For many different reasons, people want to be in Tokyo. I can attest myself that you can find the best food, technology, and places to go there. Alas, it would be an understatement to say that it's expensive to live there but you have to find a way to sustain yourself nonetheless. Oh, but if you're a foreigner, a gaijin, it'll be even harder to get said job as that's how Japan unfortunately is.
Fear not, the eikaiwa schools are always looking for teachers! Eikaiwa, or English conversation, schools exist all over Japan especially in the metropolis of Tokyo and is quite the lucrative business. Students, young and old, come to supplement what they learn in school, to hone the language for business purposes, or for personal reasons like travel. It certainly sounds like a good first step during your stay in a new country to teach what you know best. The life of a teacher at one of those schools is actually not as glamorous as it may seem.
This web series only recently has gotten started up but I enjoy it quite a bit since I've heard horror stories of working in the business. It's definitely a lighter, comedic take on the whole thing but it does a decent job of reflecting the atmosphere of working at such a place. However, one can't gloss over the scandals and mistreatment of teachers that gave certain schools terrible press. These schools are not necessarily the most engaging as they teach very basic material and students only take their interest so far before getting frustrated and giving up. It can get complicated being employed at eikaiwa schools but for many foreigners, it's one of the few choices of jobs available to keep them standing. Perhaps these days they may be getting better in providing a decent education in a foreign language but there's a certain stigma that surrounds the eikaiwa industry.
If you're interested in seeing more from the English Teacher series, go to their Youtube channel to check out the rest of their episodes or their main site for more information. It's pretty promising and a fairly entertaining insight into the business.
OMG English teaching is like the shittiest job ever. Take it from someone with her TEFL that has already been teaching for a year. The dumb brat kids never want to learn and refuse to do anything so you end up getting paid for sitting around doing nothing. Sounds great and all, but you have to keep pretending your doing something...which means spending hours preparing lectures and worksheets (since they wont participate in anything that could be REMOTELY fun)so you can keep the brats busy for the number of hours needed. AND they tell you you are getting intermediate students....and the students don't even understand "What is your name?" bleck. Horrible. -Esther
ReplyDeleteBut you can still make $100/hour by doing so. Still sounds nice job.
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