[Lonthego]

You know I really think it all depends on the school. I taught English part-time for half a year because I needed the money, I was already residing in Japan at the time..anyways I know that makes for very limited experience, but I'll post my views anyways.

IF you are teaching at an Eikaiwa, an English conversation school like I was, the most important thing is going to be how outgoing and sociable you are, unfortunately there are cases where this even trumps how qualified of a teacher you are, in my opinion. The students want to have fun, but not be treated like kids (most are adults by the way), and want to learn English, but don't want things like homework. There are serious students at Eikaiwa, but there's just as many students who view it as a social club. There will be great variation based on location, but a surprising amount of students are in their late 30s, 40s, etc. such as house wives, salarymen, so I don't think being too old is an issue, in my case (I'm a 24 year old guy) I would even say being too young seemed an issue, as almost all my students were older than me and professionals (conversely being young works in your favor if you are female).

Anyways I think regular Japanese schools and private Japanese schools are a whole different ballgame, but if you don't have experience or qualifications teaching English then you will most likely start with Eikaiwa anyways. Experience counts more it seems..I had a TEFL certification & Linguistics degree but no teaching experience beyond what was required for the TEFL and I could tell the recruiter was somewhat neutral to that idea..but this was right after the earthquake and Fukushima fiasco so there was a sudden severe shortage of eikaiwa teachers...to twist a term from its original historical context, there was a large 'white flight'.

Regular Japanese schools also care a lot more about tattoos and piercings, which isn't saying that eikaiwas don't care though..I would hide them just to be safe. In terms of weight and the rest, just remember being shy and introverted is more of a penalty than what you look like. If you come from an English speaking country it's a bonus, but there are actually a lot of English teachers in Japan from the Philippines now.