English teachers
 

Don't mean to be disrespecful but how much money do English teachers in Japan make?

Ive read that teachers with the JET program make 250,000 yen a month. Just above the national minimum wage. But take that with a grain of salt, im not a JET, ASL, or even in japan.

DB

You heard wrong. JETS actually make a bit more a month at 300,000 or 3,600,000 a year. Other companies usually offer 250,000-252,000 a month.

Do they provide accommodation for free? Surely it would be pretty tough to survive on that otherwise...

Correct. The JET wage is 3.6 million yen per year, 300,000 per month. That rate is tax free, but you do have to pay for mandatory health insurance and a retirement pension. You may collect the money from the retirement pension when your contract ends and you leave Japan. It is far more than you need to live on. I was able to save nearly $25,000 in 2 years and bought a car, computer, furniture, and got an apartment when I came back, and I still had many thousands left over to put into savings. And you don't need to live like a hermit to save that much, either... I traveled all over Japan, ate plenty of good food, bought 1500+ manga (and payed $850 to ship them all back to the US), flew back to the US to visit my family after the 1st year, etc.... the savings was after all of those activities and expenses!

Edit to add: A few places will either help with rent or provide accomodations free, but most don't, and mine didn't. I had to pay 48,000 yen/mo for a small, 1 room apartment. I still saved all that money... it really is quite a good salary. I have never earned as much since returning to the US.

Thanks for the heads-up guys/gals. Most of the information/blogs ive been reading seemed to be outdated anyway.

DB

Actually, interesting fact, the JET salary has not changed since the program began 20+ years ago...

That's absolutely true.

My school paid half of my 60,000 rent, which was nice. I still had more money than I knew what to do with.

Wow..I must have read things wrong then. Or, maybe im confused but I could have sworn some Alts blogged about their 250k a month. Maybe that is the bring home after taxes, insurance etc?

Shows how little I know.

DB

JETs don't pay taxes, they are government employees. But between health care insurance (non-refundable) and the retirement fund (which you do get back later), I think that might be about what the take-home is. I'm not sure because mine was always direct deposited, and it was 10 years ago.

After rent and taxes (which I got back later) I got 220,000 a month...

What requirements do you have to have to work for JET?

google the jet program, I am sure there will be an official website dedicated to that kind of information...

I was correct, less than 5 seconds of effort produced this:

The JET Programme--Official Homepage of The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme

250k is not minimum wage. And, it is not even the lowest that some teachers will get suckered for. The lowest monthly pay for a teacher I've ever heard of was 190k, and that is working full time.

If it is the money you want, teach in Korea. Or get an engineering degree like chav and you will be saying things like, "Can you even feed yourself with 250?" Just playing around Chavie....

lol, I was being serious - I didn't realise rent was subsidised. Otherwise, it would surely be a choice of fun or food but not both lol

My rent wasn't subsidized, and I had no problem buying everything I needed in Japan, traveling around, and still saving a lot of money.

It's important to note, though, that about 98% of JETs don't live in Tokyo, and in fact many live in small towns and villages across Japan, where the cost of living is far less.

How did you guys manage through out your experience?

I'm really interested, but being someone that's always around her friends and family, I'm a bit scared to feel lonely if I went out there on my own. Did you visit Japan before moving there to become a teacher?

Thanks in advance! :3

I was shipped out here on my own (not as a teacher) and have coped without any problems - not had a single ounce of home-sickness (although I am ultra-busy every day so probably just too tired to think of home haha!)

If you have doubts in your mind before going, maybe it's not a good idea at this point in time...it's quite a big commitment to move to another country. Maybe you would be best visiting as a tourist and see what you think first

I figured that having doubts should be my main clue it's not a good idea at the moment, I agree.

Did you speak/understand Japanese at all when you arrived in the country?

(Sorry for the double post, it seems the forum won't let me edit my previous one.)

Another question:

Are there any ways to go around the 'english must be your mother tongue/first language to be an english teacher in japan/other countries' issue?

I was born and raised in a french canadian family, and then learned english through school. Due to various situations and things that happened in the past 4 years, I've immersed myself in english and it's improved a lot since I graduated from High School. Even thougn my english is far from being perfect, I feel more comfortable speaking and writing in english, though I still use both every day(speak english at work, speak french at home). Would I have to go through some tests/exams? Or would I automatically be rejected?

I had always been around my friends and family too. In fact, I had never moved out of my parents house, even all through university. The only foreign country I'd been to was Canada (which is not very foreign at all to an American), I had never been to Japan, and I spoke no Japanese.

Yet I went anyway. Of course I had a few doubts, and I became homesick at times... for most people, that's only natural. And learning to live on my own for the 1st time, in a foreign country, had it's difficulties. But I made it through, I had a great time, and I wouldn't change my decision to go. It was an incredible experience.

How thick is your accent? Can you minimize your accent? People with a strong accent are not likely to be accepted because much of what you'll do is have the kids listen to your pronunciation and repeat, or listen comprehension when you talk.

ahh, after i get a degree, i would do like to apply for the JET program.

But I have a psychological thing that because i'm still learning chinese, i would like to master that one first. XD

Your nationality far outweighs your actual fluency in English. The JET program pulls people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds (Finnish, South American, New Zealanders, etc.). Your personality is also more important than your accent. If anything, having a unique cultural heritage and attractive accent is going to aid you in selling yourself and setting yourself apart from the masses.

Furthermore, there are high schools in Japan that have French programs. There is an eikaiwa chain (named Maple something) that specializes in teaching French and English. Being bilingual in English and French, you couldn't be more attractive to any language school in Japan. And if JET won't take you (they would be crazy not to), rest assured you can get a good job with comparable salary very easily.

Don't hide it, you want to emphasize your dual language abilities and unique cultural background! And, you need to teach me French...

Unless things have changed, the JET program I know only hires people from English-speaking countries, including Canada. There were no non-native English speakers among the JETS that were there when I was.

I am not sure that a "unique cultural heritage" is a good selling point for a country that prefers conformity over diversity. Even on thise site we have seen Singaporeans, who likely speak English better then me, being rejected as English teachers because of their country of origin.

@samurai007: I don't think my accent is very thick. Actually, I often get questioned about my nationality, because people can't figure out where I come from. My accent is there, but it's small and it will only ever show up on a few words I might still have trouble with. My english "only" friends tease me about that, hehe.

@jasonbvr: Being bilingual has only been positive for me at the moment, so I guess that would make a lot of sense. Ahah, french is hard. But if you know how to pronounce the japanese letters (especially e and i) than it could turn out to be easier for you. My french is far from being perfect, because there are so many rules and specific little things all over the place. I was good when I was in high school and college, but I've been out of school for two years now, so I haven't really been practicing(my writing that is!).

@MMM: Well, I was asking this because when I graduated from High School, one of my application to college got rejected because my mother tongue was french. Even though I went and passed a test, they insisted that my english wasn't good enough and suggested I take two years to improve it. Considering that I always had 90%+ grades in my english class in High School, I didn't feel like wasting my time there. (And that's the story of my life! Lol)

Just to clarify, they take ALTs only from English countries, but they take CIRs from many other countries. There were CIRs in our prefecture were from France, Mexico, and China.

Aha! Point well taken.

There are not as many, but I know teachers from Finland, Denmark and Tunisia, one non-JET ALT, one JET and one eikaiwa.

They must have expanded the countries they accept from at JET...That's good, I suppose.

And a Ukranian too but he lost his job because he was dull to put it mildly and refused to engage with the school children which is really dumb if you are a school teacher.

This might be a stupid question, but why not teach your 'mother tongue' instead of English? Japanese people learn all kinds of languages (one of the Japanese guys who I work with speaks fluent Norwegian for example)

Because I feel more comfortable teaching English?

French isn't all that hard to speak once you have the pronounciation of the letters and syllables correctly. That hard part is the grammar and how to spell every word. And also the meaning of the words, for example, for one English word, their could be up to 5 different words(or more) meaning the same thing in French.

Example:

You have the word 'The'.

In French you can use: 'Le', 'La', 'Les'.

Plus the fact that I've been speaking and using English more than my French in the past two years, I feel like it's not as good as it used to be. When I talk with my family or French friends, every sentense ends up having an English word in it. Sure, if I took the time to think about everything I said, it might come out better, but my writing skills have gotten even worse. For people that don't know French, it might look great, but to me, since I've always been around the language it looks horrible, lol.

It all depends on which company you go with.

I went with NOVA and well...

We all know how that's turning out *sigh*

My official wage was something like 250,000¥/month
take off taxes, unemployment insurance (HA!), rent, utilities, and a phone bill and I was looking at 160,000¥ take off food about 140,000¥

I was able to save about 1000$/month and have 400$ as fun money every month, (However that's so easy to spend as one night at Karaoke can be between 50-100$, go out every weekend and your moneis gone)

But then it cost me 1000$ to get here (had to pay that back) 2000$ to go home for x-mas and when NOVA went belly up about 2000$ just living while waiting to find out what the hell was going on.

Average hourly is 20-30$ as an english teacher, average rent is about 700-1000$ depending on location, size and roommates, average food cost is 100-200$/month if you cook (double if you don't) average phone bill is 50-100$ same for any other utilities (water, gas, electricity, internet) Average taxes is effin redonkulos.

If you're Canadian they acctually generally assume you're bi-lingual already, you have no idea how many people ask me if I can speak French. Blimy I'm from Alberta, I hardly speak proper english. XD

Unless you're applying for something like JET, just lie and say you're "Native"
if you think you can get away with it. Some places like GEOS have grammar tests but if you're already in Japan many ALT jobs (check gaijinpot) don't requite tests, but some profficiancy in Japanese.

Well, at the moment I'm not looking to move anywhere. I'm happy where I am at right now and I enjoy my life as it is. Though going to teach english in Japan has been on mind for the past year, I'd like to eventually experience it, that's just why I've been asking questions. I'm a curious person, it just comes out naturally. xD

I was also wondering, how does it work when you get there? I assume they don't just shove you into a class and leave you to your own, right? And, what kind of class can you get? Is it random? Or do you get to choose? Can you only teach to beginners, or are there intermediate classes? Generally are there only young students (12 and younger) or do you get teenagers also?

All of these questions' answers depend on where you work and what kind of teaching you were hired for. In general...

No, you do some sort of training/orientation first. Then again, you could just be handed some textbooks and a schedule before being asked, "Could you prepare something?" This was my case.

Depends where you work. Gaba has one to one classes, some eikaiwas outsource you to a business, there is the ALT thing, university writing classes, that question is really broad.

Usually you get both types of classes. In some poorly structured eikaiwas you get beginners stuck next to advanced students. In elementary schools you have three kids out of thirty that go to eikaiwas screaming the answers while the others look at you with a blank face. Mixed level classes are pure torture in my opinion.

Your last question is a tough one, but I would say that the majority of eikaiwa students are over 12. However, Japanese housewives who can afford to drop the kids off at the eikaiwa once a week just to be rid of them are quite common. Eikaiwas on the other hand target young learners for a few simple reasons, they are easier to teach because the subject matter is so basic at that level. It is all fun and games. Second reason, if the kid shows progress the parents are going to keep sending them back. Last reason, English is one of the five core subjects taught in Japanese schools and is crucial in how far your kid makes it in school.

How did you manage in your situation? I think I'd probably have a panic attack if I was left to myself to decide what kind of class I was going to give.

Is there a way to prevent that from happening? As in, before you 'register' with a program, you make sure that they will provide at least a basic kind of training/orientation.

Since I am an ALT and not an eikaiwa teacher, I was able to look at the work of my predecessor and figure out roughly what I could and couldn't do. For most ALT's it is actually a lot easier because you get an English teacher who can tell you what you need to do or focus on the lessons, but the first teacher I worked with was only a temporary teacher at my school. ALT's learn a lot about what works and what doesn't from other ALT's. Plus, on the upside of things if you screw up as an ALT you just blame it on the Japanese English teacher you work with because afterall, as the name assistant language teacher implies, you are not the one supposed to be leading the class.

However, generally speaking your very few first lessons are going to always be introducing who you are and where you are from. I always suggest that new ALT's make a basic level 45 minute lesson with pictures from home. Twenty minutes to introduce yourself, twenty-five to divide them into groups and play a jeopardy-like game reviewing your intro. Your next class is going to be making them introduce themselves. There are lots of different ways to do this. Say partnered interview sessions followed by the each student introducing the other to you. Or you can do a speech contest where each student writes a short self-intro and gives it in front of the class. That would take about three to four classes. First they write in Japanese and translate as you correct the English(2 classes), next they practice (1 class), and then they give the speeches (1 class).

And there you have it, you have just made it through your first month of teaching English at junior high.