Why You Should NEVER Teach English in Japan

Five years of teaching English and I quit, done. No more. Okay, we have some stories to go through today. I've taught children, I've taught adults, I've taught in public and private schools, I've done it all. I've seen people come in and stay for a week and quit. Why do foreigners leave Japan? Here are four reasons why you're probably not going to want to teach English in Japan. But first, welcome to my classroom. Hello. How are you? I'm good. Nice. I'm good. Good. Very good. My name is Alyssa. That's all we needed. Nice to meet you. What's this? His name is Alligator. Mr. Alligator. Mr. Alligator, he likes to eat fingers. Oh boy. My name is Masaru. My name is Rihona. That means team A, you get one point. Now, English class was a fun time for the students. It was always fun, always entertaining. A lot of them looked forward to it, which was great. But it's because it was like a break from their education during the day. It's, oh, next is English class. Good. I can relax and have fun, which is wonderful. And I think that that makes the kids like English more. But it put a lot of pressure on the foreign teachers to be performative. You are the entertainer, whether you want to be one or not. You're going to be playing games with the kids. You're going to be singing and dancing and being really silly. And there's all kinds of different expectations for you to entertain the kids that I feel the local teacher doesn't have to live up to. So maybe you are a kind of silly person that likes to joke around and be funny. But even if you're not, you kind of are expected to do that for this job. We were the big funny kid in the classroom that you could kind of joke around with and pal around with. And that was fine to a certain extent. But kids really didn't respect us nearly as much as the local teachers. The local teacher was more of the serious teacher. That was the teacher the students were really afraid of. They really, they walk into the room, most of the kids are on their best behavior. And I always felt this double standard. I found out that even in Japan, not just in China, there's a lot of naughty kids. They would do so many things with us that they would never dare, never dare to do with their local regular teacher. When the kids are hitting you, taking your stuff, messing with you, you punish them. They don't really take it seriously. The other teachers, the local teachers don't really take you seriously. It's a tough position to be in. If they tell their parents, oh, I got schooled and I don't know why, because they didn't understand in English, then the parents would often go in and complain about us. So we had a lot of pressure to not only be a good teacher, but to be a popular teacher. And to be a popular teacher, you had to kind of take a lot of crap. So a lot of foreigners, they get burnt out. Obviously, it wasn't all bad news. And there were a lot of really good days, days where I really got into the role and had a lot of fun with the kids. And every once in a while, they'd turn around and do something really sweet, like this. This is a fox. It's beautiful. Cute. So cute. Hello, how are you? Hi, nice to meet you. Oh, nice to meet you. What's your name? Nice to meet you. I'm a bear. Nice to meet you. Wow, yours is so beautiful. It's better than mine. Hi. Cream. Thank you. She gave me a gift, so you get a gift. Thank you. For you. Thank you. I love the gift. Thank you. You can have one too. You helped me. Thank you. Taiyaki. You like taiyaki? I had a lot of sweet moments like that. But at the end of the day, it came all the way from the other side of the planet to get involved in Japan, Japanese culture, learn the language, integrate with the population. And that's just not something that's going to happen in a country that requires you to work so many hours. And during those hours at the school, they were very strict about not speaking Japanese. When I would say something to the kids in the local language, I got scolded by my boss, by the other English teachers, the local English teachers. They tell me, only English, only English. Nope, this was the rule and you're not allowed to break the rules. And if you do, we're going to yell at you. And I just like, why is it okay for you, but not for me? Oh, because I'm the foreign teacher because of the way I look. You were supposed to pretend that you didn't understand what they were saying. Or ask another kid in the classroom to translate for you. I don't like to play a character like that. And I don't like reinforcing to kids that all of us that look like me, we don't know your language. We have no idea. None of us can learn your language. Isn't this like a reoccurring theme on my channel? Like, don't judge a book by its cover. Don't judge people by the way they look. When they open their mouths and they speak fluently in the local language, you should listen to them, not revert to English. This is a recurring theme. I kind of wanted to drill this in. Now, let's be fair. A lot of the foreign teachers did not and do not speak the foreign language to any degree of fluency. You could potentially learn more Japanese in just a couple weeks than English teachers that teach in Japan for an entire year. If you want that experience, you want to go into a Japanese school and experience life in Japan and experience school life. You'd be better off as a student. And that's why I'd highly recommend Akita Inaka School. You can get that school experience without all the detriments. You can just enjoy the benefits. They have a huge range of ages for students as young as 17 years old all the way up to people in their 70s have come here, which I've never seen at a Japanese language school before. I'm talking about going out for events, going out, meeting local people, going and experiencing things that would take you a long time living in Japan to experience. And you don't have to endure all the headaches of living in Japan and teaching kids to get that school experience. You can do it in a much funner way and it won't take you a year or five years like me. They'll even let you go into schools, local schools and meet high school, junior high school students and see what it's like to be at a Japanese public school. It's a really amazing experience. Which brings me to the final question. If you were to actually spend a year living in Japan, how much would you get paid as an English teacher? Unlike other countries in Asia, Japan is very expensive and they don't tend to provide free housing and meals to their English teachers. So you're going to be bearing that cost all on your own. However, it doesn't stop people from coming here. Man, you guys got to stop being so interested in this country. You know how competitive it's gotten for teachers to come over here and teach English. The salary has been driven down so much lower. And the amount of holidays you get is just a lot lower than China because so many people are interested in Japan. Japan actually lays teachers off and fires them. Which for foreign teachers, it's like no way. I thought you wanted to keep me here at all costs. But no, actually it's much more competitive in Japan. And there's so many of you that want to come here. You've just driven the salary down. In Japan, as a new teacher, you'll make maybe $25,000 or $30,000 a year. In China, you get a lot. I mean, they're just trying to attract foreigners over there. Japan doesn't have to do much advertising. But people are not coming here because it's crazy good money or because you get so many days off. People are not coming to Japan for that reason. They simply want to get a start here or they want to experience it. So rather than coming over and spending a year teaching English for not so good money in Japan, come over here and be on the student side and get all that experience. All those things you would have done in a year or two of teaching English in just three weeks. Go sign up for Akita Inaka School if you want to actually experience Japan and learn Japanese at the same time. But I just hope whatever you're doing, you're learning and improving yourself along the way. For all those that like to make fun of English teachers over in Asia, it's kind of like a rite of passage to teach English over here as a foreigner. It's something most of us come over here and do as our first job. I know a lot of people can be really overly negative about it, but everyone has to start somewhere. Perhaps a problem comes when people get stuck in that job and they don't move on and they want to move on. But for most of the English teachers, maybe 90%, it's just a stepping stone into their next chapter of their lives. I highly respect people that enjoy teaching kids. We need more of you out there. We need people like that. But it's not something that I can do every day for years and years. I'm going to say, I'm never going to do it again. I liked it, but I'm never going to do it again. But never say never, because hey, who knows? Hey kid, you're throwing snow. Nice to meet you. Bye bye. See you next time. Bye bye. Hey, make sure you give this video a like and subscribe. We're trying to get to 2 million subscribers by 2025. We're not going to make it at this rate. There are so many of you that watch my videos pretty consistently, but you haven't subscribed yet. I mean like 90% of you. So enjoy some of my other videos. I know there's a lot more that you're going to enjoy. And I'll see you in the next one. All right. Bye bye.