Teaching English in Japan as an ALT

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Teaching English is a great way to spend an extended period of time in Japan. It pays pretty well and the company takes care of a lot of the things that make moving to a foreign country stressful, like sponsoring and coordinating your visa, finding an apartment for you, and providing support with things like taxes and setting up a bank account.

I worked for a company called Interac and applied to the JET Program, so they’ll be the main programs I discuss. There are a ton of other companies out there that do similar things though, so it’s worth looking around if you’re unable to find a position with Interac or JET.

What is an ALT?

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There are a variety of options out there, but I’ll focus on working as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT). As an ALT, you assistant the Japanese Teacher of English (JTE), who is the main English teacher in the class. Your job is to answer questions, model correct pronunciation, and just generally be an ambassador from the English speaking world. If this sounds like a pretty easy job, it’s because it usually is. There are some big exceptions, and it depends a lot on the placement you get, but compared to a normal 9 to 5 job in the US (the only frame of reference I have) it is pretty cushy.

Salary

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Interac lists it’s salary range as between 230,000 and 250,000 yen per month. I’m pretty sure this is about what I made working for them back in 2010. In USD, 230,000 yen is about $2,075. This might not sound like much, but the reason it’s workable is because of an important point about working as an ALT — you’ll almost definitely be working somewhere in the countryside.

It’s possible to get one of the few jobs teaching in cities, especially if you have experience and decent Japanese ability, but they’re very tough to come by. If you want to work in a city, you’re better of looking into working for an eikaiwa, which is an English conversation school where students and professionals go to take lessons after school or work.

Sample Budget

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If you’re out in the country, $2,075 per month actually isn’t too bad. You won’t be living like a king or anything, but it’s enough to live comfortably and save some money for cheap trips around Japan. Interac has a breakdown of the expenses here, and it’s pretty close to what I experienced. Here’s an example:

So you can see that if you’re living very cheaply, the base expenses only come to about half of your monthly salary. This budget is for someone in their first year — after this taxes and health insurance go up quite a bit because you have a history of income in the country.

If my numbers above were the only expenses, this would clearly be an extremely sweet deal. But there are some big expenses in the beginning that need to be factored in.

Flights & Key Money

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Japan has an interesting tradition with apartments. From my experience (and what I’ve read), most apartments require something called “key money,” which is a gift of cash to the landlord, in order to move in. An apartment that costs $500/month, might require over $700 in key money plus several months of rent in advance. Interac recommended having at least $5,000 when I moved to cover these costs and my moving and furnishing expenses.

In addition to this upfront cost for moving, the other big expense is your flight to Japan. Interac does not reimburse you for your flight (one of the great benefits of participating in the JET Program). This cost will vary significantly of course, but at a minimum you’re probably looking at around $500 for a one-way flight depending on where you live.

Application Process

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The application process for Interac is pretty extensive, and JET’s is even more intense. Moving to and working in a foreign country is a tough thing to do, and these companies want to make sure they choose people that will do a good job and stay for at least a full year contract.

There are two main application seasons and I’ll take a look at spring as an example. Assuming you want to move to Japan in April, you’ll need to start applying during the fall of the previous year. So let’s say I decided I want to teach for Interac last September and sent in an application on their website.

They’ll review my application and reach out to me for a phone interview if I qualify. If I pass the phone interview, I’ll be invited to a big group full-day interview/information session before the end of the year. Before the seminar, they’ll ask me to put together all of my documents for employment, including visa photos, a criminal background check, etc. I’m pretty sure everything needs to be submitted to them before they’ll even extend an offer of employment to you.

If you pass the seminar, congrats! You now have a job with Interac and will await placement. You can give them some preferences on where you’d like to be placed, but they make it clear throughout the process that there are no guarantees. So now you have a couple months to wait while they sort things out on their end. They’ll reach out when they have your placement to confirm that you’ll be heading to Japan on a certain date, to the branch office that is managing your contract.

At this point you’ll finish getting everything settled with your visa by heading to the embassy near you. This ended up being pretty close to my departure date for me so it was a little stressful, but everything went through without a problem.

Moving to Japan

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Once everything is settled, you’ll make your way to Japan. 🇯🇵 I had a one week training seminar before heading up to where I was working. We learned some more about what the job would entail, practiced some sample lessons, and came up with our introduction that we would perform at each school.

After the seminar, I packed up my things and took a train a few hours north. I lucked out and was stationed in a beatiful town full of cherry blossoms and old samurai houses. 🙂 I was assigned to teach in four schools — two elementary and two middle schools. I rotated between a pair of elementary and middle schools each month if I remember correctly. Most of my time was spent in the middle school, and I went to the elementary school a couple times a week.

Teaching in Japan

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In Japan, the schools are structured a little bit differently than here in the US. Instead of students moving from classroom to classroom for different subjects, in Japan students are assigned to a classroom and teachers move to the students. Between classes, teachers sit in a teachers’ room where they plan their lessons and hold any necessary meetings.

On most days, I only taught a couple classes. I would sit in the teachers’ room until the lesson and then walk up with the teacher and help out as needed. In my middle schools I almost never had to help plan lessons — I just showed up and helped out where possible. In the elementary schools, the teachers usually asked me to plan a lesson based on a certain part of the textbook; usually some sort of game to help them remember vocabulary.

In addition to the classes, I’d sit with the students at lunch time and eat with them. The school lunch was almost always delicious and healthy — a pretty big departure from what I was used to after growing up in the US.

To be honest that’s pretty much it. There were occasionally festivals and special events that I would participate in, but for the most part life as a teacher was pretty low key. It got pretty boring as the year went on though. There was a whole world I wanted to explore outside of the school, but I was stuck sitting in the teachers’ room most of the time looking at my computer like I did at my engineering job.

You’ll see a lot of people talking about how terrible life as an English teacher is in Japan, but from my experience it’s a fine job. There are definitely some horror stories, but I think a lot of the complaining comes from people who are fresh out of college and don’t have another job to compare to. Overall I think it’s a pretty good gig.

Life in Japan

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I loved living in Japan. Being somewhere that is so different from my home country meant that something as simple as a trip to the grocery store was an adventure. Weekends were usually free, so I would explore my town with my fellow English teachers, go out for food and drinks, and occasionally take trips to nearby towns. There were some lows in the winter when it snowed non-stop for weeks at a time, and I did get really frustrated at times with my attempts at learning the language, but it definitely remains a treasured experience.

I’m having a hard time thinking of specifics to write about here, so just let me know in the comments if you have any questions. 🙂

Some Notes on the JET Program

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If you're looking into teaching in Japan, I would recommend looking into the JET Program. I actually applied to participate before deciding to teach for Interac and was not offered a position. They reimburse you for your flights to and from Japan and pay better (¥280,000 vs. ¥230,000). In addition, most of my friends that were teaching with JET had extremely cheap apartments. In general it’s just a more prestigious program to be a part of so it’s worth giving it a shot.

Life After Teaching

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One of the only problems with teaching English in Japan is that it can be tough to make a career out of it. There are a ton of teaching opportunities, particularly if you have experience and can speak Japanese, but outside of running a school yourself it might be hard to grow your salary over time.

Because of this, many people end up using the experience as a jumping off point to work in other fields after they’ve improved their Japanese to a sufficient level. Japan is currently having a problem with population decline, so they have changed up their immigration policy to make it easier to become a resident (primarily for skilled workers and wealthy people willing to bring money into the country).

Questions?

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I know I had a ton of questions before I taught English in Japan. I’m going to end this post by encouraging anyone who is considering this adventure to ask questions in the comments here. I’ll do the best I can to answer them. 🙂

Thanks for reading and good luck with your application if you decide to pursue this!

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