the joke about 'sure we could do with some of that weather here' but no, you don't want it. 34, 35, 36 degrees, every day, for months. Sweating constantly. I prayed for rain.

But you do acclimatise in different ways. The body does actually get used to it a bit I think, but you also get more sensible about where to go, and when, and so on. I went from sleeping with the air conditioning at 18 to the air conditioning at 27 over my time there.

Both kids are doing well so far in terms of bilingualism, but my daughter more so. She is 8 and has a really strong grasp of both languages. Crucially, she is able to read in both, and we have books and stuff to keep her working on it. My son is only 4 and it is a bit different. He doesn't have that strong grasp and doesn't see the value to speaking it either, which is an attitudinal hurdle that we will find very difficult to overcome. And it's important not just for some vague future for him, but because we may well move back there, and he'll need to go to school and so on.

We actually took them to a Japanese school in Dublin a few weeks ago, and plan to take them maybe once a month in the future. The (temporary) difference in his attitude to the language makes it worthwhile.

We've done the 'one parent one language' approach as well as the 'speak the opposite of what they hear outside' approach, and they seem to have worked well enough. At 8, my daughter already has a natural sound to her Japanese that I will never have. It's clear that there is no translation going on, no momentary pause to gather thoughts, no quick selection of appropriate tense or vocabulary. It's wonderful, and makes me very proud.

evolving_doors

I've heard their is little to no crime in Japan.
But, I've also heard that the Yakuza control the crime to such a degree that you never see or hear anything.
Did you see or hear anything about organised crime there (I promise I won't tell)?

irishlad12345

im a student weighing up my cao options and would like to follow a similar career path do you have any suggestions that may help me in the future ?

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

Gebgbegb wrote: »

I've heard their is little to no crime in Japan.
But, I've also heard that the Yakuza control the crime to such a degree that you never see or hear anything.
Did you see or hear anything about organised crime there (I promise I won't tell)?

When people say that about crime, they mean stuff like muggings, assault, pickpocketing, burglary, drunken fighting on the street, and so on. That kind of stuff is incredibly rare, and you just feel completely safe walking around.

I've dropped my wallet a couple of times and got it back both times. I wasn't even doubting that I'd get it back.

Having said that, bicycles do get stolen here, as there is such a big market for 2nd hand bicycles. And most shops have a place for you to put your umbrella outside the shop, but you leave an umbrella there at your own risk.

I can't say I know too much about organised crime, but sure, if you visit a massage parlour, strip club, hostess club, brothel, etc you are most likely putting money in the yakuza's pocket.

There is a gambling activity called pachinko, which is a multi-billion dollar industry, and I'm sure they have their hands in that too, although I often hear that some of those pachinko parlours are actually run by North Korean sympathisers and that is where the money goes.

There doesn't seem to be much of the horrible violence that usually comes with organised crime though, so they must resolve their disputes differently, or else hide bodies very very well.

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

irishlad12345 wrote: »

im a student weighing up my cao options and would like to follow a similar career path do you have any suggestions that may help me in the future ?

Most people seem to kind of fall into this career, and I'm one of those.

I don't think there are undergraduate courses purely for TEFL and it isn't really necessary, as most places look for a degree (in anything), and even better if you have a teaching qualification like a CELTA. A Master's Degree would be better again.

UL has a very good taught Master's programme in ELT,or you could do something in linguistics/applied linguistics in other universities.

To get started, an undergraduate degree, a CELTA or similar, and a basic level of Japanese would get your foot in the door of a lot of language schools. From there you could build up skills, experience, language proficiency.

If you want to end up at a university, a related Master's degree, some publications and presentations, and a working level of Japanese would all be necessary, although some places will not be too bothered about the level of Japanese (this means that they won't really be involving the foreign teachers in any of the decisions they make either, though - you're just left in your own little bubble, which some people like, while others don't).

I'd say you could start by looking round at getting some practical training in teaching English - lots of schools and universities offer training programs over say 10 weeks, part-time, that will cost about 300 or 400 euros. Try to get some practice with the language of the country you want to go to, as it will make life a lot easier for everybody.

Vojera

There is a prevailing attitude that Japan is incredibly expensive, but a blogger I follow who has recently returned to her home country of Germany after seven years in Japan said she was surprised at how expensive some things were in Europe by comparison.

How have you found the difference in the cost of living between Ireland and Japan?

ancapailldorcha

Thanks for the reply! I was under the impression that no real training was required and that the job involved serving as a conversationalist for students to practice with.

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

Vojera wrote: »

There is a prevailing attitude that Japan is incredibly expensive, but a blogger I follow who has recently returned to her home country of Germany after seven years in Japan said she was surprised at how expensive some things were in Europe by comparison.

How have you found the difference in the cost of living between Ireland and Japan?

Overall, I'd say that living in Ireland is more expensive than Japan.

Rent is more expensive, as is electricity, internet, car tax, car insurance, public transport (for equal distance), - and those are costs that are mostly impossible to avoid.

Eating out, drinking, would be another two that are more expensive here.

Tax, I am not so sure about, as Japan has income tax and residential tax (paid to the local government of the city you live in) as well as an 8% consumption tax, and also national health insurance (mandatory, unless you are a member of a private equivalent)- this all adds to to a chunk of your pay, maybe about 30%.

Food shopping is cheaper in Ireland though, especially if you go to places like Aldi or Lidl, for which there isn't really any Japanese equivalent (that I know of).

A 700ml bottle of Jameson will cost me....25 euros (?) in Ireland, but I can buy the same bottle for about 11 euros in Japan.

I'm an English language teacher, AMA

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Thanks for the reply! I was under the impression that no real training was required and that the job involved serving as a conversationalist for students to practice with.

Looking back at some of my answers, I have made it sound like you need a lot of training and so on, which might scare people off the idea, but that isn't always the case.

A quick look at gaijinpot.com shows that there are jobs available to people with no qualifications, other than being a native speaker of English (or speak English to a native level):

https://jobs.gaijinpot.com/

Here's infor for a job in Interac, one of the companies I mentioned previously:

Full Time / Entry Level

¥230,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month


Requirements

• English: Native level
• Japanese: Basic
• Has graduated from a university with at least a bachelor’s degree (in any subject)
• Holds a valid residence/visa status and possess a valid resident card or Alien Registration (“gaijin card”)
• Has acquired an education delivered in English for at least 12 years
• Is professional in all aspects of behavior, a team-player, flexible, cheerful, and energetic
• Visa sponsorship available

So, if you could get yourself a working holiday visa, settle down in a cheap hostel at the start, you would probably be able to pick up that kind of work to keep you going. You would not make much money (initially at least), but if that's not what you're after, then it's doable.

As for the teaching itself, it is teaching, so that is going to take some practice to be able to do it well.

Definitely, being there for students to practice conversation with is part of it, but they can't practice what they don't know, and most of the job is delivering stuff that they don't know in a way that makes them learn it.

So it's partly knowing about the language yourself (What is an adverb of indefinite frequency?), and also about how to present it in a way that is understandable and functional for students, giving them lots of practice with the new language, so that they come away knowing not only what it is, but also how and when to use it.

ancapailldorcha

Cheers! I was staying a hotel where a girl who was staying there, teaching English said that I should consider it as I'm 27 (which means I might still be eligible) and have a Masters. She said she spent most of the day chatting.

traco

Pity this post didn't happen earlier as there is a large group heading out at the end of the month. They might have asked you along to a meeting for a chat and some language / culture pointers.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Scouting-Ireland-World-Jamboree-Contingent/132532459032

celica00

This is brilliant!!!

こんにちは、元気ですか

I dont intend to teach English in Japan or anywhere else but I am currently studying Japanese (still a beginner).

I have a lot of questions, hope it's okay


1) How do experience being foreign in Japanese? I heard they older generation tends to be racist?

2) How long did it take you do speak/understand Japanese people with their slangs/accent's?

3) you mentioned that japanese people find it horrifying to eat rabbit. What else do they not eat but we do? In relation to food: how hard/easy is it for a vegetarian to live there?

4) I am going there for 10 days end of September. Any tourist traps that you can think of to avoid?

5) Do you mind if I ask many more questions since I'm a Japan enthusiast?


Thanks already

miamee

Since Japanese is world's apart from English - well I assume so with no knowledge of Japanese - does that make it even more difficult to teach or did you start off teaching people who already had a basic understanding of English?

Even from your post about things you miss, Japan sounds like another world altogether, it's definitely on my list of places to visit. You've mentioned already how safe it is so I assume it would be safe for a female, solo traveller? Even with blonde hair? :pac: