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Do you think the ESL job market in Japan will change because of the earthquake?

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azGlobetrotter:
I just moved to Korea from Fukushima a month ago. I lived 60 km from the nuclear plant and the coast. I worked with JET. I lived there for two years and loved it. As far as the job market goes, they are desperate in Tohoku. Many of the positions didn’t get filled in August and they are now taking on a September Orientation to try to fill vacancies. Many people highiered declined their placements due tot the proximity to the coast or the nuclear plant. Private schools and public schools that hire privately are also in need of teachers.
To be fair jobs left are, of course, in less than ideal locations. Teachers that had to be evacuated from costal or radiated areas to which they cannot return have been placed in the best jobs available in the region. The jobs left tend to be in recovery areas or areas outside of the Japanese government 30km restriction but with in the 80 km restricted zone suggested by foreign governments. Things in Tohoku are now running smoothly and it is possible to live there quite comfortably.
As far as stability, they were talking about cutting the jobs for English teachers before the natural disaster and every year there was the questions as to whether or not we would be renewed. I know several JETs whose jobs were cut before the earthquake and replaced with private highers who are paid less.

jcm91186:

--- Quote from: bsamurrell on September 06, 2011, 09:44:30 PM ---The board of education in my prefecture (Kagoshima) had problems organising the requisite number of new JETs this year... potentially because a number of people cancelled in light of Tohoku.

--- End quote ---

Do you think future JET applicants will be placed more and more around the danger zone since I'd assume many of those spots have lost their native teachers? JET is something I'm interested in doing, but I'm not keen on being in Kanto (personal preference) and defiantly not too keen on being around Fukushima.

Speaking of which, during the application process, you are asked where in Japan you'd prefer...do they ever take such requests into consideration? I have a lot of people I know in Osaka, so I'd ask for that area, but realistically what are my chances of getting placed there? Is placement just random?

nathanw1989:

--- Quote from: jcm91186 on September 08, 2011, 04:17:28 PM ---Speaking of which, during the application process, you are asked where in Japan you'd prefer...do they ever take such requests into consideration? I have a lot of people I know in Osaka, so I'd ask for that area, but realistically what are my chances of getting placed there? Is placement just random?

--- End quote ---

I'm pretty sure they take a person's preference into consideration but bear in mind that a large percentage of JET jobs are in rural areas and places like Tokyo, Osaka and other big cities are requested by a lot of JET's, so there simply aren't enough 'desirable' schools to go around.

ironopolis:

--- Quote from: jcm91186 on September 08, 2011, 04:17:28 PM ---
Speaking of which, during the application process, you are asked where in Japan you'd prefer...do they ever take such requests into consideration? I have a lot of people I know in Osaka, so I'd ask for that area, but realistically what are my chances of getting placed there? Is placement just random?

--- End quote ---

If you list big cities or popular tourist destinations that lots of people are likely to put down as their preferences, then I'd expect they're not going to take a whole lot of notice of your preferences.

However, if you're putting down some less popular and relatively out of the way place as your placement preference, and particularly if you have some kind of valid and genuinely important personal reason for wanting that place, then you'll probably have a much better chance of your wishes being taken notice of. For example, I know someone who requested a particular medium sized city because her husband would be working for another employer in that same city. JET placed her in exactly the same city even though she was only initially offered a 'reserve list' position.

However, if, say, you were choosing "Hokkaido - because I want to go skiing" then they're probably not going to see that as a reason that especially merits much effort to accommodate it. My guess is that just "knowing" people in some area of Japan wouldn't be seen as a strong enough reason to see you definitely placed there. I reckon it'd have to be people you had some kind of family connection to.

Someone who worked as a JET interviewer in London once told me that if your choices seem very random then they won't be paid much attention to, assuming, that is, you've done enough in the rest of your application to convince them you're a candidate worth offering a job to. Indeed, a guy I knew in Kyushu on the JET scheme told me his preferences had been Tokyo, Kyoto, Hokkaido. Presumably that (i.e the apparent randomness of his choices) would explain why he ended up in Kyushu! He stayed with JET for 3 years in Kyushu and loved it, so they were obviously correct to interpret his placement choices as meaning he was as likely to succeed or fail in any part of the country.

I doubt you could get away with expressing a preference for "nowhere near Fukushima"  ;D however much I personally wouldn't want to be anywhere near it at the moment. Perhaps listing 3 prefectures in Kyushu or Western Japan would give you the best chance of avoiding it, but JET placement is a complete crapshoot and you could end up in a really rural area and some people find the goldfish bowl aspect of that quite hard to deal with.

Paul:
I'll echo Rilakuma's statements above too.

The thing with Japan is that there isn't really much of a public sector anymore. Since Koizumi tried to weed out corruption by the Amakudari back in the early 2000s, he ... well, he opened virtually everything to privatisation. It's almost all dispatch now. Not just for public school expat teachers, but Japanese subject specific teachers too. The dispatch extends all the way down to admin staff in government offices. It has become entrenched. Ironically, I've read the change didn't do a lick of good towards the intended problem and furthermore, with the private sector floundering and nothing much for the nation to fall back on, economically they're ... in very poor shape. Oops! Shows that even the best of intentions can backfire horribly. Yeah, JET exists still but consider that dispatchers run the majority of the public school show.

Want to know how scummy some dispatchers can* be? Check out the job listings here on Waygook. There are a few spammed ads not even offering a wage but a stipend lower than the mere cost of food/bills. Note that wages are set aside in advance by the BOEs and paid to the dispatcher so to say they lack the funds is a lie, end of story. To accept such a "charity spot" you'd be working "charitably" for a private profit-motivated company (maybe even from the US of A, Google up the Interac paper-trail for example), not the local city. And that's before you read between the lines and note that they're advertising positions not in Tohoku under the guise of charity for Tohoku. Wait, wha~?

Even in the Tohoku case, consider that BOE-dispatcher contracts are one to three years in duration and locked in around February at the latest each year. The disaster was mid March. That means these cities are as far as I'm aware, stuck with dispatch companies until 2012 at the latest, some well beyond. It is little surprise that nobody wants to be working for negative dollars in an affected area and also have the knowledge that their losses and toil are only lining the pockets of corrupt private business. Those spots will likely never be filled for more than a week or month at a time (yes, staff churn is that bad, even in Tokyo; the TV networks have gone around interviewing children over how many NTs they had per year) unless the pollies in Tokyo directly step in to make them profitable or in some cases, adhere to labour laws (sif, they're too busy infighting and even if they weren't, there's bigger issues like rebuilding that they're too busy not dealing with).

It is endearing to read that some BOEs are still trying to recruit directly or via JET, although I wonder if that is for the prefectural capital spots or just the rural spots. I hear Nagano still hires through JET. Largest city I've heard of that hires them any more (well Tokyo and Nagoya do have JETs, but only in the rare separate-application non-teaching city hall type positions).

I'll give the readers above one piece of advice, and that's to enquire about the rare sister city spots. They're typically handled via agreements between the Japanese BOE and the major university in the Western sister city. Check out whether your hometown has such an agreement, and then look into a) whether the sister city is a desirable location and b) whether they have a NT hiring deal. These are by far the best paid, best conditions public school positions I've ever heard of from any other ESL workers in Japan. Furthermore, because they're based on a friendship agreement, I'd suspect (don't quote me here, this is pure speculation) they're less susceptible to being bought out.

* Not all are this bad in the slightest, but the pure economics of the situation and the limitations of the contract bidding process (cannot use past educational achievements with the BOE to promote your bid) is such that even a good, educationally minded dispatcher will pay a disappointing wage.

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