About this Site
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This site has been specifically constructed for the adventurous few who look for a wonderful experience living and working in Japan. My basic goal is to give you a comprehensive, up-to-date, and (most importantly!) free guide to finding work teaching English in Japan. My information is not 100% complete, but there is far more than most people need, and more than most $10 handbooks will tell you. I consider this service to be kind of like a traveler's debt; I've been helped so often along the way by people I'll never meet again, so I repay the debt by helping others. This is the fourth incarnation and the third major workover for this site.
I am always looking for input. If there is something about the site that you think could be better, information you think others should know, typos, outdated links, or anything else about the site that you think should be modified or added to, please let me know! For those who are interested, this site was created on a Macintosh using a simple word processor; the graphics I created myself using Photoshop. The page is frame-less, java-less, quick to download and completely free of that annoying blinking text which, if it doesn't give you seizures, makes you feel like you should be having one. The design has been made as simple and easy to use as I could get it to be. If you think the design is great and want to hire a skilled yet completely non-professional web page designer, drop me a line!
About myself and my experiences:
In 1996, I came back from my most recent stint living in Japan. My experience there began soon after I started studying Japanese in the 1980's; I traveled to Japan and met other English speakers who were working as English teachers. At first I decided to teach in Japan simply for the opportunity to live in Japan and practice the language; after a few years, I realized that the work was pretty tempting as a profession in itself.
Well, my first stint lasted about five years, after which I returned to the United States to resume my studies. I returned to Japan in 1993, where I soon found myself a supervisor in a Tokyo language school. I kept that job for about two and a half years, after which I returned home to get my Master's degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), a degree which helps a lot if you want to get serious work. Now, I have just finished that degree and have obtained a job at a college in Tokyo.
This site grew from my experiences hunting for jobs, and trying to get reliable information on the topic. I found out long ago that good, practical information can be hard to come by. When I first looked for a job (in the old days before the Internet), I used one of those handbooks they sell as a guide. It gave data which really proved useless in the end, and was made up mostly of a list of schools and mailing addresses--without warning you that mailing out resumes blindly is a hopeless cause. I sent out 27 resumes, and got back three replies--all informing me that they don't hire from overseas.
As I started my Master's studies a few years ago, I found incentives to start a web page: I got a free web site from my university and had recently taught myself HTML. I also had an honest-to-God real topic to write about, not just your usual page about my favorite band and a few of my favorite links. This site started out as a single page with some fairly general advice, and in later versions spread out and covered more and more information. This is the latest and most comprehensive rewrite I have made.
Over the past few years, this site has gained a reputation as one of the best sites on the Web for information on getting a job teaching English in Japan. I hope to expand on that and include all the information and resources possible. If you have any questions to ask, please read the information on this site first! If you read the site and still have questions, check out the "Questions" page to see if they're answered; if it's still not there, use the email link at the bottom to ask. I have been happy to answer the hundreds of emails I've gotten over the past few years, and will happily answer yours--but please make sure the question hasn't been answered already on the site.
Good luck!
Luis Poza, January 15th, 1998
Addenda: This site is four years out of date. I will try to update soon. In the meantime, keep the past four years in mind. Luis Poza, May 22, 2002.
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