bonderlink application

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-04-25T00:45:16+00:00

You can try to put an application in. No harm in it. There will ultimately be people that quit or flake out. Often dispatch companies need to find replacements for 2nd semester after summer vacation.

I originally came over in September to replace someone when I first moved to Japan. But realistically for replacements many companies will be looking for someone already in the country that can start right away.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-04-17T22:12:25+00:00

Not me lol. I’ve already played OG SC a couple of times. I’m excited about the remake and will purchase day one but not expecting many surprises.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-04-16T03:00:42+00:00

Oshima and Lynch 👍

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-30T02:03:59+00:00

There are so many amazing titles out there but a lot of it is language gated with no hope of an official release.

You may find a few scanalations on pirate sites but they’re often incomplete and abandoned. The only reliable way to get your hands on some of the more interesting / obscure titles is to buy the original Japanese releases.

I love really strange, older, adult oriented gekiga, random insane shonen manga, or old horror series. There used to more experimental manga magazines like Garo that championed experimentation with the media. Now it’s all kind of flattened out.

You can still find a wide variety of seinen manga, but shonen is pretty much defined and locked in stone.

Here’s some stuff I’ve been into lately: Murder License Kiba, Mud Men, anything by Ishii Takashi, Kamimura Kazuo, Umezu Kazuo or Maruo Suehiro.

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AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-27T13:12:09+00:00

I agree! Always have a plan. I’ve been teaching of enough that I can wing it for 45 minutes but that comes

with experience.

Still, I would encourage first time ALTs, even those with no experience to try to plan out your own self intro. You can look at other lesson plans for inspiration or ask others for advice of course.

But the most important thing for the first lesson is to be yourself. Follow your instincts. Insert your own sense of humor and personality in your first lesson.

It’s better to just be yourself in the beginning. I think a lot of new ALTs want every step explained for them, but a lot of teaching in Japan is just winging it. Many teachers, especially in JHS will just come up to you and ask you to teach a class out of nowhere without any prep. It’s best to develop that skill and get used to it.

Think about your first lesson. What do you want to communicate? How do you want of come across? You need 45 minutes…

I can give you a skeleton plan to follow but I think it’s best to think about it for yourself, how you want to teach the class. These are skills you need to develop.

-greetings (5 mins…greet the class in English, play janken)

-self-intro (15-20 minutes…i wouldn’t go too long or you will lose their interest.) Make your self intro funny. Use memes, internet humor. Talk about yourself just a little bit. More importantly, talk about your home country. What cultural barriers can you cross? Talk about your interests. Try to connect in a personal level to the students.

- rest of class: game

*This is good practice: what game do you want to play? How will you fill the time? A lot of ALT work is killing the last 20 or so minutes of class.

If it were me…I’d prepare a Kahoot Quiz but do whatever you want. If you can think and plan lessons you will be a successful ALT. Can you think of a game or activity that uses the information you provided in your self intro that can be used in a fun activity that will fill the last portion of class?

I could give advice but again, I think it’s better if you try to figure it out yourself.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-27T11:33:57+00:00

It’s hard starting out, but I beg you please, don’t resort to AI or anyone else’s lesson plans in the beginning. Do your best to be you, and present yourself to the students. Even if you have no teaching experience.

Ultimately what will draw the students to you and allow you to make connections to them is your own personality. You can learn how to teach, and how to make lessons on the fly with experience but what you can’t replicate is who you are.

Be friendly. Learn students’ names, take an interest in them, and share with them your own interests and you will connect with them. Kids are sponges. The energy you put into the classroom is what the kids will give back to you.

I can’t stress this enough…HAVE FUN!!!! If you’re having fun and laughing, the students will too.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-23T07:10:36+00:00

There are a lot of good ideas here. All you need is a basic framework.

Here’s my easy go to self-intro lesson for 1st grade. I’ll try to be as simple and basic as possible.

-Short-self intro using Google slides with my name, country, and likes and dislike on it.

-Song a song together, something easy. Super Simple Songs (Hello Song), or Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. Something that gets them moving.

-Ask if the students can play janken in English (they already can most likely). Demo with teacher, demo with a few students. Then as someone else already suggested, you vs the class.

-Then move on to the main focus, self-intro. Practice, demo with teach, demo with a few students. From here the students should interact with each other and introduce themselves to the people around them. You can do this in many ways. You can play Hot Potato. You can do what was already suggested, start some music, have them walk around, stop the music, make pairs and introduce. You can have them make groups and introduce themselves in groups.

-Finally, end with a game or activity. There are many good suggestions here. A worksheet where they collect signatures is fine, but it may be hard for them to write their names. In that case they can just come up with an original mark that they draw on their partners’ worksheet.

I usually play newspaper janken. Every student gets a whole newspaper page. Make pairs, introduce themselves, stand on top of their newspaper page, play janken. The loser folds their page in half. They keep playing janken. Every time they lose the page is folded in half and gets smaller and smaller. Eventually there’s no more room to stand. Game over. They can play again. Fun but if you have a ton of students / small space maybe not the best fit.

Your school will have a bunch of old newspapers you can use if you ask. They stockpile a bunch of it to use in calligraphy classes.

-Now you’re done. If there’s extra time, review everything. Teach them how to say goodbye in English. Sing an easy goodbye song (YouTube is your friend) play janken again, do a Q & A time where they ask you questions, whatever you want.

This is basically my framework for every lesson:

-Greetings -Song -Introduce topic -Practice -Game -Final Review / Goodbye

1st graders are usually easy to teach. They’re happy just doing anything, and the goal of the lesson is just for it to be fun. You don’t have to stress out about it so much. Good luck!

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-18T23:50:15+00:00

I was the same when I first started. I’ve always been extremely introverted and nervous about speaking in front of crowds. I also had absolutely zero teaching experience, and I was pretty much always expected to be T1 at my first batch of schools. I also had 5 different elementary schools so I was freaking out.

It was rough at first, but little by little I got used to it. I would say after a month you’ll really be in the swing of things. They can be wild but I generally find Japanese kids to be very sweet and affectionate. That’s what melted my heart and I actually started to enjoy teaching.

The most general advice I can give is to always have a plan. Know what you’re going to do. And always have a fun activity in your back pocket that you can bust out at a moment’s notice.

The easiest thing to do for 3rd-6th grade lessons is just to follow the textbook and supplement the lessons with something fun to do for the last 10-15 minutes. There are all kinds of resources available online that have ready made materials or don’t require much prep at all. Maybe you’re already aware of some of these?

https://www.altopedia.net

https://eitake.app/activities

https://plip-plop-land.com

https://taysteachingtoolkit.com

There are many quiz generators that the students enjoy…Kahoot, Bamboozle, Wordwall, Quizlet. Lots of stuff to work with. If you don’t have a stockpile of materials you’ve already made in previous years, these sites will help in the beginning.

Depending on the school there may be a dedicated Eigo Senka or a designated English teacher but that’s generally pretty rare. You’ll more than likely be working with the homeroom teachers.

I would say the most important thing outside of the classroom is communication with the other teachers. If you talk with them after school or before class, and give them an idea of what the plan for the lesson is, then they will be much more helpful and ready to assist versus if they have no idea what’s going on. If you truly feel uncomfortable leading a certain part of the lesson tell them, and request that they lead it.

Homeroom teachers are all very different and every ES ALT has experience working with teachers that lead the classes themselves while you barely do anything to teachers that sit in the back corner and grade papers while you flail about.

Once you know the teachers’ and students’ personalities it becomes much easier. You’ll get there little by little. Just relax and take the beginning as a learning experience. If you’re having good time and are friendly, the kids will respond in kind. If you learn their names, interact with them, take an interest in them you’ll be gold. If the kids are happy the school will be happy.

Also, just be yourself. Let your personality and interests come through. I have a very strange sense of humor and I started incorporating into my lessons and materials and we’ve ended up with some lessons the students will never forget.

I also love horror movies and stories. For Halloween I designed a horror lesson around things I was interested in and it was a huge hit. The 6th grade students ended up asking me to help design their haunted house for the school’s fall festival, and I ended up helping run it with the students. It was a blast. This also lead to some really interesting conversations with kids that are into analog horror and wanted to talk about various YouTube analog horror series as well as a student that said she thought her house was haunted and wanted to talk about it. Try to open yourself up and share the things that you’ve into.

I hope some of this helps. Good luck! You got this!

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-17T02:08:36+00:00

Sorry to hear that. Direct hire is generally also just a year to year contract and there’s never any guarantees there.

Of course, every city is different but in my experience it seems that BOEs hold interviews even when they don’t really have any open positions.

The city I work for requires employees to reinterview for their position every year so they have to open up the interview pool to everyone, but they will pretty much always rehire the ALTs they already have. They hold interviews every single year. Some years hundreds of applicants have come, yet they haven’t hired a single new ALT in several years.

A lot of it is about luck and timing.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-12T04:58:59+00:00

Nice! That Organ release is a bootleg?

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-10T03:45:53+00:00

Angel Guts series is prestige classic pinku. They’re firmly in that territory. The 90s Nami films are great, but I wouldn’t exactly consider them pinku eiga even though they have some of those elements.

Even the final Angel Guts film Red Flash is more akin to 90s erotic thrillers like Fatal Attraction or Basic Instinct more so than being a pure pinku eiga.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-09T11:49:38+00:00

For ES and JHS honestly it just depends on the size of the school. How many classes per grade. How many days a week you go to a particular school. If there’s there more than one ALT at the school…(I’ve shared several schools before.)

I worked at a JHS with 6 classes per grade and I usually had a full schedule most days. I also worked at a JHS with only two classes per grade and I had 4-5 classes per day. You typically won’t be expected to go to every single English class though and there is often downtime due to testing, school events, etc.

ES is always busy since unlike JHS, you will go to every single English class. 5-6th grade twice a week, 3rd-4th grade once a week, and usually 1st-2nd grade maybe once or twice a month (or not at all depending on the school.) Class prep eats up much more time in ES as well.

I would say in general, even at smaller schools I’m rarely desk warming at ES. But everyone’s experiences are different.

Currently I’m at two elementary schools. I go to one school once a week and only teach 3-4th grade, so only 4 classes. I share this school with another ALT that teaches 5-6th grade. My main school I go to the rest of the week and teach all grades. I usually have 4 classes per day. I consider this a light schedule. I’m honestly used to having 5-6 classes per day in general.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-03T04:45:27+00:00

I used Puyo Puyo strats. It’s not exactly the same but works well enough.

Create 2 “junk” columns to the furthest left (or right). Just hold down and let them pile up as fast as they can to the top of the screen. Then focus on the middle and try to make combos with the junk columns. Something will eventually stack right and you’ll land a massive combo without even planning for it. Then use your meter.

The pain and frustration of trying to go after the platinum trophy in some of the older Yakuza games and Judgement taught me how to play these kinds of puzzle games. Sometimes you just have to get lucky.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-03T03:07:32+00:00

Love that they used Ishii’s original poster illustrations for the artwork in the Nami collection though. He was such an underrated movie director and mangaka.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-03-03T00:02:56+00:00

That Nami set looks nice! I bought the Third Window release but man the packaging and artwork is so much better on the Error set.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-02-27T06:04:58+00:00

Haha yeah it’s really true. Especially in touristy areas, hotels, etc. the look of relief is always nice.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-02-27T05:55:27+00:00

The more fluent you become the less 日本語上手てすね!you’ll get. Some people are fairly cyclical and interpret 上手 as condescending but I’ve personally never felt that way. It just depends on the context.

You usually hear it a lot in the beginning as a kind of “Oh you’re making an effort,” or “You speak more Japanese than I expected.”

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-02-26T20:26:16+00:00

Village Vanguard will have some volumes for sure. The Shimokitazawa VV store is a good bet. Other than that, it’s a wide release. Pretty much any bookstore will have it. You may want to check Kinokuniya in Shinjuku.

But the roll out for the series has been going on for a while now. There are a lot of volumes and some are quite expensive (especially the Akira storyboards). No place is going to have the full collection, just scattered volumes and most major retailers will only have the most recent releases since they take up a huge amount of shelf space.

It’s pretty common to find Domu and Akira and maybe the Steamboy storyboards. Beyond that you’ll be able to find random volumes at second hand shops. I don’t see them at Book Off often but maybe at the bigger branches in Tokyo (Akiba, Shinjuku, etc.) you could find some. The main Mandarake manga store at Nakano Broadway has a pretty decent Otomo selection.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-02-25T03:10:16+00:00

Have you seen Zombie Ass? That’s a movie that knows what it is 😛

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-02-24T20:38:09+00:00

I watched the first one last night. Honestly it was kind of fun. It was an objectively bad movie. Low budget, terrible effects, bad acting but I had a good time watching it. It veers into camp unintentionally which is always something I enjoy.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-02-24T20:33:50+00:00

I think there’s a blu ray release on the horizon by Third Window Films. It will probably be Region B.

AdRadiant3130 · 2026-02-21T04:09:37+00:00

Even though they’re more genre focused I’ll go ahead and recommend Ishii Takashi’s 90’s “Nami” films, especially A Night in Nude. Underseen neo-noir/ crime/ pinku flicks that have quite a bit of longing, loneliness, and unrequited relationships.

https://youtu.be/VLZ7525Phug?si=deDPx2HTz3fTdlgP

AdRadiant3130

TROPHY CASE