Job Discussion Forums

[mlomker]

[ChuckECheese]

[harold]

chuck,

are you in seoul? i did a year in busan and while the base salary is pretty standard across the country, and i saved a load of cash, we didn't exactly find privates falling out of the sky. there were a load of hagwans around the beach neighborhood where i lived, and we also had these wankers advertising for fifteen and twenty an hour. a friend of mine in daegu found them often, but i hear in seoul you can find the gigs you're talking about. so, if you don't mind, in which korean city are test prep privates for a hundred an hour so easily found?

[ChuckECheese]

[sethness]

AnnMouse, for almost every OTHER English school in Japan, 25 contact hours per week is full time. However, Nova is notorious for exploiting fresh-off-the-boat newbies-- this includes 40 contact hours per week, 8 hours a day.

The justification for this is that other schools typically require some office hours or lesson-planning duties, whereas Nova is so modular/standardized that teachers can literally wait until the last minute, look at a set of students' records, and choose a modular lesson that none present have done before.

If the OP has a 4-year degree, I'd strongly recommend COMING to Japan on Nova's work visa, but finding an alternative employer once he/she is here. So many Nova teachers do this that their 6-month average turnover period is well known. (Switching employers is OK with the government, as long as there's no gap in one's employment.)

As for private students-- Nova is pretty adamant about not permitting contact with students outside the school, and also does not permit outside employment. (Both of these rules are fairly popular with other schools as well.) Also, typical Nova teachers live with 1 or 2 OTHER Nova teachers, so running side-job classes from one's apartment would be a hard secret to keep-- as an alternative, one might be able to travel to the students' homes or make arrangements to rent a lesson-room at a shukaisho.

[davechile]

[ghost]

[Galileo]

There is also a much better selection of international restaurants in Vietnam.

[ChuckECheese]

[laconic]

[liehtzu]

On some points brought up by others here:

I generally like the Korean food better than the Vietnamese. In the restaurants. Home cooking would be a far tougher call, as some of that Viet home cooking is obscenely good. I think there's more variety in Korean food, but Korean food is not to everyone's fancy and seems to divide folks into love it or hate it camps.

The international restaurants selection is better in Korea than in Vietnam, specifically Seoul and Busan. Hanoi and Saigon are coming up, however. Anywhere outside of Hanoi and Saigon: forget about it.

Almost everybody in every Asian country only eats local food.

You cannot save nearly as much money in Japan as you can in Korea. Pay is higher but they don't cover your apartment and costs are often through the roof (most painful example: cost of afternoon movie ticket in Jinju, Korea, where I worked: $6. cost of afternoon movie ticket on a trip to Fukuoka, Japan: eighteen).

I think you can save good money in Vietnam if you're not a binge drinker. Even if you are a binge drinker you can save money in Korea. You can even throw a few whores and Nikes in there if you so desire. Korea is the best place in Asia to work purely for cash. Hands down.

[Galileo]