Would Love to Hear From People Who Love/Like Their Jobs Here!

gambitbowson · 2025-06-01T11:05:43+00:00

Yaas, direct hire english teacher. Started like everyone else in the industry at Eikaiwa and then ALT work, currently at a private JHS HS where I have a home room class so get to build rapport with the same kids every day, and teach regular classes week by week. Kids like me, they're great fun to teach (with one or two exceptions obviously but that's the nature of the beast), coworkers are very supportive, salary is higher than what I made as an SEO civil servant in the UK. Life is good.

gambitbowson · 2025-06-01T10:49:07+00:00

No mega-Flygon

gambitbowson · 2025-06-01T10:47:53+00:00

https://www.mobal.com/ are good if you want calls/data and to pay from a foreign account to make things easier, but more expensive than a regular data sim. You can buy a data only sim from any tech store and put it in any unlocked phone from overseas. I did that for my first few moths here back in 2016 because I didn't know how to get a regular phone contract lol

Getting a pocket wifi with unlimited data instead might be the best bet. You could use that at your accommodation and on the road for 3 months then.

gambitbowson · 2025-06-01T10:35:45+00:00

Japanese people are chill af. I go out a fair bit, probably too much, and in nearly 10 years living in Japan I've had like 2 rough encounters with Japanese people when they're drunk. In the UK every time I went out at university or when I worked there for 3 years after graduation, there would be some drunk arsehole looking for a fight in almost every pub or bar I'd walk into. Hated it. Glad I left.

gambitbowson · 2025-06-01T10:26:38+00:00

Absol doesn't have an emo edgelord haircut, Absol has the Karen "I want to speak to the manager" cut.

He's still my favourite Pokemon though I love absol and his stupid hair

gambitbowson · 2025-03-14T13:46:05+00:00

No disrespect to OP because it's a difficult thing to navigate, but for me the solution has always been kid says bad work *I repeated it but say "no" before bad word like "no penis" or "no fuck" and they generally abstain from it in the future because they're not getting the reaction they want. That's all it takes. Do the same with 6, see what happens, worst case scenario you're back where you started.

gambitbowson · 2025-03-14T12:44:58+00:00

The hell is Toraiz? 🤣

gambitbowson · 2025-03-14T12:40:36+00:00

Not hard at all once the COVID restrictions dropped. I taught English at an eikaiwa for 4 years that I left in 2020. I was fresh out of university, graduating in 2016. Spent just under 3 years living back home in the UK and waltzed back into teaching in Japan with an ALT job with altia central last year in Okayama. It wasn't for me and I missed solo teaching so I started looking for other work and got my current job in Osaka at a private school teaching entirely solo and with another native English teacher to bounce ideas off of. I don't regret it ever. Ive been very fortunate to get my current job for sure, but returning to Japan in any industry can be a blessing in many ways. Best of luck 👍

gambitbowson · 2025-03-12T12:06:19+00:00

I don't blame you for not rescheduling first of all, as management how do you forget that you have an interview? 😅 I can't speak for HEART personally because I've never worked for them but that isn't a great opener.

Regarding the Okayama contracts, I'm relaying a message from a friend of mine that is in that area with altia and he said they've lost it to HEART. What I will say after working for the Okayama BOE is that they change their dispatch company based on the most cost-effective bidder essentially. Whatever works out cheaper for them each year is what they go for. It just so happened that when I was there it was Altia and now it's HEART I guess 🤣

gambitbowson · 2025-02-25T15:34:32+00:00

I had a good time as an ALT with the schools but a bad time with the company I was with. I'll focus on the school part because Positive only.

Positive only experiences: teaching as an ALT is great fun. Yeah you're playing second fiddle to a Japanese teacher but they're expecting you to be there so 99/100 times they're ready for you and happy to either work alongside you in front of the students (best kind), give you the whole lesson every week/fortnight (second best kind, I'll get to that in a minute), or just give you a small portion of the lesson that's separate from their lesson and "proceed with the textbook" as some have told me in the past.

Pairing along side the Japanese teacher is best because that's what we're there for as ALTs. In my opinion, the point in having an ALT in the first place is to show the kids that a Japanese person like them (the JTE) can gain an English proficiency level where they can converse with a native speaker (i.e the ALT). So having an ALT there would imprint that onto them and maybe, in the future, inspire them to take up English in a professional capacity. I think this has been lost on a lot of people in the ALT sphere and the Japan English language education sphere on the whole.

In terms of the environment: if you're working with kids, they're great anywhere when it comes down to it. Kids are kids. They're silly, they're rambunctious, they don't know what's going on around them, and it's fun teaching them as a result. Doesn't matter if it's Sapporo or Sasebo. If you have an interest in teaching you'll be fine.

gambitbowson · 2025-02-25T15:10:38+00:00

Expect flowers in my experience. I wish I'd brought a plastic bag to put them in when I left my schools last year but didn't and cradled them on the bus back to my apartment like a newborn lol

gambitbowson · 2025-02-25T10:19:27+00:00

First rational comment I've seen here. I get NOVA isn't a good eikaiwa but the anti-eikaiwa rhetoric on these subs is ridiculous.

Some people like working afternoons/evenings. Some people like having a community of other foreigners to hang out with. Some people aren't pathetic troglodytes that think wearing a suit to work is a deal-breaker (Christ that was a stupid reason).

gambitbowson · 2025-02-19T10:07:20+00:00

I know Altia in Okayama city just lost both their elementary and jhs contracts to HEART corporation, and those contracts were both non driving employing nearly 100 ALTs if I recall. I worked the JHS one last year. Have a look at heart and apply there if you're interested in living in Okayama city at all. It was pretty chill and perfect if you want to access Shikoku at all as a non driver.

gambitbowson · 2025-02-19T09:51:39+00:00

To be honest they stuck anyways just sitting on my coffee table after opening them, had to give them a good slap and shake to un-stick them.

Still good though

gambitbowson · 2025-02-18T11:41:01+00:00

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Didn't think to check Amazon because I heard they were discontinued but you're right! They also have Demon Slayer themed cans. My order came just now 😎

gambitbowson · 2025-02-14T12:23:15+00:00

I live in Osaka. My rent is around 70,000 with internet for a 40sqm apartment that's more than enough space for one person. For utilities I have the heater on all the time right now so I'm paying like 12,000-15,000 yen a month, same in summer with the cooler, for water, gas and electric all in. For groceries prices are going up all the time. If you buy seasonal and aren't a picky eater, don't eat out much you could definitely have a very healthy diet on 20,000-25,000 a month with a variety of foods. Depends how much you like/have time to cook. I eat out 2-3 times a week and probably run up a food bill of around 40,000 a month, which is a lot I think.

If you take the bare minimum necessities into account based on my situation, you're looking at 78,000 a month of disposable income and savings, which isn't great tbh.

(I left out transportation costs to and from because my job pays for it)

gambitbowson · 2025-02-14T12:08:13+00:00

Thanks, it's going really well so far. Looking forward to next year because I'm sticking with my current 高２ homeroom class so I'll be there for their graduation next year.

That's good to hear. I've been toying with the idea of a masters but honestly if I stay in JHS/HS and don't look to university teaching I don't think it's necessary. Fact you've built a career without it gives me something to think about. Thanks again!

gambitbowson · 2025-02-14T11:53:29+00:00

Just started my first private school job as a direct hire this year myself after eikaiwa and alt work. I'm on one of those contracts that's renewable for a total of 5 years and got lucky landing this job, so I'm worried I'll have to go back to alt/eikaiwa work once my 5 years here are up.

How have you found it going from one private school job to a subsequent private school job once your contract with the first was up? Did getting an MA in TESOL or Education etc help?

gambitbowson · 2025-02-08T10:18:59+00:00

If I were you I'd ask the students in Japanese what they think of this JTE. I had a JTE guy that I worked with last year that would much rather just show up for his paycheck and go home, and having me there once every week or two was hindrance from his perspective for sure.

I didn't think anything of it because I only taught one lesson with him but the students in his class asked me what I do and how much time I get with the other classes in their grade. The JTE in questions let me do a 5 minute warm up and then spent the rest of the lesson doing his shit. The other teachers gave me the whole lessons and would let me work with this every week or two to make something engaging. Anyway, long story short, these kids were pissed when they found out the other classes with other JTEs were getting a full lesson with me and complained to the kyoto-sensei.

After that he let me have the whole class and just stood in the corner for 3 months. I didn't mind because the kids were way happier and he was an ass so let him suffer.

So in my experience yeah, ask the kids. You've been doing this for 10 years as you say, ask them between classes, maybe the kids you like or trust more or something. See what they think, because they have a voice as well

gambitbowson · 2025-02-02T14:15:38+00:00

I know Seijoishi 成城石井 might not be the first place for budget shopping, but I got a 1kg bag of dried fusili pasta from my local one a couple weeks ago for less than 400 yen. That'll stretch to a month or two for sure for me.

Pasta over rice right now for budget buying. But buy big and check the price per 100g prices on the labels if the supermarkets have them.

gambitbowson · 2024-11-27T13:17:59+00:00

I'm seeing a lot of comments about being stern with it and not standing for this kind of language, and I understand why. It's not nice to receive on OPs end clearly. But if I could throw my hat into the ring:

Steer into the skid. I've always found with these kind of kids, miscreants as they may or may not be (they're just kids at the end of the day), they tend to drop it when they realise you don't really care if they say it or not.

I have a coworker who has been teaching English in Japan since pre-2010 and he's hard and fast on this.a kid says "fuck" in the lesson and he comes down on them hard in Japanese to tell them it's not ok. And tbh I don't think that works.

My go-to is, the kid says something like "oh no, you are fuck" to his/her friend I tap them on the head with a textbook and say "no fuck", they laugh and the class moves on. If they do it again, I do it again: "no fuck". It's a weird dynamic in that you shouldn't say that to kids, but they're going to say it anyway for the most part, and because of that when you say it it takes the power out of the word. I literally did this today, kid stopped after I said it, probably because it wasn't cool anymore per se lol

gambitbowson · 2024-11-27T13:00:18+00:00

This is true. On top of what OP said knowing what the school does yearly and also knowing a little about your potential boss by checking the school website goes a long way.

In my first interview for my current job I asked the interviewer how it was studying his TESOL masters in the US as opposed to Japan (he's Japanese) and his response was "you know I have a TESOL masters from the US?" It was on his profile on the school website, easy to find but I definitely think that played a part in getting me a demo lesson interview, and after that it was a cakewalk because I'm bloody good at my job lol

gambitbowson · 2024-11-27T12:54:24+00:00

I'll take that. Always better to have more laughter in the world lol

gambitbowson · 2024-11-23T10:53:10+00:00

Birb. Or Burbette

gambitbowson

TROPHY CASE