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Unread 01-07-2011, 01:08 AM   #2
culture shocked
kiratsukai's Avatar
Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 3,802
are there any good ones besides JET?

"Good" ones? If you mean a job that will provide you with 35,000$+ a year full-time employment, a 3-year visa, free job training seminars, national health insurance enrollment, housing-support and free tickets to and from your country: No.

JET is more or less the only legitimate program/agency dispatching ALTs which doesn't use loopholes in immigrant law and deceptive employment practices to deny their employees national insurance (required by Japanese law for all full-time employees), undercut pay and cut corners by putting multiple employees in single-occupancy apartments or requiring them to work out their own housing with little or no support.

The dispatch agencies and eikaiwa schools are more or less all being protested by one foreign-employment group or another for fraud or other abuses.

Many do not pay a competative wage sufficient to live in the cities where they ask you to operate unless you hold down a 2nd or 3rd job.

JET is a wonderful opportunity but is threatened by cost-cuts and a wave of popular criticism.

If you are an experienced individual who already holds a valid Japanese work visa, you may be able to be contracted directly to a school board and cut out the middleman altogether. The gig usually pays a bit less than JET but will provide you with insurance and a decent wage without a third party taking a cut.

There are also privately-run small-scale eikaiwa schools who will hire foreigners who are already in the country or recruit on a small scale through sites like gaijinpot. Some are good deals, some are worse deals than any agency could offer you... It's a lot of shooting in the dark and networking.

You should be 100% aware, however, that 99.9% of Japanese jobs for foreigners will only guarantee employment on a year-at-a-time contract basis and will offer virtually nothing in the way of job security or hope for advancement. Teaching English in Japan is certainly a job, but it isn't really a viable "career".

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Last edited by kiratsukai : 01-07-2011 at 01:12 AM.
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