The disadvantages of teaching in Japan

“My first two years in Japan were spent teaching English… The students… studied English- or should I say, English was taught in their presence. Nothing ever seemed to sink in. Years of classes and endless tests and still they couldn’t master the intricacies of a simple ‘How are you?’ When I tried to have the most elemental of English conversations with them they looked at me with blank expressions, shrugged their shoulders, and said ‘Wakaranai’ (’Huh?’) They did this, I believe, just to annoy me. Don’t get me wrong, these teenagers were polite and studious and well-mannered, but they were still teenagers, and teenagers are pretty well insufferable anywhere you go on this planet.” From “Hokkaido Highway Blues”, possibly the funniest book about Japan that actually teaches you something (the funniest in a guilty pleasure kind of way being Dave Barry Does Japan) pg 7. More quotes from this book on my much neglected blog QuoteJapan here.

Other disadvantages:

- The belief that there is nothing (mixed levels, lack of a teacher’s book, lack of experience etc etc) that you can’t overcome with a gambarimasu can-do spirit

- Incredibly tired business students who really should be having a nap instead of coming to class

- The chances that the economy will slowly fade away leaving your yen worth nothing if you stay here too long

- The difficulty of investing that yen in a way to make them worth the effort even if the economy doesn’t shrivel up like the aging population’s skin

- Prejudice against mixed race kids

- Too many interesting books about Japan meaning your ETP magazines and linguistics books get dusty in a corner

- Split shifts and Saturdays (although that’s certainly not just Japan)

- Loads of potential cultural banana skins in the classroom and out (although you’ll probably be forgiven all of them)

- Being asked very personal questions

- Being asked the same bizarre questions like “Can you eat Japanese food?” and “Do they have four seasons in your country?” over and over

- The occasional student who takes two minutes of silence before each two word reply

- Some very dirty schools and kindergartens (because the staff are supposed to clean up but are overworked and there is no full-time cleaner). Very unexpected that one!

- Students who just want to chat but have nothing to talk about

- Replies to “How was your weekend?” usually being “I slept”, “I cleaned my room”, “Nothing special” or just a cringe

- Being far behind the rest of the world in terms of getting hold of the latest materials

- Some terrible locally produced materials, especially the self-study stuff in Japanese your students might be using, including stuff from NHK (”the BBC of Japan” my arse!)

- Some long and crowded travel (although your shift times might cut down on that)

- Some tiny classrooms

- Getting very sweaty in the summer before you even reach your front door

- Having to teach the phonemic script, how to do pairwork, classroom language, grammar terminology in English etc etc from scratch with each new student

- Some awful teaching your students have gone through from both native speaker and Japanese teachers, although that can make you feel like the total professional with very little effort…

- A lack of clear career paths (although again that is not exclusive to TEFL in Japan)

- A lack of CELTA and DELTA or equivalent teacher training jobs

- A lack of FCE, IELTS etc spoken examiner work

- The number of TOEIC classes, but I guess if you can make that exam interesting you will never have any fears teaching BEC…

- JALT being a bit elitist (but then there is ETJ for the rest of us)

- Japanese being tricky (but interesting)

- Never being able to admit that you are an Eikaiwa teacher at parties

- The substantial chances of another school chain or two collapsing like Nova

- University jobs being hard to get and with continuously reduced working conditions

- 30 classroom hours being a standard Eikaiwa week

- A lot of the workshops being aimed at Japanese primary school teachers with no knowledge of English teaching at all

- The British Council shrinking, closing down branches and closing down the library (also not just Japan)

- A particularly unpleasant Dave’s ESL Cafe forum

- Lots of low level students

- Some very restrictive school policies of things such as sensible use of L1 (although in other ways you are left on your own if you never get student complaints)

- Managers and the people who write the school rules getting used to 23 year old idiots and so treating everyone that way

As is usual when you get to let out your frustrations on the keyboard, this list of disadvantages is substantially longer than the list of benefits I wrote a week or so ago, but that should not be taken to mean that I wouldn’t recommend teaching in Japan. For me, it’s worked out well and I think I manage at least a year or two more before I need a substantial change.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 12:02 pmand is filed under British Council, Business English and ESP, CELTA, Cultural differences/ cultural training, Diploma/ DELTA, ETJ- English Teachers in Japan, Eikaiwa, Functional language, JALT, Japanese education, Learning Japanese, Materials, Mixed ability classes, Pairwork and groupwork, Problem students, Rave Spelling's ESL Au Lait, TEFL, TEFL career planning, TOEIC, Teacher forums, Teaching, Teaching English in Japan, Teaching low levels, Working conditions, becoming a teacher trainer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.