Job Discussion Forums

[dawnbuckley]

Hi,
I am cheating a bit asking about 3 things!
I have been offered a position for 230000, flight reimbursed mid and end of contract and 115 hours. Is this a bad deal, or ok? I thought that 2500000 was the average salary, but i'm not sure. I am new to Japan. Any advice would be great. I have almost 2 years experience, mostly in Korea, no CELTA but a TEFL, and MA (not tefl related, just English lit.)
Next: The school is called ACC, has anyone anything to say about it?Finally: Nagoya? Nice city?


Thanks,

Dawn

[ironopolis]

From what you've said about it above and on the other thread, I'd say it's not a particularly good deal at all. Y250,000 used to be the minimum salary for the category of visa that nearly all EFL teachers here get. But that's no longer the case and there are now many schools offering salaries (and people accepting them!) well below that mark. (Incidentally, a lot of schools tended to cheat their way around the Y250k rule by insisting teachers took the school-provided accommodation and then massively overcharging them for the rent which was deducted at source.)

Airfare being reimbursed is good, and is not actually that common in Japan. However, that would seem to be the only good point about it. 115 hours a month, if that's an accurate reflection of what you would be working, is a lot for that kind of salary and would make supplementing it with private lessons very difficult, unless you were happy with minimal free time. If you got free or heavily subsidized accommodation, then that would make it a lot better, although, unlike in Korea, free accommodation is very, very rare in Japan.

You mentioned wanting to save on your other thread - put simply, lower salary and higher cost of living mean your ability to save in Japan would be much less than it was in Korea. It's also worth bearing in mind that the yen has enormously dropped in value over the last couple of years against most other currencies, except the US dollar. Obviously, if you have a bit of money saved in euros to bring to Japan, that's going to buy you a lot more yen to start up with than was the case a few years ago. But on the other hand, unless the yen shoots up in value over the next year or so, you're not going to do so well taking your saved Ys elsewhere.


Sorry, I don't really know much about Nagoya. The impression I've had from a couple of visits was that it was - pretty ugly (but just like most biggish East Asian cities) although with a better range of things to do than many smaller cities and pretty conveniently situated for travel to the rest of Japan.


BTW, what did you mean by "no CELTA but a TEFL"? Some other TEFL qualification?