Teaching English in Japan

I've had an assfull of the ol' US of A, and am thinking seriously about doing this. I'm curious what people have to say about the experience, both good and bad. bbobb, Strider, and maybe Salsashark are the only people who come to mind. Anyone else?

I'm looking towards JET. Goddamn, that application is a huge undertaking by the way. JET's got a great reputation, but are there better alternatives? Thanks in advance.

p.s. Would've thought there'd be a thread for this already. I searched but may have missed it.

Oh shit, here comes bbobb...

When You Can't Hack It At Home (c).

I've been "hacking it" just fine for some time now. I'm mostly bored is all. This seems like a great opportunity to experience something radically different for a year (or more), and I've always liked Japan anyway. Why not? Actually that might not be rhetorical, which is one reason I started the thread.

There are no better alternatives then JET honestly. The other big Eikaiwa's don't pay as well nor do they have as good of benefits, you can try to go private, but those jobs are usually filled with people who are already in Japan so they're near impossible to get till you're here. JET is a long process but well worth the time it takes, the only negative is that the application process starts in November so you wouldn't be able to get over here untill August '09.

As for some good and bad. Well with JET the job pays well, and is really really easy so that's great. You have a lot of time to do what you like. But you need to throw away any preconceived notions of what Japan is. This is not the land of Anime and Videogames (although it is the land of everything being cute), and it's quite different from America, as what we perceive as logic is often absent. Also you have to be prepared to be the center of attention 95% of the time, especially if you're in a more rural area of Japan. If you're a foreigner you stick out like no other here, and if you don't like feeling like you're on stage all the time when you go out you may have issues with it.

Also, unless you're in one of the big cities, you better like Japanese food a lot because other than Italian restaurants that serve spaghetti (the Japanese don't seem to understand that there's more to Italian food than that) there really aren't many options for non Japanese foods.

Also weather is another issue. Unless you're in Hokkaido you need to be aware that buildings here have little to no insulation. So when it's fucking cold outside, it's even colder inside, and when it's ungodly hot outside it's usually just as hot inside as well. And it gets brutally hot an humid here.

But on the positive side, it's interesting to live in a country and culture that is different from America, and if you get out to the rural areas Japan is incredibly gorgeous, I spent this last weekend hanging out deep in the forested mountains hiking around, then hopped in the car and drove just 30 minutes and I was on the beach. If you like the outdoors rural Japan is incredible.

I could probably write some more, but I'm just kind of rambling so I don't know where to go. I'll leave it to some of the others to pop in say a few things and then I'll add more. Also fire away with any specific questions you have.

For the people IRL I've known who do it, it's for the exact reason I posted. They weren't motivated to get a job in their major after school, and bolted to Japan within a year of graduating.

It DOES seem like it would be fun, though. :D

Thanks for the impressions, bbobb. I actually do have a specific question:

INSECTS.

What's the deal. Are they plentiful and huge and crunchy? Or can you pretty much avoid them. I'm talking about rural areas. I've been to Tokyo, and I don't remember seeing so much as a fly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Compass

Thanks for the impressions, bbobb. I actually do have a specific question:

INSECTS.

What's the deal. Are they plentiful and huge and crunchy? Or can you pretty much avoid them. I'm talking about rural areas. I've been to Tokyo, and I don't remember seeing so much as a fly.

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Ah the bugs of Japan. In the rural areas they're about as numerous as in any rural areas anywhere. There's big old bugs all over here, BUT, the thing to know is there are only two poisonous bugs in Japan, the mukade (centipedes) and the giant Hornets. Mukade you do see pretty regularly (especially if you're in the mountains, and they're some mean motherfuckers) the Hornets not as much (their nests are wiped out by the cities any time they build one near places where people live because they're very dangerous).

Other than those two though there's not much to be concerned with, you will see some strange looking bugs, but none of em are remotely dangerous, in fact as far as I know the spiders here don't even bite (I once thought I might have a spider bite on my arm and was talking to one of the other teachers about it and she had the most dumbfounded expression I have ever seen in my life and outright asked me "Spiders bite people?"). There's no avoiding them really, but it's not like you're in the Jungle either.

Uh oh. That's not good news. I'm much less worried about being bitten than I am about just crushing one by mistake, or finding one crawling on me, or lurking in my bed. If I have a single phobia, it's of the horrible crispiness of insects and arachnids. :(

I have some spiders that I let hang out in my apt, since they help keep any other bugs away. I've never really ran into any others in my apt itself though, although a friend of mine keeps getting mukade in her place. Now that is freaky. You're not going to crush one of the spiders by mistake nor find one crawling on you, they don't get near people. As for in the bed, well I guess it's possible, that is if you even have a bed, but they prefer the walls.