Eikaiwa? JET? Some other random job? For a "gaijin" from Australia!

[shazam]

[quote="ttjereth"] 2. You will probably end up working less hours than in finance, but you will also be working different hours. Prime time for English schools is when their clients aren't working, which generally means nights and weekends, so even if you meet some Japanese folks you want to hang out with, you may find it impossible because of conflicting schedules and you may find that although you have more free time than if you were in finance (less money though), you either spend it alone or you end up in the situation of spending all your free time with other eikaiwa teachers because you all have the same/similar hours. Nothing like constantly hanging out with nothing but foreigners for the authentic experience ]

What about if you are teaching at a school of kids? Wouldn't it just be regular school hours?

I never actually thought that I might end up just hanging out with other foreigners, thats a good point I'll need to consider.

[Samurai_Jerk]

If you really just want to come to Japan to experience the country and screw around for a year, I'd suggest spending 6 months to a year saving at home and coming on a working holiday visa. You're young and Australian, so you have that option. Then you can spend 6 months to a year working part-time, studying the language, drinking Asahi Superdry, banging the locals, doing judo or whatever it is you're interested in and have plenty of freetime to "experience Japan." After that you can go back to Australia and reenter the workforce. As long as you don't take off more than a year, I don't think it will be the end of your career. You'd definitely have a lot more fun that way than taking a year off to teach English.

If you want to work here then I suggest coming the finance route. Teaching English here is a dead end even if you want to be a career ESL/EFL teacher. You said you don't have any certification. The easy answer to that is get certified.

The fact is the market sucks right now and all the investment banks are cutting people. There will most likely be at least 1000 laid off in the next few weeks in Tokyo alone. It's the perfect time for you to spend a year or so studying for a CPA, CFA, CA, etc. Pass one of those tests and in a year or so when things start picking up and all the investment houses start hiring people again, you can ride that wave right into a job in Tokyo.

There are pleny of guys working in both Japanese and Foreign investment banks in Tokyo that speak little or no Japanese. And they aren't all C-level expats either. Tokyo is one of the easiet major markets to get into banking because there is a lack or talent here. But your chances go down significantly after age 30.

[ttjereth]

What about if you are teaching at a school of kids? Wouldn't it just be regular school hours?

I never actually thought that I might end up just hanging out with other foreigners, thats a good point I'll need to consider.

Your odds of landing an English job (outside of JET) where you do nothing but teach at real schools during school hours is close to 0. There's been a trend in recent years for school districts to have teachers from local eikaiwa schools handle those jobs and the eikaiwa schools usually have those teachers teaching regular eikaiwa classes in addition to the school visits (and the positions that still do exist tend to be more sought after so being brand new and short term you have less chance of scoring them), on top of which 99% of the "schools" do not consider commuting/travel time as part of your work hours and if you are going around to schools out in the boonies that travel time can be considerable, so you can easily find yourself spending 10-12 hours a day for work but only getting paid for 7.5 (because most eikaiwa schools like to work you right up to the point that they still won't have to pay any of your benefits/insurance etc).

Even on JET there are a fairly large number of host institutions which have the ALTs teaching night/weekend classes (in exchange for a weekday or several hours during a weekday off). Also note that Japanese schools aren't just 8-3 mon-fri.

Getting stuck in a perpetual gaijin sausage party is a pretty common situation for English teachers here.

[shazam]

samurai_jerk, thanks for your thoughts. You do have a point about the bad state that the financial markets are in. But as you mentioned after 30 it could get really tough... and I'm not far from that magic number... another reason for my desperation.

ttjereth, thanks to you too. I will definately keep in mind the types of hours I could be working. Are you teaching atm?

So many regrets in my life.... A lot of whatif's have been going through my head of late. Like, had I just been less lazy during high school or uni I could have taken the opportunity to go on an exchange or learn another language or pick up some skill rather then wasting it away. Thats another motivation for me wanting to go to Japan. I feel that come another 5 years and if I don't do anything I'm just going to come up with that same feeling of regret...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Thats another motivation for me wanting to go to Japan. I feel that come another 5 years and if I don't do anything I'm just going to come up with that same feeling of regret...

Then go with my first suggestion.

[Bucky]

I came across this fellow's observatons of his attendence at the Tokyo Summer Career Forum:

This past Wednesday and Thursday I attended the Tokyo Summer Career Forum (hereafter referred to as CFN) at the Tokyo Big Sight International Exhibition Center near Odaiba. This post contains my experiences and observations from the two-day event, some of which are positive, others of which are negative.

Please note that all of the following personal observations are from the Tokyo CFN, and as such, the candidates in attendance and overall event atmosphere may vary significantly if you attend one of the forums held in either the United States or Europe.

http://bwhaleyjapan.blogspot.com/2008/07/career-forum.html

[amdg]

I came across this fellow's observatons of his attendence at the Tokyo Summer Career Forum:


http://bwhaleyjapan.blogspot.com/2008/07/career-forum.html

"Of the three, I would say that the Toshiba interview went the worst. This was mainly because the interviewer simply did not understand my resume at all. We spent most of our twenty minute slot going over my resume line-by-line. I had to explain just about every item as he furiously scribbled notes in the margins."

That’s interesting because I also had a disastrous interview with Toshiba a few years back. Almost the whole interview I was on the back foot, defending myself from charges of not being Japanese. WTF? - you knew I was not Japanese when I applied was the main thought going through my head the whole time.

Later, the only way I could understand the interview itself was to think that Toshiba had a directive to interview some foreigners for positions, but that none were to be actually hired.