I'm trying to find a job as an English Teacher in Tokyo area right now.
I have more than 5 years experience as a music teacher, and I have the CELTA certificate.

I applied with the following EIKAWA companies, i.e. filled out their online form.
- Peppy Kids Club
- NOVA
- interac
- Berlitz
- Kohgakusha

Haven't heard back from them yet, but it's only 3 days since I sent those forms.

Now I am looking at GajinPot ads - however, pretty much all of the ones I have looked at, that also accepts overseas applications require you to be a native speaker.
Any non native speakers who'd have suggestions to share about where or how to go about looking for a job would be very welcome.
Please help me with some advice if you can, thanks.

So here's the thing - anyone that is happy to hire from overseas has an infinite pool of native speakers to choose from. There is very little incentive for them to look at non-native speakers, and hiring non-native speakers messes with their marketing spiel about how they have all these perfect native speakers.

If you're serious and none of those companies get back to you, you're going to have to take the risk of rocking up in the country and looking for a job. You'll have vastly more options - smaller companies are much less likely to care whether you're a native speaker or not (so long as your accent is good). The place I work for hires a couple of non-native speakers, but it's a small company and there's no way they're going to hire someone from overseas.

As well as GaijinPot, you should look at Craigslist and Ohayo-Sensei.

If your country has a working holiday visa arrangement with Japan and you're under 30, you'd be in an excellent position to just show up and look for work and should take advantage of it.

Edit: did you see this? https://jobs.gaijinpot.com/job/view/orde...TkbWBiqptk
Thought it sounded like something you could do.

Aikynaro,

thank you for your response.
What you say there makes perfect sense. I don't have a problem with gambling a little - by that I mean moving to Japan in advance and taking my chances. It's only logical that it would be easier to get a job from there.

Thank you so much for posting that ad!
That one would be a rather ideal match for my skills. I got really excited about it when I read it, and already wrote a new application letter and sent it.
I just sensed how much better it would feel do be doing something like that, even though I'd of course also welcome teaching English.

*sigh* let me hope the best.

Again thanks for your support!

I've seen some "non-standard" English speakers working at some of these companies before; people from the Philippines and such. I think you stand a chance if you can show you've used English for many years. I mean, you get English speakers from many EU countries where English isn't necessarily the first language. That said it'll be challenging.

maxwell777 Wrote:Thank you so much for posting that ad!
That one would be a rather ideal match for my skills. I got really excited about it when I read it, and already wrote a new application letter and sent it.

11hr days that maxes out at US$36k a year? Crap that's like $14 an hour and its in Tokyo too. Its fricking minimum wage and requires a degree and experience too lol

juniperpansy Wrote:11hr days that maxes out at US$36k a year? Crap that's like $14 an hour and its in Tokyo too. Its fricking minimum wage and requires a degree and experience too lol

8:15 - 17:15 = 9 hours/day, presumably including an hour for lunch = 40 hours/week, plus 'generous' annual leave, probably no lessons during school holidays, most of the time spent sitting in the staff room "planning lessons". Could be worse.

oh crap... i suck at counting ><

anotherjohn Wrote:most of the time spent sitting in the staff room "planning lessons"

Generally you could say this about most regular schools but this is a Montessori school, so I bet you'll be working, or expected, to work a lot harder on your lessons than you usually would.

The pay is also quite decent as well.