07/08/2021
all right hi hey everyone hi as you can see it's not only me this
week welcome to our live stream we have guests today i'm super happy about it hi maddie hi
georgia hello hey so yeah back here another for another week and
i'm live on a different day i usually go live on fridays so today is very special
and also because we have guests so i'm super happy about that
and yeah if you are watching if you can see us if you can hear us please just leave a high in the comments that would
be really cool and where you're watching from i'm always really curious about where people are watching from
and um yeah i'm in south korea my name is linda from itt if you don't know me and i'm yeah
about an hour and a half south of seoul at the moment it's 6 30 on a thursday evening and i think
it's the same time where you are right maddie and georgia
same time and you are in tokyo what's up yeah yeah super exciting and
we just talked about the weather before we went live and it's raining in tokyo right
very much it is rainy season it's rainy season oh my gosh yeah it's it's rainy season
in korea too but today was a good day today was nice but i think it's going to rain again so we'll see
how that goes oh we have someone watching from australia hey hi
cool yeah because maddie and georgia you are from australia right yeah yeah yeah where where in australia
um we're from a country town called kingeroy it is the peanut capital of
australia oh that's by the name i guess yeah yeah
okay because i wanted to ask you about that okay interesting cool okay because yeah georgia and mary
are going under the name globetrotting peanuts right on social media and you also have
a blog correct yes yes so that's what we're going to talk about today
basically your experience of living abroad in japan and you also took a teflon tesol course
from itt so that's how we kind of are connected so that's really cool so thanks so much
for taking the time today and doing this live session with me it's super exciting
yeah and so for everybody who's watching please don't forget to like and subscribe we're
actually live on facebook and we're live on youtube at the same time so that's really cool and yeah please
like and subscribe because we do go live every week um i also have a colleague lisa she
goes live uh usually on tuesdays and i go live on fridays but sometimes it's changing so
you wanna look out for that and um what else yeah there is
also a 30 off uh discount that we offer during our
live also today very very special so what you can do you can either scan
that qr code in the upper right hand corner or
i'm going to share a link so you can just apply one second with that link if i
okay let's get it okay should be here now looks like this so if you apply through
this link you get 30 off a teflon tesol course from itt
so yeah that's a good deal and when did you take your tefl course
when last year end of last year yeah not so long ago oh yeah cool so you were already in
japan when you took it yeah we've already been at our jobs for about a year
when we started the tesol sauce yes got it cool all right and you
also prepared some really nice slides for us pictures that go along with what we're gonna talk about today
so i think let me see you have intro slides right do you wanna
jump into that all right cool oh and at any time uh for
anybody who's watching please uh feel free to ask questions that's why george and maddie are here today
they will answer your questions about what it's like teaching in japan living in japan in tokyo and anything
like that so at any time there's also going to be a q a section at the end um and yeah let's get started
all right so georgia
um hello i'm georgia um so i am a teacher already before i came
to japan i was a high school teacher um i was teaching music and history
mostly but um in australia you can kind of be thrown into anything so i've taught a
bunch of other subjects english dance other things that i've been needed in
um i love to travel so i've done lots of travel um europe and canada and the us
we came to japan on a family trip to visit maddie um when she was living here before and
loved it um and last year before corona we went to korea and it was amazing we would love
to come back and visit you guys yes please yes yes so
yeah that's pretty much me yeah i was a teacher in australia for about four years um before i came to japan cool okay
interesting and how did you like korea
oh sorry can you say that again oh how did you like korea oh we loved it so much
yeah um you know there are a lot of similarities to japan but it's
also very different at the same time culture all of the history
um yeah yeah it's just such a beautiful place i would recommend to anyone absolutely
to visit korea it's amazing yeah yeah awesome cool all right and then we have
maggie okay so that makes me maddie i'm a younger sister um i actually don't
have a teaching background so i actually did um archaeology and japanese in my undergraduate degree
and then
oh did we lose you guys hi are you still there [Music]
maybe we lost maddie in georgia let's give him a minute maybe the connection will come back
all right i think we're coming back all right there we are sorry i don't
know what happened yeah no problem no problem um
so yes i'm maddie i don't know where i'm going hi again um
so i don't come from a teaching background i did archaeology and japanese at university and my
undergraduate so hence the interest in japan and then i went on to do a masters in
museum studies and then within that i did a thesis on public programs and education in
museum in museums so that's kind of where the education interest came from um i haven't traveled
as much as georgia yet i was trying last year but we all know how that worked out
um yeah and then yeah i was just working on a museum
and teaching piano uh before i left for japan
awesome very very cool awesome i think someone you know is
watching as well kelly payne cool hi dad
cool and lots of other people saying hi
sure japan is an amazing country to live and work been here for over 15 years now wow
yeah awesome thanks so much for watching very cool very cool all right
okay should we jump into some questions now yeah so i prepared some questions but uh
the viewers feel free to also ask your questions at any time so i'm just gonna start off with my first one so that is uh why did
you choose to teach english in japan i mean i know for maddie yeah it's
obvious but what made you interested in japan though in the beginning
i i was doing japanese in high school and i had the amazing opportunity to
come here for a 10-day homestay at program school
and i loved it like it's just it's so different to australia that
everything is exciting everything is new i'm a bit of a foodie so the food is
also great um so then i went on to study it in
university and again that time i did a six month exchange here um and again
loved it and then a few years later i wanted to get some teaching experience
like for the museum world and japan was just a great place to do that because i loved it
and then you brought your sister with you and then she decided basically um i had finished
um i was kind of coming to the end of what i wanted to do at my school and i
was looking at new opportunities overseas and then maddie decided she maybe wanted to move to
japan and i said i'll come too cool that's awesome and so you do you
apply like together or individually uh individually like in you you have to
apply individually but you can put on your jet forms that you know someone else who
is applying you or you have family because god sure okay see so you both work for
jet the jet program okay could you maybe talk a little bit about the jet program and like
what does it stand for what is it for people who don't know yeah um so the jet program is japan
exchange of teaching um and
basically um you are employed as an alt so an assistant
language teacher um you can also be employed as a cir i don't know what that stands for but
basically you work at the board of education helping them translate documents and things so you have to have quite a high
level of japanese for that position then there are also sports there's not a lot of them but
there are sports positions where you are basically a pe teacher in english um
so there's the three positions but the most positions are alts um we are both alts
um basically you get put in um a
school or multiple schools um depending on where you're placed
and you assist the teachers to teach english but there is a saying
in the jet program every situation is different and it's totally true we have lots of friends on the jet
program and everyone's experience is completely different so might get to
teach all of your classes by yourself and your um japanese teacher just helps you you
might just assist you my team teach like it's you might teach elementary you might teach high
school you might teach at seven schools you might teach at one school it totally depends on your placement
it's very interesting okay and do you teach at the same school
no as each other no yeah oh okay all right um private schools
in tokyo we were lucky to get private schools in tokyo but even then like our jobs are
still very different being at different schools yeah for sure um
and being placed at a private school is not a common thing it's mostly just in tokyo most other i
was just gonna ask about that yeah because i always thought the jet program is just public schools
so it was until about five or six years ago um
there were not any jets in tokyo um because tokyo had other companies it
wasn't an issue trying to get alts to tokyo so the jet program was focused on the
countryside areas but they brought jets into tokyo and private schools
in tokyo um and so the tokyo jet experience is quite unique compared to
other places because um you have to find your own apartment whereas in the countryside they give you
an apartment things like that very different life gotcha okay
and how how do you like the jeff program is that is it was it a good choice
but we're really lucky as you know we said every situation is different so although some people
have some troubles and problems on jet we are really lucky that our schools are really good they're very supportive
of what we do so because of that like i love the jet
program great yeah and you listen here some pros and cons of the program do you wanna
maybe go through that yeah so i mean the probably one of the biggest pros
considering other alts and other lt companies in japan is the pay like the pay on the jet program is great
when you have to afford to live in tokyo yeah um there's you have a big support
network like there are hundreds and like there are thousands of jets across the whole of japan
so you kind of your own little community and there's lots of support um like procedures on the jet program
because it's such an old program um they have like mental health support and they have a lot of places that you
can go to if you're having issues um there's like you have prefectural advisors that you
can reach out to if you have any issues sorry there's like a lot of different ways that jet supports you
yeah that's really awesome and they do allow for further education
they do provide grants for things like t soul so we got a t cell grant in order
to study with um i triple t and
for your japanese language proficiency tests once you get to a certain level they can also help sub um subsidize or
pay for your language proficiency test oh wow really helpful yeah that is
because but to join the jet program or to work through the jet program you don't have
to know japanese right no it's obviously a plus
for your application but it's not necessary because you're not going to be teaching alone
you will have a japanese teacher with you and that's their job is to help with the japanese
so you don't have to but it's very encouraged that you um actively try to improve your japanese
while you're here yeah okay and i guess uh maddie's japanese is pretty good how about
georgia um i have learnt a lot since i've been here i knew
pretty much zero japanese coming here um but being in a japanese school
environment has helped a lot like uh my listening is a lot better
um because you just hear it all day and um so that's really cool and you're a
colleagues teach you things um and you have manuals that jet give you to
study and yeah it's gotten a lot better yeah have you taken any like official classes
or not yet so we started out taking our local city
hall classes you just it's like two dollars um for an evening class run by volunteers
and the two dollars oh that's so cheap wow awesome
um so that was really cool we did that for a while and then we started taking some japanese lessons at
a local company um as well so and but maddie does a lot of study by herself too she's
very good at that yeah oh cool do you think like um
do can people get by only knowing english in japan and specifically in tokyo if
you're in tokyo you can and you know we often hear of jets who have been here for
you know three or four years and still can't speak japanese you know it's
it's up to each person what they want to do but you if you're in tokyo like you definitely can't get by so you have to
kind of try extra hard to make sure you're still learning yes
okay and trying to learn something it definitely makes your life easier
but you know a lot of people speak a little english you at most places
yeah that's good i think that's similar here in korea too it's about the same especially in seoul they're like people
who live there for years and they don't know any korean yeah but it helps it definitely helps i
actually really wanted to start learning japanese i started but it's so hard the writing system because there's three
writing systems i'm like oh hi yeah yes even japanese people think
they're writing systems yeah so that's really hard i just need
to sit down and every day practice practice practice all the letters and then hopefully one day
they'll stick yeah because i hear like the grammar like
korean and japanese are actually quite similar
kind of interchangeably learn them pretty quickly like if you're in that means if you're japanese you can
learn green but i actually bought yeah i actually bought a book i could show you real quick
i bought a book for learning japanese in um korean and they have like all the
grammar yeah it's really fun grammar it's probably too small to see but yeah
i thought maybe that why because the grammar is so similar it makes more sense maybe to learn it with korean instead of
like english yeah how that goes i need to learn the writing system
yeah wow good luck yeah we'll see i should take classes too
though but yeah it definitely helps i think particularly because japanese has so
many levels of formality that a lot of the textbooks teach you like really formal language which is not
particularly useful in everyday life so speaking lessons is really great because
your teacher can say you wouldn't probably say that to someone you know unless they were like the emperor so
here is the more casual way that you would probably fit to ordinary people yeah yeah i see that cool
okay did we cover everything on this slide so far um i think uh i mean with the con
the ones are they can be positive too you know like the fact that you can be
placed anywhere in japan is really exciting and i know
and the fact that every situation is different is also really cool because you have a completely unique experience
and you can kind of craft it yourself a lot of the times that's right yeah um yeah i had a friend
she taught um in japan with the jet program in okinawa and she really loved it
it was great right there yeah she loved it it was
great yeah okay and next question so in what ways did your
teflor tesol course prepare you for teaching in japan well i mean for me at least
i you know i didn't come from a teaching background i didn't study education so my tesol course was really
everything that i know about education now um but it was fantastic especially for
teaching english as a second language like the little things like pronunciation
um and grammar like i don't as jets you don't necessarily
have to teach grammar very often but i do or i get a lot ask lots of
questions about it and it's really difficult to answer about english grammar because hey we don't have to think about it so
it was really really helpful for me to understand that and also get ideas on activities and
tasks that kids can do to help them improve a lot as well so
it was really it really taught me everything i know yeah great and georgia since you came
from a teaching background why did you decide to get tefl certified um so i also don't know much about
grammar um as a native speaker and the education system that we went
through we were not explicitly taught grammar so um it was really
great to learn all of the terms for everything that you already
know um and be able to talk with teachers about it because
they will often ask you questions um like is this sentence correct or
if it's not correct why is it not correct and often we would have to say it just isn't i
don't know why right not correct but you learn about the grammar you can
talk in more specific terms and actually be helpful to the japanese teachers got it and
walk us through what we're seeing on this slide are these like the your biggest takeaways from the course yeah yeah absolutely um
i mean it's especially that it was so like your courses that i triple t is so easy to use and follow and to do in
your own time generally around you know a test period in japan you have a lot of more extra
time and it was just it was so easy to do and follow and they give you really practical
examples that i went on to use in my classes so it's so helpful yeah that's awesome
cool what what do you think is the biggest uh or the the hardest thing about teaching english
as a foreign language for you what do you think grammar for sure yeah grammar yeah i think
um yeah grammar and trying to step out of
what you know as a native um because the textbooks
are teaching very specific like patterns and things that are part
of english but maybe you don't use very often so just knowing that
grammar and how to explain it um is yeah that's really tricky
because maybe you use it very much yeah that's true cool um
and do you you mentioned like teaching grammar is not you don't really have to do that
often as a alt general i mean again every situation is different but
yeah you get most i would say majority of jets mostly do like communication or
conversation i guess that's good native speakers and objectively the japanese english
teachers will handle all the grammar because they are more qualified to do it than we are yes
okay got it okay cool we have a question here from maria oh hi maria asking i've
always been curious about it how easy is it to find a job relocate etc in japan
um i would say there are plenty of jobs in japan
for english teachers absolutely um the jet program is pretty competitive depending on
where you're from um but there are thousands of places on the
program and there are lots of other programs um in japan other companies
that do the same thing um and outside of that there are jobs at
international schools um there are jobs at eikaiwas which is
english conversation schools that kids go to like after school um there are yeah i'd say there's a huge
amount of jobs um in japan for english teaching for
sure absolutely um and easy to relocate um jet really helped you with a lot of
things so that's great and i imagine other companies probably help you too
um yeah so we had a lot of support moving over yeah we did
if you like want to change schools do you like talk to somebody at jet or do you
look for a recruiter or how does that work in if you're on the jet program um
that is i guess a con that if you want to change schools it's quite difficult um unless you're
like getting married to someone who's in a different place or there's family that you need to be around
except for those situations it's really difficult to relocate but outside of jet i guess it's like any other job you just
apply for a different apply for a different job and so when you're in the jet program and you want
to get out of it you can like is that easy you can just quit jet and then
you can it's obviously discouraged because they put a lot of time and resources into
hiring you because the process for hiring jets is really long you um you send your application in
in october and then you arrive in uh like august so it's
like a quite a long process um and you are employed year by year so i
guess um that's kind of a positive because you can just decide yearly if you keep
if you want to stay but in saying that you can quit if you want to they can't
stop you so um if you really hate it you can absolutely quit
okay cool all right and maria says thanks
she also says my skills improved a lot after taking this course i have recommended it to all of my
friends salutations from izmir turkey
also a place i've always wanted to go turkey
then robert is asking link to jet do you do you know the website i need to
google it the jet program dot org
is that is that it jetprogram.org
i think looks like it here
ah this one yeah yeah that looks right
okay here you go that's the link i'm
other cool thing about jet is that you don't have to be a native speaker some companies require you to be
speaking um english country but jet does not there are less places for people like they have certain
number of places per country but you don't have an english speaker you just have to have
native level english oh that's great so if you're not a native speaker you have to provide like an ielts or
like some kind of english language proficiency certificate probably right
um so i one of my colleagues is from the philippines and she had to do
a few extra things um like in your interview um she had to do a demo lesson
um but he did not in australia so
does that make sense sometimes you have to wonder yeah you do you
really do um so yeah there are a few more hoops to jump through i think but it's there are plenty of people from
country but i think that's one of the advantages of the jet program that you don't have to be from an english-speaking country because that's
the problem with korea and the epic program they only hire people from seven
countries like all english-speaking countries yeah yeah wow so wow yeah that's really cool good for
jet i like yeah and it's nice for the kids to get like a variety of people you know and we
realized that english is universal not yeah from like america
and england yeah right so do you know a lot of other jets i guess yeah um
jet has before corona um has a lot of um like meetups so that you can meet
other jets in your area and that's really cool cool from all around the world so yeah a lot of jet friends
cool and are they all from all different kinds of countries yeah yeah whatever yeah that's awesome
cool yeah and actually that's one of the next i think that's next yes
so how has it been living in japan during the pandemic because we just talked about
pre-covered meetups how has it been since
um obviously the the teaching itself is a big difference um we've
been wearing masks in japan since it hit japan which was last march so
it's now been a year and a half of wearing a mask every time you walk out the door
right so um that's really big change especially in the classroom
you know some of the kids i love that started last year i have not seen
the bottom half of they say i don't know what they look like it's so weird which is a really weird thing
but yeah outside of that like we haven't we've never had any harsh lockdowns in japan um they don't
really have the the laws to do that so a lot of the restrictions here are based
on your the trust morals the trust of the citizens to do the right thing
right i heard about that before yeah that's interesting yeah it works for the most part i think
most people are pretty law-abiding rather not law-abiding just like doing the right thing um
but there are always exceptions you know
um and with teaching there's been like kind of waves of what
you're expected to do when it first started people wearing face shields like maddie is in that picture
yeah that looks so cool i love it and i guess like um having a mask on
it's tough to teach kids about pronunciation and things that can be difficult um and they have the
desks like have shields at lunch time they have to like eat in like a little plastic prison um and
yeah but like not too much you know clubs have been cancelled and things like that in here i i mean it
depends on the school most schools did a big extent of online classes last may
um maddie's done a lot of honest i've yeah my class has been re and my school has been
quite strict with the online classes so we've gone through i think three like quite large periods of online
classes which you know is has its own difficulties when you teach english
communication to 40 children on zoom but you know we do what we can
yeah oh cool and like um i forgot what i wanted to ask
[Applause] maybe it's going to come back to me oh yeah i just wanted to add like with
what you were saying that everybody was like wearing masks in the beginning since like march and everything
i think it's kind of the same like here in korea i feel like it's also part of like the asian culture they're like more
like right away like care about the community about the others not just
even like before corona i think that's the same in japan when somebody has a cold or the flu they wear a mask
and stuff like that so absolutely yeah i have some kids some really shy kids that just
wear masks all the time
yeah i think it's strange it's still strange because it's been going on for so long and there's like no end to it but yeah yeah
yeah what about like where like restaurants and stuff ever closed
or restaurants are kind of the only thing in japan that is really being affected by the
restrictions um i can't even keep up with what
they're doing now but for a while at least they had to close by
8 p.m now it's still 8 p.m and they weren't allowed to sell any alcohol
but now they can serve alcohol till 7.
some rules but that you know they are they i think they've always been open kind of until eight o'clock at
night because so many it's a big part of the culture here to eat out like on your way home kind of thing yeah
because your apartments are tiny so cook they eat out on their way home yeah
yeah and i remembered what i wanted to ask about the pandemic um do you know if like the
pandemic affected the hiring of teachers and the jet program and stuff like that are they still hiring
them okay
a lot of the countries still went through the hiring processes it's just that they couldn't get here so
my school um has been trying i have a co-jet so there's two jets at my school
and um my co-jet became a teacher um and so we needed a replacement and
the replacement was supposed to arrive in november and then it was december and then it was january and then february
and then maybe never so um well it's but she's from america um so i
think that was a deciding factor but i know australia and new zealand sent jets in december
some year last year because they're um from like low-risk countries but there are a lot
of jobs at the moment for english teachers so if you can get here it's a good time because there are a lot
of positions open um yeah cause that's a good point because japan like for tourists is
tourist is still closed right yeah yeah okay shame i really want to go
as soon as the borders open um i'm going to be on a plane over there yeah for sure okay
no we need to meet yeah one time yeah no i actually had a trip planned to
tokyo in like march 2020 to see the cherry blossoms i had everything planned
everything was set and then everything got cancelled that was so sad that was so cute it's been really
strange actually we've had two years two two cherry blossom seasons with no tools which is yeah but it must
be nice for you though yeah yeah but that's like a dream of
mine to see like the cherry blossoms in japan with like the castle and you know like people wearing kimono
and like oh and mount fuji i hope maybe next year
okay and then i think you're gonna show us yes your apartment and the biggest
culture shocks so what have been some of the biggest culture shocks of living in japan
i mean this is on the slide the the apartments i mean this is also kind
of tokyo specific obviously other people live in bigger places but yeah we shared a 17 square meter
above it for two years we've literally just moved we both moved into our own
individual apartments on saturday so yay for us but um
bye you like it we were that's how close we were sleeping up in our loft
um i think in two banners and you know just coming from australia
it was just that was a big shock and it's huge of getting used to um we're fine now but when we got here
it was like oh no what have we done
and you mentioned like because you're in the jet program in tokyo you needed to find your own apartment like by yourself
how was that if you're like new to this country and then here find an apartment that must be really challenging yeah
they do put you onto an english-speaking real estate oh yeah or if you're placed in tokyo um
some people you know if they have good enough japanese decide to find their own place but um for us we found the company
really helpful and we actually got this apartment site unseen before we got to japan
it's not it's not recommended they don't really recommend that wait until you're right yeah but that's
really fun when you sign the contract is it like for a whole year or two years is the average in japan
but it's not here so don't like don't freak out about it you
know like it's easy to get out of if you give them a month it's fine oh okay okay any other
culture shocks just the apartment or i mean kind of like for me i've been here so many times
already that probably didn't culture and you studied the language so i think that helps yeah
but yeah um i think one of the things for me was um everything is really quiet
um like people are quiet transport is absolutely silent like no
one talks on the phone actually when we went to korea um that was like a culture shock because we'd
been living in japan for so long and then we went to korea and everyone's talking on the phone on the train and i was like
what are you doing you stepped on the train after leaving the airport and someone was on the phone and we went
i'm surprised when i go to seoul and they're on their phones in the subway like do you have
how do you have service down how does that work that's crazy yeah so
i think that's probably a big thing um yeah i guess like coming from australia
everyone's pretty loud so here um you know like you keep your voice down and everyone's silent on the
train but you know it's actually kind of nice when you sort of get on the train after work and it's just like very peaceful
that is nice yeah yeah so but that was definitely a bit of a culture shock and i guess
probably in tokyo how many people there are like it's
just crazy like on rush hour literally like pushed like there is a man
into the train there's a man whose job it is to make sure the door's closed so he literally will
push people in the door let me try and go oh wow
really like here go ahead get in get in oh my god okay wow yeah that's crazy
yeah and like there's just crowds everywhere you know like if you go to a shopping district
there's just always like lots of people so you just have to be very brave yeah yeah that's also one thing i
miss from back home sometimes like just going outside and there being like no one yeah like never yeah sometimes i miss
that because i also come from a very rural small place
yeah what what's like something that you missed the most from back home
probably about your family
like japanese people are very friendly and you know their hospitality is great but
very polite very polite but i once told a story about
a chat i had with someone in a grocery store in australia and their first question was why are you
talking to the cashier at a grocery store like i don't know for us but like they just
they don't do that sort of stuff a lot like talking on the street
yeah like the general chit chat where you get to know someone like it's very like customer
um yeah like the customer service is amazing but you're not making friends with them
got it okay good interesting yeah oh we actually have a question
here and we talked about this already but maybe we can just repeat it so how can non-native uh speaking teachers
teach in japan are there any opportunities for us to teach there if we could just maybe repeat that real quick
um so there are definitely opportunities um you would just have to have some kind of
english qualification that you can show the um employers and the jet program takes
non-native speakers um so i'm not sure what ah where are you
uh algeria you're from algeria um so the jet program has people from all
over the world um you just have to have an english qualification that your
english is a native level um i'm sure there are other companies as well oh yeah there's lots of like
english conversation schools and all around japan that hire anyone who has native level english so
yeah definitely awesome good okay and then
oh social media okay so that's where people can find you guys right
yes instagram blog youtube
regularly updated yes i saw your recent instagram posts like the the blue
flowers that looks so amazing they were beautiful [Music]
like yeah that's i think that's something i really love
about japan is how much um beauty is appreciated
um like every season is appreciated people like there are
words for watching flowers
and people go to see the autumn leaves and there's a different flower every month and people talk about it at work they're
like oh did you see the lovely this crowd and people travel long
distances to get to the flower field which is where those photos were taken like specific flower fields
wow it's amazing that's so pretty cool and where where is that at the picture
so that's in ibaraki prefecture which is like north east of tokyo okay
and i didn't know you also did youtube cool a little bit a little bit okay i need to
check that out too interesting again we haven't done a lot of traveling lately
yeah well yeah but can you travel like in japan at the moment or is not really
advised not advised they advise against well especially tokyo whites because
you know the big cities is where karina is they can't suggest that you don't yeah but there's a lot to
see and do in tokyo right thank you so much you could never run out of things to do
yeah yeah you really want to go welcome to i've been to fukuoka and
osaka and like now oh wow that's amazing yeah but i want to see more because it's
so close to korea like i want to go at least like once a year but did you place the ferry to fukuoka
i did yeah from busan yeah because i had to that was actually
a funny story because before i moved to korea i lived in china and i had to
get my korean work visa but that like kind of something didn't work out so i couldn't get it in china so i actually
had to do it in japan so my school said you can do like a visa run you just take the ferry
go to fukuoka and then get your visa three days and then back so but it was so fun it was my first
time in japan it was so cool that's amazing so cool yeah fukuoka was
your first experience in japan yeah did have you been there again yeah we had a
trip booked but we had to cancel okay got it yeah i feel like and that was like
that's so long ago i feel like i didn't i did a lot i actually did a uh kimono
experience and like i don't remember i did a lot of stuff but i feel like i could have seen more i don't know i
wouldn't go back next time yeah all right then q a those are i think all of my
questions let me just double check oh no we have i have two more questions but there's also a question
from the audience so to me asks how is the cost of living there and how is the salary range first
okay well hello hello um the cost of living really depends on where you
are in japan obviously tokyo kyoto have a much higher cost of living um
but that being said things like food incredibly cheap so all around japan
and that was a big difference between australia where food is so expensive to eat out
here it's so so cheap it can be cheaper to eat entire food at a grocery store
like if you eat somewhere for more than ten dollars you're like wow that's a bit expensive
that's awesome cool do you eat so you eat out pretty much every day no we don't particularly not with
corona you know oh yeah yeah yeah but everything's a lot of
tokyo people eat out or get um bento
boxes um the grocery store yeah yeah oh yeah okay um
yeah if you're not a big cook it's a great place to live and how's like how's the salary range
for people on a job is it like different jet and private school or is that like
is it different all jets have the same wage yeah it increases
for each year you stay on jet basically and we do have especially as alts
i think jet has the highest wages yeah so we're really lucky to be on jet yeah
it's not that far off what teachers get paid yeah um and uranus so um the
first year salary for a jet is 280 000 yen per month um
which is like three thousand dollars a month ish i think so
yeah depending on which dollar you're talking about
and google it google it yeah yeah yeah 280 000 yen per month it was the first
year and then it grows up from there um and like we said earlier the if you live
anywhere except tokyo your school will provide you with an apartment or a house even sometimes
people who live in the countryside have like entire houses to themselves rent free not necessarily free but like
may as well be free like 50 dollars a month wow yeah so that's really cool
um we live in inner city tokyo um we the suggestions
is 70 000 yen per month we pay
um between 80 and 90 000 per month for our current apartments um
mine's a little cheaper which is doable it depends like how much
traveling you want to do was really tiny and very cheap for both
of us to live in and split the rest but we did that because we just wanted to travel and not be home that much so but we find
it really cool like the jet salary with living in inner tokyo very yeah very much so
and if you are very worried about and you want more space lots of people live in the surrounding
areas from tokyo um like and kanagawa and they just commute in like to my school most of the teachers
don't live in tokyo they live outside and it's a 30 minute train which is what it takes me from inner tokyo so it's a lot cheaper
to live where they live um yeah sorry cool yeah i think that's what a lot of people
like we say like tokyo is so expensive like apartments are too expensive but
yeah seems like you can make it work definitely definitely yeah okay okay then i just
want to mention one more time our 30 off link real quick for people who have might have missed it in the
beginning this is the link um it's in the comment box uh this link if you apply through that you
can get 30 percent off any teflor tesol course from itt and which course did you take the 120
hour 120 and 20 hours yeah yeah yeah that's the most popular option for sure
right okay or you can also scan the qr code and then i'm gonna make us bigger
okay cool and i think i actually have let's see
okay one more question i think we answered that kind of already so same to me are you
provided with accommodation in the jeff program kind of said that yeah so if you're
anywhere but tokyo yes you will be provided with accommodation
um if you're placed in tokyo they will set you up with an english-speaking real estate company
um and they will help you find an apartment so either way you will have somewhere you're not alone
great all right and that's one of my questions what's your number one tip for others wanting to move to japan
to teach english um i would say just come with an open mind
um the teaching style here is very different probably to what
you're coming from um and you it's not your job to change the world so
um just come with an open mind um just try and fit in with the teachers
you'll probably work with lots of different teachers lots of different classes um just be really flexible and bring
your enthusiasm because you might be the only native speaker that they've or you know
foreigner that they've ever had contact with um in real life so just be enthusiastic
about english um they've probably had like a whole week of grammar classes and then
you come in and you're the communication teacher so just try and be like fun and
encouraging um yeah that would be my tip yeah it's a great tip
cool and then oh yeah sorry oh no i would just i would probably say be
prepared to be your own advocate and that's probably for any job in japan
though like the work culture itself is very very different to a lot of other places in the world
um you know if you want to leave at four o'clock which you're
entitled to then do it don't you know don't do ridiculous hours like
hours over time because everyone else is um also
like be your own advocate for your type of english oh yeah um so obviously
we're australians all of the textbooks that we teach from are american-based
um but luckily you know after talking with the teachers in my school and everything i am allowed to use like british
spellings and australian words and teach the kids a bit of australian english
um and not everyone's allowed to do that so yeah be your advocate that's awesome i think
that's great advice for sure yeah that's good cool and then also
what is next for you are you gonna are you gonna stay in japan forever or
what's what's next probably not forever
i am just finishing up on jet um this month this is my last month so
i've you know said goodbye to all my classes and um yeah i have what two and a half weeks
left um and then i'm going to work at an international school
in tokyo where i will teach english and humanities um so yeah i'm really
excited about that change jet is a really great stepping stone
into other positions in japan and really helped already be in japan to get a job in
japan yeah that's awesome and i talked about that in my previous lives too about like
usually like the first your first year in in a new country teaching is like not
gonna be your end like that's usually the beginning for like making connections and networking and
also finding out what kind of school you're looking for maybe where you want to live so the first year is usually like kind
of just getting to know the place and finding out what you like i think yeah for sure yeah absolutely
and you can kind of stuff out what the options are right yeah absolutely okay what about betty
um i'll i've just signed on for another year or i'm about to start my third year
of jets so i don't know i'll probably stay as a jet for the next couple of years
i'm getting more and more of my own classes and more responsibility every year which is
great cool um yeah i don't think i'll stay in japan forever um i have thought about going on
to like continue doing esl teaching in europe or something so also hence the tesol course very helpful
for that awesome so yeah we'll see what happens after the world opens up again
yeah that's great all right then we're almost at the end so if
anyone else has a question for maddie and georgia before we sign off now is your chance
and also make sure you follow them over here on all of the social media and blog and
i need to check out that youtube too yeah and if you have like any questions
we're happy to answer them on our socials if you think of a question
later or if you're coming to japan one day
yeah yeah oh yeah i'm definitely going to take you up on that
for sure absolutely at any time yeah cool anything else you want to add
before we sign off anything we've missed thinking i don't think we missed anything
no i don't think so yeah yeah okay maybe let's give it a couple more
seconds there's always a delay actually between the live and like i think it's like a 20-second delay between us talking and
then it showing up on facebook so sometimes you need to give it a minute okay but yeah
very very interesting and really thank you so much again for taking your time today and joining us
live that was really great no we are we are so honored to have been asked
yeah thanks so much for having us okay and charles can confirm your great
tour guides thanks charlie cool
awesome yeah i also really want to go to australia never been wow can give you lots of
recommendations clean yeah because like i was born and raised in germany and
from germany it's so far to get to australia
yeah but from korea it's not that far it's too far but not yeah yeah not
nearly as hot yeah how long does it take when you fly from tokyo
back home eight and a half hours to brisbane
yeah and what's the best city in australia i mean again a lot of harvest we're from
we're from the state of queensland and and the capital in queensland is brisbane
and so where we did university i lived there after university and it's like it's a
city but it doesn't feel like a city i think it's beautiful like the quintessential australian experience
in the stage of queensland you have like the beaches and the reef and also the outback oh yeah it's got it all yeah
but also i my favorite place is tasmania it's beautiful island
underneath it's stunning the food is nothing nature is amazing yeah i think it's an
undiscovered part that people don't usually visit yeah i just want to go everywhere anywhere
just outside of korea yeah just anywhere
all right cool i think we can sign off now it was really awesome we had a great chat
i learned a lot about japan um and yeah i think uh this is it for today
please tune in again next week and also you can always re-watch this episode if you just caught
it in the middle you didn't have enough time please just watch it again it's always in our playlist on facebook and also on
youtube and um yeah that's it for today then thank you so much again maddie and
georgia bye thank you for having me all right see you later
