Job Discussion Forums

[nateliu99]

Hello, your advice is greatly appreciated, of course in the end i have to decide where to go, but talking it out with people helps me

I have been offered a good one year English teaching position in Taipei at an elementary school (PengLai) through the Ministry of Education, salary is about 80,000 NTD with free housing or a 5000-10000 housing stipend. I'm still waiting on a possible job offer to teach science Taipei Fuhsing Private School, which I have heard is a pretty good place too. The salary is about the same.

At the same time in the next 7 days I should be hearing back from Westgate Corporation for a position in Japan. Salary is 280,000 yen, and you can rent an 81,000 yen apartment from them. I have heard people express that that is pricey, but they give you the option of finding your own place. That job would be a contract from September to December only, and if you want to you can renew it in April, but from January to March, I would have no job. As of right now, they have not told a location, and will not tell me that until mid to late August. This position could be teaching adults at University or teaching children.

My Thoughts:

Taiwan-

+'s I have lived in China for the last year, and I have been to taiwan for two summers and know it is a better version of China in regards to politeness and food.

I never learned Mandarin growing up, so my Chinese has improved a lot over the last year through study, Taiwan would let my skills continue to grow, and I find Taiwan Mandarin easier to understand

I have great memories of Taipei, I love nightmarkets, Mango Ice, and the nature is my favorite part

I have 4 friends and two family members in Taiwan.

Steady pay for a year, and if i get an afterschool side gig, the savings are even better

Everytime I went there, it was quite a negative experience at first, but I eventually got used to it and loved it



-'s I hate humidity. I hate mosquitoes. I hate dirty. I hate cockroaches and rats. If I end up hating the experience like i did this year in Shanghai, I cannot leave for a year

20% tax rate for foreigners if I arrive after July 1, which i will


Japan

+'s I visited once last year, I loved it. Went to Hakone, Kyoto, Tokyo. The weather was amazing

The people were amazingly friendly and in Tokyo so many of them knew English and stopped to help me without me even asking

I love sushi, amazingly fresh and can be cheap in Japan

EVERYTHING WAS SO CLEAN. Seriously, the subway, the city, almost no pollution at all and a great recycling program.

I love that every area in Tokyo is like a little city unto itself, but that being said, I may not be in Tokyo.

I remember leaving Tokyo and thinking, "Wow, I want to come back and live here or in Kyoto one day"

Whereas I actively did not want to get involved with a mainland China girl, I would not mind at all ending up married to a Japanese girl. They seem to already be exposed to Western culture and English to a degree

Ease at which an American can enter or leave the country



-'s I don't know much about the culture or being accepted by it. Many Japanese have told me that no one shows you their true feelings, that they are the worst about showing you one face and thinking something else about you

No nightmarkets

Maybe a little more expensive to live there, although i feel all the reports that traveling in japan would be expensive were a bit exaggerated

The culture seems more concentrated on appearances and fashion. Does that mean the people (and especially girls are more superficial and into looks? I've never considered myself good looking, I was surprised that quite a few mainland China girls were interested in me, i think they are less interested in looks and more interested in earning potential haha

only know 1 person who lives outside of tokyo

the contract is only for 4 months and from January to March I would have to find another job



I know this post is long, but any thoughts or advice on my specific situation you can give me would be amazing, thanks!

[Glenski]

My first inclination is to tell you to take the Taiwan job. It's longer, which will look better on a resume. But you didn't say what sort of teaching career you are hoping to be in. Kiddies? Uni? What? Westgate's options are for 2 very different types of students and teaching situations.

Yes, you will be out of a job after the first contract, which means you'll be looking almost as soon as you start, and in a pretty dead time of year (not to mention in a period where the country is already flooded with teachers and wannabes). Finding PT work will be better for you since you will already have a visa, but you still have to live off it, and that's not easy, IMO. I also think you'll have to move out of your place after the contract, and finding temp quarters would probably mean a guesthouse or LeoPalace-like setup.

And, I'm sure you don't need to be told that having visited a place as a tourist is nothing compared to living and working there, but I just wanted to mention that anyway.

Yes, much of Japan seems pretty clean, but you might also end up in some fairly polluted areas (and beaches here are a general disgrace).

Don't know when you visited Japan earlier, but considering you hate humidity and were in Kyoto and Tokyo, it must not have been from June to September. Heads up on that, because even in September, it can be hot and muggy in those cities.

Again, do I have to mention that whoever you met on vacation, Japanese women (or any, for that matter) are not like what you seem to think. Perhaps they are a bit more "exposed to western culture", but I wouldn't say to much extent. They know Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, perhaps Harrison Ford and George Clooney all by names, but that's about the extent of their knowledge unless they have actually lived overseas. They know nothing of western religion or politics, to say nothing of discrimination (any that you will face here, or any they may face in the west), and their image of the USA is the Grand Canyon and New York's glittering lights, perhaps with a little Ichiro and Matsui thrown in. Tread carefully on this one. To say they know "English to a degree" is really stretching it, but I don't know how they compare to Taiwanese. Most J women can barely create sentences, but I don't know who you met.

Yes, many/most J women are into appearances and fashion. Superficiality is fairly high, IMO, and you might want to keep in mind that they tend to be a bit more naive and immature for their age. Also, be aware that some are only out to get a foreign bf, not a mate, and some just want a boy-toy or a trophy to show their friends. I'm lucky to have found a sincere one.

Taiwan and China must be bears in restricting movements of foreigners in and out of the country, but Japan has its fingerprinting and photographing system, plus (and hopefully not for long, but who can say?) it is one of the few countries that forces you to pay to leave if you have any thoughts of returning under the same visa. No reentry permit, and you lose your visa.

Living in Japan as a tourist is like visiting New York or London, financially speaking. Rail pass makes life cheaper on average, but if you live here, you can't get such a pass, and I'd have to say transportation costs alone are pretty high. Many/Most teachers find themselves on vacation when most of the Japanese are (3 major holidays), and that's when transportation and lodging costs double or triple.

You will be accepted by the culture, but never allowed to fully integrate. Your J friends are right about keeping a distance. Keep that in mind when you talk to your girl friends again.

You seem pretty fired up about a chance at Japan. I am not trying to discourage you completely, just give you the other perspective from what you seem to know. Keep asking questions.

[seklarwia]

How long were you in Japan last year and when? I'm with Glenski: Visiting Japan really is not the same as living here.

You hate humidity and yet you are singing Tokyo's praise... Let's hope you are not in Tokyo in September. And last I checked, Japan has mosquitos, too. I have quite a few red and extremely itchy signs of them already. Believe it or not, we even have cockroaches here. It's not quite China levels (I used to live in Shaoxing; just down the road and across the bridge from Shanghai. BTW Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are the poop holes of China; I could never wait to escape back to my "town" whenever I was in Shanghai, which was very often!) but you only need to watch a little TV and see the millions of adverts for mosquito and cockroach repellent to realise they can be a problem here, too. Last summer there was a resident monster roach that would come and take pew beside me as I had my evening smoke on the steps outside my apartment. I could never bring myself to kill it.

And yes, you can find people in Tokyo who speak some English. If you went to tourist hotspots then likely most everyone spokes some English. But in general, people really don't speak much English and if you get placed outside Tokyo you might not cross paths with even a single person who speaks any real English outside of work. In my little city, it's often near impossible to find any English speakers. In Shaoxing on the other hand it was pretty easy to find someone to speak English. I just had to pick out anyone who looked like a SH or uni students. The campus where I worked, had way more than 10,000 students all taking course entirely in English. And there were numerous other schools and colleges all turning out people with quite amazing English. Even in Beijing, I did teacher's training with a class of 14 year olds from "No.2 School" who spoke better English than their UK equivalents (not difficult these days if UK exam results are anything to go by). In China, it was easy to find English speakers because so many aspire to escape to a "good life" in a western country so study it quite seriously. This is the opposite of the average Japanese person's mentality.

And don't be fooled into thinking that girls are any less shallow here. Many are looking for a man with good earning power so that they can become kept-houswives. Two of the younger JTEs I work with often tell me about the kind of man they want especially now that they met my bf and our best friend who are in legal professions. And at lunch a couple of days ago, our school librarian announced how stress she was that her husband has just returned from an overseas transfer. She then joked about how she hoped he got transeferred again soon so that life could return to how she liked it: house to herself with the husband sending money every month.
And I've heard a couple of stories of heart-break with girls who only wanted a temporary trophy foreigner on their arm until the settled down with a nice Japanese salaryman that they could actually introduce to their parents.

After living in China, it did take me a short while to get used to not having any private information. You have to carry and ID card here that has all of your personal info on; DOB, nationality, home town, address in Japan, employer, etc. Police can demand this card at any time. You have to produce this card in order to sign up with banks, phone services, etc. And if you move apartments you've got 14 days to report in with the local yakusho to update their database and, of course, your ID card. And as Glenski mentioned, you've got to apply and pay for re-entry permits here and the finger printing.

But you were right about one thing: Japan is definately cleaner than China. I doubt that I could find any beach, lake or river here to rival the filth of even West Lake, Hangzhou (which is supposed to be a lovely place in supposedly China's most beautiful city... YUCK!). And you won't find parents allowing their toddlers to take a dump on the main roads. And then there's the spitting; people have said that spitting is a problem here, but I've never noticed it and I've most certainly never seen people spitting out bones, etc on tables when eating or coughing up and spitting huge globs of phlegm on the floor beside their table in restaurants.

[nateliu99]

No that is an awesome response Glenski, really great, and you are right, i have idealized notions of japan based on visiting it for one week in April last year

Teaching career. Well, I am already a US credentialed teacher, so this experience does not help my resume all that much. I already have a good deal of good things to put on it. I feel in the US the only teaching experience now that could beef up my resume is to get an admin credential or National Board Certification, I eventually plan to get an admin credential in the USA and be a principal

I guess everyone in general in japan seemed more westernized, so many of them, at least in Tokyo, knew some degree of English. On 8 actual separate occasions strangers stopped to help me and my friend when they heard us talking about how we were lost in English. This is a strong contrast to China, where certain parts outside of downtown, people will stare at you like a freakshow if you speak English.

thanks for your post, it is very wise and i'll consider it

[Bread]

I laughed at the minuses for Taiwan because the last two days in Tokyo had absolutely nightmarish humidity and at this moment I have two mosquito bites on the BOTTOM OF MY FOOT, I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW THEY DID THAT.

Just out of curiosity, why did you actively avoid getting involved with a mainland Chinese girl? Because they want to get married and have babies and live in their hometown in the countryside forever? That's been my experience with them.

[nateliu99]

haha, well it was not like i was beating them away with a stick, i think it is just a big difference in culture

in my opinion they really want to get married quickly, not because they love the guy or anything but because they feel the societal pressures to marry by 25, which is just ridiculous. this attitude is not something i would want my future children to have bearing down on them. Also, their manners are low by western standards, with the crouching over trashcans and spitting fishbones everywhere. On top of that, a lot of them seem to worship white foreigners and think they are so good looking, rich, etc. (even the UGLY fat white foreigners) Since I am not white, I don't want to compete with that. Comments like, "He is so good looking....his skin is so pale and his eyes are so big (same comments from chinese guys about foreign girls too)" just make me want to scream "WELL of COURSE....THEY'RE WHITE PEOPLE!" Many of their English skills seem really low, a few cannot even use pinyin, making communication with them very difficult. On top of all of that, many of them find an ideal after marriage lifestyle living in a 2 room apartment building with their husband, kid and grandparents spitting fishbones onto the table while tubs of fresh vegetables sit in the bathroom sink and shower.....or at least that is my opinion

To top it all off, they will forever be tied to Communist Mainland China, which I have not enjoyed living in for the past 10 months, so I myself do not want to be tied down to them and by association to this place

Sorry, bit of a rant....Oh, and they don't shave/take care of their moustaches

[robertokun]

Family, friends, decent job, good money, cheaper living, night markets, picking up Chinese . . . Go to Taiwan. Take a holiday in Kyoto. Go back and become a principal one day and live happily ever after. That's what I'd do

[Glenski]

[Mr_Monkey]

@natelieu,

Yeah, those Chinese are barbarians, aren't they?