If you want to move to Japan and teach English there, then you have come to the right place! Choosing to teach English abroad is one of the best ways to travel around while making a living for yourself. It helps if you have a deep understanding of English grammar. Another bonus is having experience in learning other languages yourself because then you can really help your students learn to the best of their abilities.
First and Foremost, You
Need A Visa!
If you plan to move to Japan and settle down for a couple of years or so, you will need to get a working visa. For this, you need to have a university degree. It doesn’t matter what subject it’s in as long as you have one.
What If I Don’t Have A Degree?
For those of you who DON’T have a bachelor’s degree or higher, then all is not lost if you come from one of the following countries: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Korea, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Spain, Argentina, Chile, Iceland, Czech*, Hong Kong* or Taiwan*. If you come from one of these countries and are aged between 18 and 30 years old (as a general rule, although it’s only up to 25 for Australians, Canadians, and Koreans, and up to 26 for residents of Iceland), you can apply for a working holiday visa instead. This will grant you permission to move to Japan for work and travel from 6 to 18 months – wonderful!
*Note that these countries also have extra requirements: Czech applicants must be currently residing in their country of nationality, Hong Kong residents must have a valid HKSAR or British National Overseas passport, and Taiwanese residents must have a valid passport of Taiwan.
Get A Teaching Qualification!
Second, what you want to do is get online and search for TEFL/TESOL and CELTA courses.
What Is A TEFL/TESOL?
TEFL and TESOL stand for ‘Teaching English as a Foreign Language’ and ‘Teaching English as a Second Language’. They are essentially the same qualification. They range from a 20-hour weekend course (which is what I originally took back when I was studying at Aberystwyth University), to online courses that range from 60-300 hours.
Most companies require at least a 120/180-hour TEFL qualification to see you as a suitable applicant. However, you could always fall lucky like I did and wing a summer teaching job at your local English school with just the weekend course. I did this in the UK a few years before my move to Japan. In hindsight, I don’t recommend doing this, though, because it was smegging terrifying and an extraordinary learning curve not for the weak-hearted!
How Much Is A TEFL/TESOL Course?
The prices of online 120-hour TEFL courses vary. They can cost anything from £200-£500 and up.
What Is A CELTA?
This stands for ‘Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults’ and is seen as the mother of all English as a second language (ESL) teaching qualifications… Except for the DELTA, which enables you to teach CELTA courses. But, frankly, who needs that when you just want to move to Japan or see the world?
Anyway, I digress. You can either choose to take a full-time four-week course or take a part-time twelve-week course instead. The courses and timetables available generally depend on the school that you go to, so make sure you do your research before jumping into anything.
Which One Should I Go For?
Getting a CELTA will open more doors for you than a simple TEFL. This is because it will give you a more complete teacher-training background and really prepare you for the reality of teaching English. But, at the same time, the course is intense and more expensive. So, it completely depends on which route you can and are willing to take.
I highly recommend the intensive one-month CELTA course that I took at LSI Brighton. However, for those of you who don’t live in the South East of England, they provide courses elsewhere throughout the UK and abroad too. Check them out here: LSI CELTA course brochure. Scroll to the bottom of the brochure to see the different school addresses. You can just Google the school you’re interested in from there!
LSI is not the only institution that offers CELTA courses, so fear not if you’re not close to anywhere on the list. Plus, if a school is far from where you live, many students choose to stay at a hotel or rent a cheap apartment during their study time anyway.
CELTA Course Entry Requirements:
LSI Brighton, where I attended, requires the following to be permitted to apply:
- Two A-Levels or equivalent “high school” qualifications that would allow you to enter university.
- Be aged 18 or over at the start of the course.
- A Cambridge CPE or IELTS 8.5 if English is not your native language.
How Much Does The Course Cost?
That’s the tricky part.
A CELTA course usually costs between £1000 and £2000, and the prices typically change every year. This year, at LSI Brighton, they are stated as being £1240 with early-bird sign-ups. For those of you not dwelling in the UK, you will need to check out other schools in your country for their pricing. However, I imagine it will equate to about the same amount.
Related Post: How I Moved To Japan With Only £200 In My Bank Account
What’s Next?
So, you have your degree and your ESL qualification, and you’re feeling good to move to Japan! Next, you need to find a company at which to teach English. There are many English conversation schools (known as 英会話 “eikaiwa”) that offer visa sponsorships. You will need a visa sponsor to get into Japan, so this bit is critical.
You need to know that the pay at eikaiwas is NOT GREAT. In fact, at first, it’s smegging awful. I barely had enough to survive on for my entire first year in Japan, so try and get in and out of a school ASAP. Or get promoted to a more managerial position. There are many much better jobs available in Japan that also offer visa sponsorship, but they don’t do online interviews. My best piece of advice is to get over here by getting a visa with one of the following schools and then hunt around for better jobs later.
So, without further ado, here are the most popular and well-known English conversation schools for you!
English Conversation Schools (Eikaiwa)
NOVA
This is how I was able to move to Japan. NOVA offers group and private lessons for both adults and children. Children’s lessons are much rarer than adult lessons, and in my time teaching there, I only taught three children’s classes. Group lessons have a maximum of four students. Lessons last 40 minutes each and then you have a five-minute break to update lesson information and prepare for your next class.
You teach from a set of textbooks specifically created by NOVA. The training lasts three days (and is pretty simple and flimsy, which is why I seriously recommend getting a TEFL or CELTA qualification first). Then, you are sent on your way to teach all of the Japanese people in the world (well, Japan).
You get paid per lesson that you teach, and the amount you earn depends on the type of lesson. As before-mentioned, the pay is terrible and I think you earn something from like 1000 yen per standard class. Perhaps it was less, actually. I have clearly blocked this from my memory! Tip: Private lessons pay better, so befriend all your students and get them to book you privately if possible!
If this information hasn’t scared you silly, consider applying for a position here!
AEON
AEON has a similar approach to NOVA as it offers both group adult and children’s classes. It doesn’t specify on the website whether they offer private classes, however. Differing from NOVA, it offers parent-and-child classes for children aged 1-3, and group lessons for those aged 3-6. These are taught to a maximum of six children per class. For older children, aged 6 and above, there is a maximum of 8 children per class. For those afraid of teaching children, perhaps choosing a different eikaiwa might be better.
This school appears to be more modern regarding its teaching practices as teachers teach using an iPad and the lesson content is shown on a monitor at the front of the class. Students are taught in groups of either 5 or 8 depending on the lesson type.
Regarding salary, I would guess it’s in the same bracket as the other eikaiwas. I don’t have any personal experience with this school, nor know anyone who has taught here, so I can’t comment for sure. Scanning through their website, it seems like a standard English conversation school, though. Apply for AEON here!
ECC
This school appears much more rigid. It offers two weeks of training in both adult and children’s classes to support those with zero teaching experience. This is nice! It also claims to offer a decent salary of 270,000 yen per month, which is very good for this industry.
With ECC, a large portion of its customer base is children. Lessons last between 30 and 60 minutes. It has its own custom program for children aged 18 months to 12 years old and teaches a maximum of ten students… If you are not a kids person, I do not recommend ECC for you. Ten 3-year-olds are going to be an absolute battle for the most experienced of teachers, so don’t focus purely on the salary. It’s higher for a reason.
As for adult’s classes, these are taught to a maximum of 12 students, so the lessons are going to be more intense for you to manage. The lessons for adults last between 40 and 80 minutes, so again, slightly more rigorous lesson prep is also necessary. Apply for ECC here!
GABA
GABA has a different approach to English teaching. It only offers private man-to-man lessons and there are no children’s lessons! Lessons here are 40 minutes in length and include a computer for internet access. Also, unlike the other three, you can set your own schedule. So, it’s the most flexible of the eikaiwas. Although it’s flexible in that regard, note that you must work a minimum number of hours per month under a visa sponsorship contract.
The main drawback to GABA is that, although you set your available hours for teaching, you only get paid for the lessons that students book. A friend who worked here described it as a ‘popularity contest’. So, if you are a terrible teacher, don’t expect to be getting many return students. No students = No salary. GO GET A TEFL OR A CELTA!
So, yay for flexible scheduling! The pay here is also pretty dismal, though, so you will need to work as much as possible anyway to pay the bills. C’est la vie! Apply for GABA here.
Eikaiwa Summary
These four are the main competitors in Japan, although there are maaaany other eikaiwas around that you will discover when you move over here.
Unfortunately, not all of them offer Skype interviews or visa sponsorship, which is why it’s best to get a visa with one of the schools listed above and then consider changing jobs when you get here. Of course, only change job if you decide that where you are working is not the place you want to be (as was my case when I came over here with NOVA). I quit and moved onto a different company within my first six months. This means I handed in my notice at four months because – at least at that time – NOVA asked for notice of resignation two months in advance.
On that note, the legally required time for handing in your notice in accordance with the Japanese government’s regulations is only two weeks. So, if a contract you sign asks you to give a ridiculous amount of notice prior to resigning, know that you are within your rights to just quit with two weeks notice, no matter what the company’s contract states. Wish I’d known that back in the day!
Accommodation?
These eikaiwa also offer accommodation to teachers that move to Japan to work for them. It’s fine if you want to take the easy, safe road and go with that, but there are several drawbacks to this.
- First, you are at the mercy of the company to work where they wish. You cannot choose to work in Tokyo and will most likely be sent deep into the Japanese countryside to work.
- Second, this makes resigning more difficult if you ultimately decide that you do not want to work for them anymore. You would have to find a new apartment AND a new job in order to quit.
- Finally, you have no choice over where you live and what type of room you get. Basically you end up completely at the disposal of the eikaiwa you work for and I do NOT recommend putting yourself in that situation.
If you are wondering about alternatives to accommodation, I will soon be writing a topic on where to find a place to live by yourself. Check back here soon because I will link that article here.
In any case, I would advise you to tell your chosen eikaiwa where you will be living in advance. Just say you already have accommodation in Tokyo (or wherever in Japan you wish to move) even if you haven’t technically found any yet! Then, they will have no choice but to place you in a teaching position there. This is exactly what I did when I came over here with NOVA.
Successful Interview!
Congratulations, you got the job! If you don’t succeed at one eikaiwa (if you have a teaching certificate, you should though), then just apply for another. They will then start processing your visa for you, so let them know when you plan to head over!
You will need to send your actual degree certificate – they don’t accept copies – to Japan (scary, I know). Then, they will send you all the documents you need (plus return your degree) and you can pop along to the Japanese Embassy in your country to process your visa. In the UK, the Japanese Embassy is in London, so I just made a day trip out of it! The Embassy will let you know when it’ll be ready, and then you just need to go back a week or two later to pick it up.
Bon Voyage!
That’s it! You’re all done! Have a great time in Japan!
Related Post: How Did I Learn Japanese By Myself?
Hope this post helped you out! Be sure to comment below if you have any questions, and I’ll try to get back to you on them.
Love Jade xxx