Teaching English In Japan
Teaching English is Japan is a fun thing to do and a terrific cultural experince should you will not soon forget.
If you are going to teach English in Japan there are few things that you need to know that will help you get started.
First it’s not a bad idea to learn some basic Japanese like how to say hello in Japanese before you go. It is easy these days to learn conversational Japanese quickly with online courses, so it would be a good idea to learn a little more than simply hello. You can take Japanese lessons online these days and learn fast for very good prices.
Qualifications
You will find that a majority of the english teacher employees will require you to have a 3 year bachelor degree before they take you on. Plus you will need to complete the TEFL (teach english as a foreign language) course.
Howver people do still get jobs without having a degree and even the TEFL but is much more diffilcult, especially in the cities such as Tokyo and Osaka.
The Cambridge CELTA is the most popular TEFL course around at the moment. It takes a total of 4 weeks to complete the course full time, but you will often find they offer a part time course also.
Visa’s
Visa are not to difficult to acquire if you have the correct qualifications and paperwork you need. The easiest way is to apply through the company that is going to employ you, and they will take all your forms to the Japanese emmigration on your behalf.
When you gain approval you then need to take done to your local Japanese Embassy with your passport and they will issue your visa for you. (please check the all legalities and proceedure with you local authorities thoughroughly as each country is slightly different).
Applying for a Job
Applying for a job in February or March is a good idea as this just prior to the new school year starting and teachers are in higher demand then, but don’t worry if you can’t go then as you can still find a job at anytime of the year.
One piece of advice I woud stress that you do is make sure that you think carefully about where you want to work. Ask good questions in the interviews such as – “what are the holidays?” , “will I get to meet a lot of Japanese people?”, “will I get to experience Japanese culture?” , and don’t just except a polite “yes” ask them to be specific.
There are two types of employers; the public system or the corporate system.
The public system as the name eludes to, is when you teach english in public schools. The general consensus is that the public system is slightly more relaxed with more holidays than the other option which is the corporate system, all though both have there advantages.
When it comes to the corporate system the largest company is called ‘JET’, and they can quite easily be found on the internet. Make sure that you are prepared a submit a quality application as JET are known for rejecting a lot of applicants each year.
“Do I need to Speak Japanese?”
Well the answer to this is ‘no’ you don’t need to speak Japanese however it is rather silly not to. As I mentioned above it is very easy to learn basic Japanese grammar such as japanese verbs, nouns and particles, and not only will this help you communicate it will also help you understand where the learning blockages might be for a Japanese student with English.
All the best!
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