I teach English, I own an English school.
I worked at a few, hated them all, they sucked or has fundamentally huge business flaws or customer satisfaction flaws. I saw an opportunity to introduce a much better service than the competition, and jumped on it.

Can teaching English in Korea be just as laid-back and easy as in Japan?
How much do you usually earn? How much hours would you be working if your did the bare minimum and if you did a good job?

If you don't mind,
How much did it cost to start the school? What were the flaws? How many staff did you hire? Do you require a 4 year Uni degree in order to work there? Is there a site for it that I might see?

I don't think you understood me, if you plan on doing a good job teaching then it won't be easy or laid-back. Teaching requires a lot of time and effort, and if you just take the "easy" approach you probably won't last longer than one year there.

Teaching in Korea, I'm not too sure how "easy" that is. To my knowledge it's just as demanding - if not more so - than Japan. When I looked into getting a visa there to work (and what the employers ask for) they ask for a lot more than Japan does in terms of paperwork, evidence, qualifications, experience . . . I would say it's not an easy option at all.

In Japan you earn around 250,000 yen a month, and this is around 3,000,000 yen a year. The wages are near enough the exact same wages a teacher would earn in the UK, around £21-24k a year. Most jobs expect you to teach aroun 20-24 contact hours, and I think there's usually around 20-24 office hours too. So let's say 40-45 hours of work a week.

What I meant to ask was how much hours do you need to work if you do the bare minimum and how much hours do you need to work if you do extra hard work in preparing for classes. Do people come in a lot for the office hours? About how much of the office hours becomes waiting time?

How hard is it to get a teaching job in Japan? Can you still get it even if you have bad GPA?

Also could I teach Korean on the side? What's the demand like for learning Korean language?

It's not entirely difficult to get a job in Japan, however it's a very competitive market at the moment, so the more you have to offer the easier it'll be. You need a four-year bachelor's degree (three years is acceptable if you're in the UK), and I think it's at least 12 years of schooling in an English speaking school, and to be a native English speaker. A TEFL qualification can help, as can previous teaching experience.

Your questions about office-time I can't answer, you'd need to ask more experienced members who've spent time in Japan. The bare mininum number of hours working for a full-time job will be forty hours (aprox.).

You'd do best to look at these threads:

http://www.japanforum.com/forum/livi...-jp-2-0-a.html

http://www.japanforum.com/forum/livi...ive-japan.html

RealJames, do you have japanese teachers too? is your school mainly for teaching english to japanese or do you also have japanese classes for foreigners?

What if I came to the US from Korea when I was in 3rd grade (8 yrs old)?

You are probably fine. And I am willing to bet from now for the next year or so getting an English teaching job in Japan will be easier than it has been in a long while, with all the "flyjin" who bought the media hype, and headed straight for the doors. Anyhow in order to get sponsered for a work visa (if you are American) you do need a four year degree as far as I know.

When I first came over living in teacher housing cost me 13,000 yen a month, the place was a dump, and really shabby even by Japanese standards. I got used to it though and lived there for quite a while, and really saved a lot of money by doing so. Now my rent is 58,000 yen a month the place is smaller but billion times nicer, and part of my contract gets me 30,000 yen a month of that rent paid for. So i basically pay 28,000 yen a month in rent plus anywhere from 8000-15,000 in water/gas and electric bills each month. Internet+cable costs another 8000 yen, regular phone line is 1680 yen, cellphone is like 4000 yen. Food/commodities bought at grocery stores has always been around 3000-4000 a week when it is just me.

In all my time here I have been able to save about 50-60% of all my paychecks. I do not own a car however, and live my life on a bicycle or by public transportation.