I’ve been teaching in Japan now for about 5 months. It’s not a very long time but thought I might share my experiences. Also, I invite other English teachers to contribute - I know there’s a few out there who came in on the same batch as I did - hi Autolycus!
Douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu!
Do find it hard to get your students to speak? I teach English in Italy. Italians are naturally chatty, but even they get tongue-tied when they have to speak English. I’d imagine it’d be harder in Japan, or is that just a stereotype?
Do your students typically already know the latin alphabet? Or do you have to start by teaching that?
Do they expect you to teach US English or British English?
I am an assistant language teacher at a junior high school.
Hell yeah, most of the students are quite shy and they are reluctant to speak because they are afraid of making mistakes. With a lot of students, if they are not 100% certain what they are saying is correct, they won’t speak at all. Others are more outgoing and want to chat about their lives and interests. But in general, English is a weird and distant game to them - it’s something they learn to pass tests. My job is pretty much to show students that you can actually use English to talk to people and that foreigners are strange but human.
One problem is that the first year students are cheerful and energetic but can’t express themselves. By third year, the students are bogged down in grammar and stressed about exams, so are they not so keen to chat. The change in their demeanor over two years is scary!
Most students learn a little of the Latin alphabet in elementary school but we still have to teach the alphabet and phonics at the start of the first year of junior high.
We teach American English, which I thought might be tricky because I am Australian, but it isn’t really a big deal. I use American English vocabulary, grammar and spelling but I speak in my natural non-rhotic accent (it’s too weird for me to pronounce the “r” in car.)
Like Manwich, I’m an ALT at a junior high school too, located in Fukushima prefecture. Actually, 3 junior high schools. Most, if not all of us, do a rotation around several schools, some as many as 6 or 7. I know one fellow ALT who does 6 in one week.
I have mixed experiences. While of course I have classes where I suspect they’ve all been replaced by amazingly life-like mannequins, I also frequently have classes where the kids are falling over themselves to volunteer, play games or answer questions, to the point of being really disruptive. You can have totally different teaching experiences in the same school depending on the class, and even totally different experiences with the same class depending on day of the week or time of day (e.g. morning sleepiness versus a class coming off a high from doing PE the last period). It also depends on the confidence, attitude and ability of the individuals - I’ve found that the class clowns and sport jocks generally speak up a lot more, and they tend to be relatively good at English by comparison.
Sadly, this is reinforced by those Japanese English teachers who teach the textbook as a bible rather than a guide. They don’t go outside of rigid sentences and grammar to show students how to communicate as a skill. Everything is learnt by rote, because the exams are based on the textbook’s content, so why bother? However, having said that, I’ve been fortunate that the Japanese teachers I work with are more inspired than that. The best one so far actually come up with games where students compete in teams to communicate with me using the level of conversational English they have learnt so far. The level of creativity his students have in coming up with answers never fail to surprise and amuse me.
So, what kind of training do you need? Are you expected to have some kind of diploma in teaching English as a second language? Or is just a college/university degree plus native fluency in English enough?
Heh - this is always a topic guaranteed to rile up the non-Americans among us (of which I am one, hailing from Australia). My fellow Australian ALT makes a point of always spelling things the Aussie way, e.g. “color” as “colour” etc. Me, I take a pragmatic view of things. I don’t want to mar my students’ exam marks over something trivial, so I usually go with the standard (American English). However, whenever this comes up in class, I usually launch into a spontaneous mini-lesson about different “ben” (Japanese word for dialect) around the world. The students seem to like it more or less, and I fulfill one of my job description about “internationalising” the students. I also don’t put on an American accent, except when they can’t understand me - like pronouncing “can’t” as “kent” rather than “kahnt”.
Actually, as an interesting sidenote, I was speaking to a 60-yo Japanese gent and he told me that back when he was in school, the standard was British English. Which is why he calls the season between summer and spring “autumn” rather than “fall”, which is a silly name anyway. 
That really surprised me, but I started teaching in mid-August as a first year ALT, so maybe this was done and dusted before I was let loose. I teach all grades in junior high, and I’ve never ever had to go over the alphabet in any of my schools.
For the JET programme, you only need a university degree and be a native speaker. And be under 40, preferably. In Australia, we had to submit various forms with our application and an introductory letter/essay. Wait about 6 months to see if we pass to stage 2 which is a panel interview. If you pass that, you’re pretty much home free, apart from medical tests and police background checks.
Then your training begins in the form of seminars, lectures and workshops in Japan, and depending on where you’ve been posted, you can have anything from just 3 days to a few weeks training. The REAL training is when you’re thrown into a classroom of perhaps 30 students and your first lesson is to do a self-introductory presentation. If you’re lucky, they’ll be responsive, find you interesting and you’ll only be asked to do a 30min presentation. If you’re REALLY lucky, you’ll be asked to do the entire 50min class period, incorporate games with prizes, and field questions from the cheeky little buggers about whether you have a girl/boyfriend, and would you date anyone on the staff? Which can be rather overwhelming when you’ve never taught before, can’t really speak the language and can’t be sure if they can understand you. Having done it for about 2 months early on, it’s no big deal anymore. Especially the girl/boyfriend part. I had the actual following exchange with a 14yo class clown two months ago:
Him: Do you have girlfriend?
Me: No… do you?
Him: Um… yes!
Me: Oh? How many?
Him: One hundred!! 
Me: How many are REAL? :dubious:
Him (after the laughing Japanese teacher translated): … Zero. 
I’m an English teacher, but here in the States. I’m sort of interested in teaching abroad, but I’m over 40. That’s a problem?
My question is more about the culture. How well are you adapting?
Do you ever have concerns about fingers being shoved up your buttocks?
Have you ever had to perform a Gaijin Smash?
Do you know what the hell I’m talking about?
Yeah, one boy encouraged me to kancho his friend but I decided against it.
I had to literally perform a gaijin smash at a staff drinking party. All the new teachers had to put on a silly act, so one Japanese teacher was breaking wooden boards with his fists. I was not-so-gently “encouraged” to get up on stage and give it a try, because obviously all white people are brutes. Somehow I managed to do it without breaking my knuckles so everyone was happy.
Veteran of nineteen years here - it’s like pulling teeth sometimes! I particularly hate the ages of about 12 - 16 as they have to battle their natural surliness anyway and unfortunately the silence usually wins…
I have my own language school now, and I teach children mainly. I start off with phonics awareness in kindergarten and then devote a year and a half to teaching phonics, reading and writing from 1st grade. (Whilst doing conversation of course but they cannot just write stuff down from the board or read their textbooks otherwise.) I also have an extensive reading programme using phonics readers from the UK and Australia.
This is all buggered up when the kids hit 4th grade and learn the alphabet (by name) and Romaji (roman letters for Japanese words) so I suddenly get long-term students saying things like “shit” for “sit” and “she” for “see”, and writing crap like “siip” for “sheep” and “syaak” for “shark”. It drives me batty to see three or four years of work go wonky. I start in on the constant nag nag nag of “Romaji is not English, say it like you see it.” Sigh…
My own son is JHS 2nd grade now and regularly loses twenty or more points from his tests because the teacher will remove points for such crimes as not staving his capital I,(he tries to remember but it’s not how I taught him…) writing in words not on the test (he was given a zero for writing “difficult” when the answer she wanted was “hard” in the question “The test was too …”) and for using British English spellings. Sigh…
He has Eiken 2 kyu for those in the know, it’s not like he can’t do English. He speaks Japanese to his Dad and at school, English to me, reads Japanese war history books, listens to Harry Potter and Hitchhikers on his ipod and watches Blackadder and Allo Allo so I’d say he’s a fairly balanced bilingual. Not according to the school, though because he didn’t hyphenate “Japanese-American” or put a comma in “Yes, I do.”
GRRRR
I just briefly checked the official site and there’s no mention of an age limit so my bad, sorry about that. All the same, might be best to check your nearest local Japanese embassy or JET office to see if there are any specific limits to your country. Actually, it might be an advantage of sorts to be older than the typical age of applicants as far as maturity in discipline, experience and working ability is concerned. Of course, JET isn’t the only way you can apply to teach overseas - I know some here who work for private companies. For example, a private kindergarten teacher in my town hails from Hawaii and she’s over 40.
So far I loooooove being in Japan. 
I work in a regional city (more like an amalgamation of several towns and villages under one umbrella name) where the people are awfully nice and generous. My friend and I had an old lady on the bus insisting we take half her fruit shopping just because we gave her our seat on a crowded bus. Compared to where I come from (Sydney), it’s a nice change. Do you mean other aspects, say working culture?
I’ve heard and read horror stories though. There are those of us who have reached what’s called Stage 2, which is when homesickness, frustration with language and culture and isolation combine to produce a mental backlash that can manifest itself as depression, health problems, and sadly, racism and xenophobia about the country and people. For example, Japan is pretty racially homogeneous, so any foreigners are bound to stick out, get stared at and openly commented on. It’s not so bad for me, as I’m of Chinese heritage, so I blend right in. But I can see that after a while, being the centre of curiosity and attention like this will wear on you and you snap with a GAIJIN SUUUU-MAAAA-SHING-GU! moment.
Hahahhaa - yes I do know what you’re talking about, to all of the above. Believe it or not, I have not experienced the dreaded and notorious kancho - literally “shit finger”. It’s a lot more prevalent in elementary school, probably because all adults are basically walking backsides. My friend got a massive FRONT kancho that caused him to drop everything he was carrying and roll around in agony to an appreciative and entertained audience.
I gaijin smash all the time at traffic lights. It’s still red - I’m going to walk across anyway - oh NOES! It however, can take more extreme forms. For example, the other day, a group of us were having dinner at a restaurant when two of us whipped out guitars and began an impromptu concert right there and then. Hm.
This may seem like a random question, but considering the prevalence of American English, have you ever been asked or pressured to use Americans instead?
Also, wow, that sucks about your son’s JHS. Do they have an ALT? That’s pedantry right there.
I was once, as a JET in about 1991, asked to use American pronunciation. I just firmly and politely said “I don’t do that” and that was the end of it. Most older teachers slavered over my “Queen’s English”. I didn’t have the heart to say that as I’m from the north of England, the Queen wouldn’t be seen dead speaking my English!
My son’s school does have an AET who is a long term private hire, and has been teaching my boy since he was 8 in the elementary school. In fact my son was “outed” by the AET who saw my son in JHS and of course just naturally struck up a conversation with him. That was the first thing that the English teacher knew that he could speak any English at all. But the AETs have absolutely no power in the school and do not grade any tests. (Or at least none that count towards the exams that decide your place in high school.) He’s a nice guy though and does a good job where he’s allowed to.