Do you have all the necessary qualifications for an international school job? Experience as an ALT is secondary compared to that teaching certificate that lets you teach in your country of origin.

What kind of ALT were you? Are you a member of the JET alumni master race or a member of Interacs Anonymous?

Username does not check out for Japan.

There are a lot of posts on this topic on the forum, including specific schools and discussions of money, and you should really search through them.

Others have talked about the barrier to entry in Japanese international schools. Nothing to add there — the really good ones have a very high bar, and even the bad ones are higher than you’d expect. There are essentially five classes of international school in Japan — the handful of top schools in Tokyo (ASIJ, YIS, TIS, BST) and Canadian in Kobe, the good community schools in smaller cities (Nagoya, Hokkaido, Fukuoka), the mid-to-low-level schools in the big metros (Tokyo/Osaka), the startups and failures in greater Tokyo, and the handful of new British boarding schools out in the middle of nowhere. Conditions are very different in each of those classes of school, and rather than retype the thousands of words I’ve written on the topic, I would encourage you to do a forum search for the relevant posts.

Generally speaking, the first three groups listed there are good jobs. They don’t pay well in comparison to the market in other countries, but they don’t need to, and they are well above the national median. If you plan on living in Japan and don’t have debt obligations or plans to return home regularly, you’ll be fine financially. If you do, you won’t, although that may be different if you have a working spouse. Community schools tend to have good work/life balance, and people with local ties tend to stay for a long time. The fourth and fifth groups tend to have higher turnover and worse working conditions.

You’ve lived in Japan before; you know what you’re getting into there. It’s a good place to live and work and raise kids if you don’t need to worry about money. It isn’t if you need to care about money, or if you land at one of the unhappier schools.

It can range widely between schools. The good ones pay well and have excellent benefits. The poor ones pay barely above ALT roles. Make sure you research schools properly before applying.

Depends on the school, your qualifications and experience.

I did JET, then got my teaching license and had 4 years experience before I got my current job.

If you’re looking at some of the top schools, you’d need a stellar CV to get an interview. IB experience is a huge plus at many of the schools.

If you’re not licensed, you’re outta luck for decent school.

This really depends on where you are looking to live. The salary needed in Tokyo is much higher than say Hiroshima or Fukuoka

To add to the feedback from previous comments, you would need to be registered/certified/licensed in your home country and have years of experience working at legitimate schools there, or internationally, to have any chance of getting a job at a legitimate international school in Japan.

I have lived and worked in Tokyo and was part of the hiring committee at a school I worked at, and we would have to review hundreds of applications to create a list of candidates to be interviewed. A former colleague who I’m friends with is an assistant principal at a school there now, and he said they’ve received over 1,000 applications for one advertised position.

So, as an unqualified teacher, your chances of getting an interview would be 0.0%. If you are appropriately qualified and an experienced educator, you have about a 0.2% chance of securing a position applied for.

To answer your question, it’s wild to think one’s chances are so low, when the salary has actually decreased by about 50% against the USD compared to ten years ago when I was there.

Good luck and may you be in the 0 to 0.2% 🙃

Pay is pretty shit compared to other places. I could probably earn double what I make now if I moved to China.

If wifey is Japanese you'll obviously save money because you won't have to support a spouse or worry about schooling.

Market is completely over-saturated for non-STEM roles though, so you're gonna have to get pretty lucky or just know the right people if you wanna squeeze in amongst the bazillion English and humanities teachers wanting to make money here.

If you can I would look at doing online tutoring and taking advantage of the favourable exchange rate.

I taught in Tokyo for two years (this was before covid). It was a beautiful place to live. I am so grateful for my experience during those two years!

With that said, it was challenging to save and living quarters are tight.

But I really enjoyed my time there 😌