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If you had to do it all over again, what would you have done differently?

OP, I don't know who you've talked, or if perhaps things have changed in the many years since I moved back stateside, but I do have very pertinent experience with what was called "dispatch" in those years and if it's anything like what I personally experienced, you aren't getting very accurate information.

The Dispatch Teacher racket was, simply put, a system that connected lazy government BOE departments with greedy private corporations to provide walking, talking gaijin teaching assistants in public schools. Nothing more, nothing less. In my case, the Osaka Prefectural BOE had two modes for hiring foreigners to work in schools, and primarily their high schools.

One was the "Direct Hire" gig, which was the holy grail for most useless expats slumming it through life. As the name would suggest, the Prefectural BOE would hire foreigners to work as NETs (Native English Teachers) in, generally, the higher-ranking, academically-advanced high schools. You were generally required to have at least a Master's degree and some sort of teaching qualifications/certs from back home. Depending on the school and head teacher you worked under, your duties might range from team-teaching to actually running the entire 40-80 student classroom on your own. You were an actual employee of the prefectural government, at that time were paid about 310,000 JPY/month (which was straight baller, since eikaiwa grunts were getting paid about 250k at the time), were entitled to all the paid holidays that Japanese teachers received and were enrolled in the national healthcare system. In Osaka, the NET department consisted of less than two dozen teachers for the entire prefecture, so as you can imagine, the job was very, very difficult to get, extremely competitive and involved a very lengthy application and interview process. Unless you had some ridiculous degrees, credentials and experience, you needed an inside connection at the BOE, and usually someone very high up.

The other was the Dispatch Teacher gig. Since most large BOEs didn't want to personally deal with the hundreds of gaijin teachers needed to fill all the prefectural classrooms, they would contract with private companies to provide warm bodies. Most of the large eikaiwa outfits at the time (like AEON) developed departments for just this purpose. ECC, for example, developed the "Corporate Sales" division. Basically, the BOE would pay AEON/ECC the full 310,000/month to provide them a warm body five days a week, AEON/ECC would put out ads for "ALT" (Assistant Language Teacher) gigs, and then AEON/ECC would pay those desperate fools about 230,000/month max on a per diem basis, "dispatch" you to a public school (and usually not a very good one) and pocket the rest of the money. You were not enrolled in the NHS. You received zero paid holidays (again, company pocketed that money). If there was no school because of a national holiday, you didn't get paid for that day (so you usually didn't get the full 230k).

Also, since it was basically understood that these ALT "teachers" were going to be practically useless, they were generally used as tape-players with a pulse. Often times, dispatch ALTs would work alongside JET ALTs in some of the prefecture's shittiest schools with the shittiest students, doing the ever-important tasks of singing the alphabet or role playing dialogue from a textbook that even 5yo SPED kids would find retarded. And as if that wasn't demeaning enough, the dispatch ALT would soon enough figure out that the JET ALT, unlike him/her, was an actual government employee and thus entitled to all the pay and benefits that his/her eikaiwa dispatch company was robbing him/her of. So in other words, the 22yo JET jagoff, for whom this was his/her first job right out of unit, was getting paid the full 310k, had real health insurance, got all the paid holidays and probably got a semi-subsidized apartment, too. But because both of these ALTs were almost always utterly useless, in the case of the prefecture's more advanced/prestigious high schools, the head teachers would request the BOE send them an actual NET to teach the actual classes, or at least un-fuck whatever the two ALTs had fucked up, and the dispatch/JET idiots were relegated to the back of the classroom to do coloring books or cut out paper snowflakes or some shit like that.

So again, if you're hoping to do actual teaching, dispatch is not the way to do it. If you're financially set and none of this bothers you and you're just looking for a technicality to pad your resume back home where they won't know what "dispatch ALT" means, then by all means have a great time. Just know what you're getting into.

interesting and funny read, thanks
Looks like working in a convenience store is more fun than that
 
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I'm a TESOL teacher

plenty of cash

In Japan, those rarely go hand in hand. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but teaching salaries in Japan are horrible. You can, quite literally, make more money flipping burgers at a restaurant with better working conditions (and free meals).

You'd do far better to teach in Dubai and vacation here a couple of times a year.
 
In Japan, those rarely go hand in hand. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but teaching salaries in Japan are horrible. You can, quite literally, make more money flipping burgers at a restaurant with better working conditions (and free meals).

You'd do far better to teach in Dubai and vacation here a couple of times a year.

That was certainly true during my time and I've heard it's even worse now. Outfits like NOVA were paying 260k/month almost twenty years ago and someone mentioned to me that today they're paying around 250k if you're lucky. Twenty years ago I was finishing up my degree and getting paid $7.50/hour to work in a department store part time; if a company in America tried paying me $7.50/hour today, they'd face charges for criminal labor practices, among other things. Unless of course No Ingles, No Papeles. Then it's called Red State Workplace Innovation.
 
interesting and funny read, thanks
Looks like working in a convenience store is more fun than that

I was hired directly by a BOE--not based on any merit but because I knew someone upstairs--and given a lot of freedom, so to be perfectly honest, for a 25yo who'd come from the eikaiwa rat-race, it actually wasn't that bad. I was placed in a very prestigious high school with excellent students that routinely went to the private Big Four in Kansai and a few to Handai and Kyodai; I had my own nice, big, quiet, secluded section of an empty satellite office with a nice, big, comfortable desk to sleep at; out of the six periods each day I only worked three at the most; and thanks to the inherent, ingrained Japanese blood bigotry, I was every racist Japanese teacher's favorite "gaijin" on campus (granted, there were only three or four). All my reviews sent back to the BOE were absolutely stellar so never any visits from the BOE management. My only real gripe was the amount of downtime. I could only sit at my desk re-reading Ayn Rand for so many hours a day, or pacing the hallways in my Birkenstocks or occasionally stopping by the music department, grabbing a random instrument and jumping in with the kids (the kids loved it, and the director was an alcoholic degenerate so we got along just fine).

The only things I actually enjoyed, other than helping out the student bands in the Music Department, were the festivals. So after fulfilling my promise and watching my original 1-nen kids graduate, I resigned and went home. As it would turn out, that was the last decent and respectable thing I did with myself, because a year later I was a brand new republican political operator in D.C. and I never had to tell the truth or keep a promise again.
 
today they're paying around 250k if you're lucky.

I just heard less than a week ago that they are now offering 230.000 yens for full time positions.

You can still get 950 per hour at McDonald's.
 
In Japan, those rarely go hand in hand. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but teaching salaries in Japan are horrible. You can, quite literally, make more money flipping burgers at a restaurant with better working conditions (and free meals).

You'd do far better to teach in Dubai and vacation here a couple of times a year.
It’s not just the low pay that makes teaching English in Japan a bad idea tbh, I would respect a person who works in a field they are passionate about even if the pay is low. I would also respect a person who has the courage to show the middle finger to corporate monsters and instead choose to work in a stress-free environment and earn less than their “potential”.

The problem with the dispatch companies, especially eikaiwas in Japan is that they are poorly regulated shady companies. There is no option to be promoted, they make their employees work part time hours while not paying for non classroom work to avoid paying health insurance (which is illegal btw), they sometimes coerce employees into working in unhealthy moldy classrooms and don’t care if the kids are sick, and they commit fraud by falsifying contracts.

It’s better to get the necessary qualifications to teach in Japan by getting a masters degree and transfer to a direct hire school for better pay, or work in China after graduation or some other asian country first and then find a job in Japan. (Like my friend did.) All of the big dispatch companies are the same. All of them, no exceptions. I just know a few of them personally but every single eikaiwa teacher I know are miserable, overworked, underpaid, burned out, depressed and mentally & financially struggling. It should be a last resort.
 
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All of the big dispatch companies are the same.

Yes, I know some of their owners/directors. Every single one of them is a piece of shit garbage excuse for a human being, too.
 
That was certainly true during my time and I've heard it's even worse now. Outfits like NOVA were paying 260k/month almost twenty years ago and someone mentioned to me that today they're paying around 250k if you're lucky. Twenty years ago I was finishing up my degree and getting paid $7.50/hour to work in a department store part time; if a company in America tried paying me $7.50/hour today, they'd face charges for criminal labor practices, among other things. Unless of course No Ingles, No Papeles. Then it's called Red State Workplace Innovation.

I enjoyed my nova job, i think with a bit of overtime and a few late shifts i was making about 280k per month, and living in my nova shared apartment the rent was like 60k pm for a nice place on the odakyu line. 220k pm to spend on food and beer as a new grad wasnt bad, and the job was easy. As i wasnt totally socially and / or professionally retarded, i understood that this was a stepping stone, entry level job. I just did the job to a reasonable level, then got a better job after 12 months of earning not much money but having fun railing a few cute nova receptionists.

I always felt that the nova teachers who complained about working conditions to be a whole new breed of pathetic. Its a stepping stone not a career. If you actually want to work there long term, then you deserve no more than 250k pm and 10 paid holidays.
 
I enjoyed my nova job, i think with a bit of overtime and a few late shifts i was making about 280k per month, and living in my nova shared apartment the rent was like 60k pm for a nice place on the odakyu line. 220k pm to spend on food and beer as a new grad wasnt bad, and the job was easy. As i wasnt totally socially and / or professionally retarded, i understood that this was a stepping stone, entry level job. I just did the job to a reasonable level, then got a better job after 12 months of earning not much money but having fun railing a few cute nova receptionists.

I always felt that the nova teachers who complained about working conditions to be a whole new breed of pathetic. Its a stepping stone not a career. If you actually want to work there long term, then you deserve no more than 250k pm and 10 paid holidays.

I swear, if I'd started drinking earlier today I'd accuse you of being a NOVA recruiter. And that 66k/month for the "furnished" apartment was highway robbery, at least it was in Osaka. But I suppose you might also chalk it up to a different mindset.

The gang of eikaiwa "teachers" I inevitably ended up hanging out with--and not surprisingly am still friends with 20 years later--wasn't made up of guys looking for any sort of stepping stone, as I don't think any of us wanted to be in Japan long-term. We were all in our early-mid 20s, degenerate British, Australian and a couple of American goons, and we all had but three objectives for our time in-country: DRINK, FUCK, PARTY. Then go home. The eikaiwa gig was just a means to that end. Eight miserable fucking hours around miserable fucking people (students) and equally miserable, mistreated young staff girls and then that 9pm bell rang and we were flying out the door to go get shitfaced and try picking up schoolgirls on the train platform.

The guys who were smart, or maybe just lucky, nailed every single NOVA staffer and student they could, caught a (curable) STI or three at Club Pur in Namba, humped their way through every square inch of Tobita Shinchi then got on a plane and went back to the real world. The unlucky guys decided to forego the condom one fateful night and there went their dreams, ambitions and hopes for the future. I guess I just fell into the stupid category, as the first eikaiwa year passed so quickly I decided to punish myself with another, and then a friend greased me into a decent teaching gig and there went most of my 20s. By the time I got home I was too old to begin anything meaningful, so naturally I ended up in a suit, tie and wingtips in Washington, D.C.

I actually know a guy who started with NOVA back in, maybe, 2005...and he's still there now. Not a joke. Part of you wants to give him some money, maybe. Part of you wants to kick his ass. Part of you wants to kidnap him, stick him on a Delta flight going stateside and tie him to his seat. Part of you wants to Zoe Barnes his ass on the JR Line. Some souls just can't be saved, I guess.
 
As a young single dude (back in the 90s) Eikaiwa was a ball.
Great mates, good times and more sex than ever.

But those who never went home pretty much all moved into other fields and are doing well. I only have one mate left in the eikawa game, and he loves it, has a great wife and 2 lovely kids.
Other guys still in the teaching industry have either set up their own schools or are employed in Universities now. A few do marriage celebrant work on the side.

Other dudes have gone on to set up successful businesses, and many are living the dream.

But I doubt any of them would be there today without the eikaiwa route. And t get togethers we have now are some of the funniest times as the stories get better and better. (i.e. a mate bailing naked thru the toilet window of nurses , as the matron was doing the rounds).
 
As a young single dude (back in the 90s) Eikaiwa was a ball.
Great mates, good times and more sex than ever.

But those who never went home pretty much all moved into other fields and are doing well. I only have one mate left in the eikawa game, and he loves it, has a great wife and 2 lovely kids.
Other guys still in the teaching industry have either set up their own schools or are employed in Universities now. A few do marriage celebrant work on the side.

Other dudes have gone on to set up successful businesses, and many are living the dream.

But I doubt any of them would be there today without the eikaiwa route. And t get togethers we have now are some of the funniest times as the stories get better and better. (i.e. a mate bailing naked thru the toilet window of nurses , as the matron was doing the rounds).

Oh, I don't want to make it seem like a regret my time at the eikaiwa. On the contrary, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It was an experience and unless you did it you'd never understand. I think most of us who went through it tend to wear it as a badge of honor, a rite of passage, if you will, if you really want to say you "did Japan." Your pals basically mirror mine, at least the ones who stayed. One got his PhD and is a pretty highly regarded professor in Kyoto today; another started his own small chain of private schools and does quite well; one did the whole JLPT thing until a big corporation hired him and he's some bigshot up in Tokyo; the smartest one married into money and fucks his wife for a living; even some of the staff girls used the experience to start their own businesses. We get together once or twice a year, leave the wives and kids at home, get utterly shitfaced telling eikaiwa war stories and for a couple of hours we're all 22 again.

A buddy of mine did a stint in the Marines after high school, including a couple of tours in Iraq. The way he sums up his experience in the Corps could easily be used for the eikaiwa: "In the Marine Corps, you will meet the absolute stupidest motherfuckers, and also the absolute greatest motherfuckers, you will ever meet for the rest of your life."
 
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Oh, I don't want to make it seem like a regret my time at the eikaiwa. On the contrary, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It was an experience and unless you did it you'd never understand. I think most of us who went through it tend to wear it as a badge of honor, a rite of passage, if you will, if you really want to say you "did Japan." Your pals basically mirror mine, at least the ones who stayed. One got his PhD and is a pretty highly regarded professor in Kyoto today; another started his own small chain of private schools and does quite well; one did the whole JLPT thing until a big corporation hired him and he's some bigshot up in Tokyo; the smartest one married into money and fucks his wife for a living; even some of the staff girls used the experience to start their own businesses. We get together once or twice a year, leave the wives and kids at home, get utterly shitfaced telling eikaiwa war stories and for a couple of hours we're all 22 again.

A buddy of mine did a stint in the Marines after high school, including a couple of tours in Iraq. The way he sums up his experience in the Corps could easily be used for the eikaiwa: "In the Marine Corps, you will meet the absolute stupidest motherfuckers, and also the absolute greatest motherfuckers, you will ever meet for the rest of your life."
Couldn’t agree more.
 
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Don't exactly live in Tokyo, live somewhere accessible to Tokyo and cheaper like in Chiba, Saitama, or Kanagawa.
 
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Hello everyone,

So I'm moving to plague city this year as soon as I get the green light from the dispatch company - don't try to dissuade me. I'm getting old, and this is probably the last opportunity I'll have to experience life in Tokyo.

Kind regards,

Joshusan
Old YOu crazy? I'm going be that dude at 65 with a 18 year old Girl-Friend we have organic foods and vegggies to keep up looking young stay off the pork and exercise daily. Man, If you really strapped with cash which I would be able also. Go half on a club visit and the bottle. Grown man stuff, gotta go to the club and get your own girl to V.I.P I will strapped with cash also going this winter.