Job Discussion Forums

[Quibby84]

Has anyone ever heard of this school?
(I give up on the search/bring the subject back to the top thing)
I have been trying to find information about this school on the web as well as other Gajinpot and other places like that but havent found much...
so..anyone know anything?

[Patros]

I worked for them for a while... the pay was as advertised (that is to say, fairly low), but they were generally fair and honest. I did find the Japanese staff at the head office told a fair number of little lies, but it was always about stupid things that weren't really important. If you wanted something to get done you pretty much had to go to the foreign office staff, or the owner (Waka).

Your questions are pretty vague, but that was my general impression of the place.

[Quibby84]

Well we are not worried about the money as much as we are the many hours at work, since it is my husband AND I I think that we will have enough money.
How many hours did you work?
Did you make enough to save?
How was the working conditions?
How was the apartment?
WOuld you rather work there or at a conversational school?
Are you close enough to tokyo to be able to "be in the action"?
That is all I can think of now...
oh, what would you rate it from 1 to 10?
Thanks SO much for responding

[Patros]

I assume you'd be working as an ALT for heart, or else much of this isn't really relevant to your situation.

Questions 1 , 2, 3, (possibly 4), 5 and 6 could have easily been answered by asking heart, or searching this forum or the web. I'm not trying to be a tool, but most of the info on hours, money, apartments and possible locations is available from heart, and is more up to date. There're tons of resources about the ALT experience in Japan online.

1) I worked 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, a total of about 200 days a year. Heart had a large variety of contracts while I was there, mine was the most hours per year.

2) I made enough to save, but I am a thrifty dude. I was making 230,000 a month. I'm from Canada and I found it cost about the same to live in either country, as long as you're willing to be a little flexible. There are plenty of financial discussions and tips on the boards.

3) The working conditions were pretty much determined by the BOE, not heart. There were a lot of problems with my BOE, 4 of the original 7 teachers (including myself) didn't finish their contracts. While I was there 2 other teachers were given warnings by the BOE, etc. However, the 4 other ALTs who worked for the BOE about 5km away had no problems at all. Heart was very reasonable in trying to deal with the BOE, but they had put me in a tough spot (the BOE had requested a very experienced ALT for my school, and I had no ALT experience at the time.)

4) The apartment was a leopalace... they're small but clean and cost 60,000 a month including utilities (that was the standard heart deal, although some cities were not leopalace).

5) It's an entirely subjective decision. Search the forums for discussions on eikaiwa vs ALT. I prefered Eikeiwa. I loved working with kids at JHS, but hated all of the BOE drama.

6) That completely depends on where you wind up. It seems like you need to do a little more homework.... Heart sent teachers to Ibaraki, Tochigi and Saitama while I was there. You could be 3 or 4 hours away, or you could be 45 minutes away from Tokyo. You probably won't save much money if you go to Tokyo on a regular basis. There are plenty of cities that may be closer that are a lot of fun. I spent a lot of time in Utsunomiya in Tochigi, and I had a better time there than I did in Tokyo.

I'd rate Heart a 6.5. They don't offer the best pay, but they're pretty upfront about what they do offer. They were quite reasonable in dealing with BOE problems. But they were suffering a growing pains while I was there.

[Quibby84]

Thanks!
I dont know what a BOA is (I am pretty new to this stuff)
The ALT position is what we want, and I have looked at ALT vs Eikawa, and we decided on ALT, it is more of what we want to do. My husband wanted to live in Tokyo, but we may just live in a big city that is by tokyo because that may be cheaper and easier.
I tried to look up a leopalace, it looks like a hotel, is that what it is?
But they looked really nice and clean (which is most important).
From what you say and from the few things that I have heard from other people, Heart seems like a relatively good choice. We will probably do the interview and see what happens from there.
again, thank you so much for you time.

[Perpetual Traveller]

[Quibby84]

Is it like a college dorm room with no kitchen and no private bath or does it have those things?

[Perpetual Traveller]

They all seem to have different set-ups but in mine I have an entry corridor that triples as a kitchen and laundry. I have a sink, two hotplates, a microwave, a fridge and a washing machine out there. There is a shower room and a toilet and a living/sleeping room. Mine is quite big (comparatively speaking) but then I live in a smaller city. It has a bed (often this is loft style, which many say gets too hot to sleep in during summer but mine is just above some cupboards so about twice the height of a regular bed), a desk, a tv, a table and two chairs and a pretty big wardrobe but then again a lot of these things can be the luck of the draw. Really there isn't any way to know until you get the key.

PT

[wangtesol]

Mr Wakabayashi is the owner of Heart English School in Ibaraki. In 2004 he fired an ALT for declaring himself a union member of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo South (http://www.nambufwc.org)

He was subsequently taken to the Labour Relations Board and found guilty of violating Trade Union Law (ie, firing a worker just becuase he is a union member).

The case took about 4 months and during that time the employee stayed in the apartment he got through Heart. He used this as leverage against Wakayama since Heart had to continue to pay the rent. So after 2 months he played a power harassment (pawa hawa) card and filed to sue the employee for rent. The case was baseless though and never went to court.

Wakabayashi is a member of the Lions Club.

Most ALT companies are illegal since they do not have "dispatch company" licenses. Heart may have gotten a license by now, but may not be entering into legal dispatch contracts with Boards of Education. This entire issue is called gyomu itaku (illegal service contracts). The entire basis of the company is built on fraud, so look out for more lies.

Heart usually does not enroll its employees into the mandatory social insurance program in Japan (National Health Insurance). This saves them a lot of money since the employer must pay half the costs. It only costs you about 2000 yen/month in the first year. Most ALTs do not stay on for another year because ALT companies lose the contract with the school or, more likely, they get sick and tired of what it is to work for a business based on fraud.

Heart employs less than 50 ALTs.

[Quibby84]

They said they have 125 employees.
We have an interview with them next week and will ask them about the insurance thing, I know that they get contracts with schools, it doesnt seem that bad to me that they lose a contract after a year. We will just find a new job, after all, you never except your first job ever in Japan to be a barrel of monkeys/the best thing ever (if anyone has ever considered a barrel of monkesy lots of fun). From reading what you wrote, it didnt sound like what happened there was to crazy. I have worked for much worse employeers with MUCH worse situations.
Anyways, we are just looking around now, we will see what happens. But thanks for mentioning the insurance thing, I will be sure to ask about that.

[wangtesol]

Here is a link from the Japanese government Social Insurance Agnecy on the insurance issue. Management at Heart may try to lie and say that they do not have to enroll you. It has happened to me. So, maybe keep in mind that even the government says you have to be enrolled, not just the teachers unions.

http://www.sia.go.jp/e/ehi.html

And here is more info from the General Union (for foreign teachers) in Osaka ....

http://www.generalunion.org/healthandpension.htm

By the way, in Japan it only takes 3 people to start a union at a company. So if you and your husband join, all you need is one more person and you then negotiate your own work conditions with Heart. Wakabayashi knows a bit about unions since he claims he used to be in one.

[Quibby84]

how does a union work?

[Quibby84]

Here is what Heart says about insurance...is this good or not good?

Does Heart Provide Health Insurance?
The Japanese Government provides insurance, for around 3,000 yen a month -1st year only, it goes up after that according to your previous year�s salary. (That�s right, for around $30 dollars, (U.S.) a government can provide universal health care coverage�.that is if its not spending its tax resources on other activities�just wanted to point that out to my fellow Americans). This insurance includes your dental, but I REALLY don�t recommend Japanese dentistry. Your health insurance covers 70% of your medical cost. If your cost (including prescriptions) goes above 100,000 yen in a given year, the amount that it is over 100,000 can be deducted when you file your taxes, so keep the receipts (I assume this deduction is against your years salary, which is the base for calculating your taxes, and not your actual taxes).

The cost of medical treatment is also lower in Japan, thanks to a lack of Medical/Insurance/pharmaceutical industry lobbyist and the effectiveness of a large single client (the Japanese government) negotiating in bulk. For example, I went to a private doctor, spent about 20 minutes with him, he ran some tests, and I paid 2,400 yen out of pocket the rest was picked up by National Insurance, I then went to the pharmacy where I continued to get 70% off. Just chatting with a Doctor for 15 minutes has cost me as low as 400 yen ($4).

Additionally Heart provides work insurance. If for some reason your are injured on the job (at the job site, NOT in your car on the way or way back) then you are covered under even better insurance. I don�t know the actual % as we haven�t had many stair falls, or muscles pulled playing soccer with the kids, but I was told a while back that it pays more then the National and it includes lost salary compensation.

[Willy_In_Japan]

I have heard that Heart ALTs don't get paid in August.....zero percent, and that they don't pay for transportation costs.

If you 'do the math' it works out to approximately 190,000 Yen a month based on a year from what I hear through the grapevine.

This may or may not be true, but I would not work for a company like Heart.......it sounds much worse than Interac.....not just a little.

[Patros]

Yup, I've really never heard of anything better than a marginal dispatch company. To make a good choice between two or more dispatch companies you'd have to compare the specific offers they were making. That and their track record on employee satisfaction.