52 reasons you should teach English for yourself in Japan

The Bulletin (Issue 53)

May 08, 2024

I read a good non-Japan-specific post about how great teaching English as a foreign language job still is, and this food-for-thought post — “Don’t move to Japan” about whether Japan was such a great option these days given the collapse of the yen… and I thought, someone needs to write a post about why teaching English a) for yourself and b) in Japan was actually a really great option. That someone is me…

So, this is Bulletin issue number 53, meaning I’ve already written one of these a week for a year. Not bad considering I thought I’d run out of material after a month. To mark this unofficial one-year anniversary and remind myself (and you) why I do this newsletter, I thought I’d offer unbridled optimism1 about life as a self-employed English teacher in Japan.

Consider this one piece of optimism per week for a year, or you can gorge yourself in one sitting and overdose on optimism right now. Do you have a friend who would benefit from a hit of get-off-your-arse life-advice? Send them one or all of these 52 reasons today!

Sick of your boss? Hate your company’s policies? Detest one or all of your work colleagues? Never have enough shifts? Have too many? Turn all that negative energy to your advantage — work for yourself and you’ll never waste another second of your life ever again bitching about any of the above.
You don’t need to speak Japanese fluently to start your own business in Japan. In fact, your relative lack of language skills becomes your superpower.
That is to say, just because something comes relatively easy to you (like speaking English), it doesn’t mean it’s worthless to others.
You don’t need to know everything about English grammar, just these 12 points are enough.
Or teach lessons without worrying about grammar at all.
You don’t need a TEFL certificate or university degree to get started. It can be helpful, of course, but it’s not a necessity.
You just need to understand these basic points about how to teach a language.
Even so, you don’t have to be all that good when you get started.
You can make mistakes, as long as you learn from them. I’ve made a few howlers, but I’m still standing.
Still scared to get started? Just start with a waiting list.
Naming your school is the first step in making it real.
Then you can start up your business from home and go from there.
Or just start a playgroup.
You could start your own online school.
Or work part-time from home with a few online students and your existing material.
Worried about teaching kids how to read? Don’t be. The basics are all here.
When you are self-employed, you don’t have to teach people you don’t want to.
In fact, the more with-or-without-you energy you exude, the more successful you’ll be.
You can start by teaching your neighbours.
If you are self-employed you can teach the flavour of English you are most comfortable with. British English? Phillipine English? Kiwi English? No problem, go for it. And make a lesson about your choice.
In fact, when you are self-employed, you can make and teach lessons about anything you’re interested in.
And you don’t have to teach anything you are not into. Hate exam English? Fine. Don’t teach it if your aim is to improve your students’ English abilities more than their exam-passing abilities.
Make a lesson from a review of a book you’ve just read.
Don’t have a clue what to teach? Use textbooks.
You can write and publish your own textbooks for fun and profit.
Why stick to textbooks? How about publishing your own graded-readers for junior high school kids.
Or your own This is Me fill-in-the-blanks diaries for budding writers.
You can use any of these lesson plans for free based on age groups of your students: Kindergarten, Elementary, Junior High, High School, Adult.
You can set your own salary when you are self-employed.
You can fix your own work schedule.
You will have significantly more time off than Japanese company employees.
Being self-employed is much safer than working for a company.
You can make a lot more money self-employed compared to a company drone.
This is because you can re-use everything you do for your own family’s benefit, not the boss’s, if you’re smart.
In fact, just having no boss is a wonderful feeling.
You can rent your own school.
Then use your profits to build your own school.
Don’t just teach English, run parties for fun and profit.
You can get your students to pay for your trips abroad.
You can have a comfortable retirement.
Or choose not to retire. It’s up to you.
Sure, you can’t quit, but you can’t be fired.
You can make your own career.
That includes the option of deliberately keeping your ambitions modest.
Do you find the day-to-day life of a classroom teacher a pain? Hire someone to do the teaching, and you focus on other areas of the business. Like writing a newsletter.
You can adopt or avoid AI as much or as little as you see fit when you are your own boss.
Running even just a moderately successful one or two-person business, changes how you see life for the better.
Although teaching English is sniffed at by some as a low-status immigrants-only trap, it’s only a trap if you see it that way.
In fact, most days are incredibly varied as a self-employed teacher in Japan.
You can escape the rat race today.
You might find that teaching English for yourself in Japan opens entirely unexpected opportunities for you.
The bottom line? It’s your life. Turn off the auto-pilot and grab the throttle before you run out of time.

Anything you think is worth sharing here? Anything you disagree with? Leave a comment and share with your fellow Free-Talkers. Thanks for making it through this mammoth list, and I’ll see you on Friday for the podcast.

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