“We don’t have enough money to live on, so my debts are growing every month. Even when he says he wants to marry me, I’m so worried about our livelihood that all I can say is ’I’m sorry.’ I don’t even have enough money for the train fare to go on a date.”
Jesse Ali (43), from California, USA, who works as an assistant language teacher (ALT) in Kanagawa Prefecture, took the microphone and made this appeal in front of the dispatch company he is contracted with on June 17th.
He became interested in Japan when he met a Japanese exchange student when he was in high school. From 2001, while he was a university student, he studied international relations at International Christian University for two years. After graduating from a university in the United States, he came to Japan again and began working through a major company that handles ALT dispatch businesses. With a break from returning to Japan in between, he has taught at elementary, junior high, and high schools in Kanagawa Prefecture for a total of about 15 years.
In elementary school, in addition to English conversation, he teaches classes such as singing English songs together, five to six times a day at one school. Since the guidelines differ depending on the board of education where he is dispatched, the content needs to be rearranged. He also puts in a lot of effort, such as illustrating his own characters. “I want them to feel the joy of communication and broaden their international interests,” he says of the rewards of his work. “No one believes me when I say I don’t have money.” But he says he is not earning a salary commensurate with his work. His salary fluctuates depending on the number of classes he teaches, but even if he works five days a week, his monthly take-home pay is less than 200,000 yen. It drops even more in March and April, when spring break is. He also receives no bonuses. Wearing a mask in class is now mandatory… (The following is a paid version, 1288 characters remaining) Asahi Shimbun July 13, 2024 15:00
>>1 >I don’t have enough money to live on, so my debt is increasing every month. Where are you getting the money from? How much do you spend on the 200,000 yen you get a month? I can’t really say anything without knowing more details.
I somehow had a feeling that the employment conditions for ALTs were terrible. And, frankly, I thought that their personalities wouldn’t be compatible with the type of Japanese people who become teachers.
>>35 There was an alt who was off work all day because of a toothache Maybe he didn’t have social insurance If he didn’t have social insurance and was treated as an individual business owner, his national health insurance would go up dramatically and he’d be in trouble
The starting salary in Japan is one third of the starting salary in the US. If a Japanese person went abroad and worked for one third of the starting salary in Japan, their annual income would be 800,000 yen. That’s about how it feels.
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