Why NOT to Teach English in Japan

you know i thought i knew what real terror was when earlier this year mcdonald's japan actually ran out of french fries forced into rationing those pitifully small portion sizes truly the unthinkable and yet equally as horrifying as some of the stories i've heard over the years from people teaching english in japan now for many people teaching english is something of a gateway a golden ticket into an impenetrable culture for me i actually came here as a teacher my first three years i was here on the jet programme and for the most part it's a time

of my life that i look back on very fondly even if the students seem to have a fascination with my size and scale going so far as to call me vip debit vip depict to this day i don't really know what that means is it an insult is it a term of endearment probably the first one but for me three years was the perfect number if i'd carried on i would have lost my sanity but what happens if you do carry on what happens if you do it for 10 long years you might recall my

best american friend pete from our epic road trip to japan's most northern point in hokkaido last year this week after 10 long years pete has finally quit his career as an english teacher with five jobs each one worse than the last i don't think i know anyone who's had as ridiculous a career in japan as pete has had and that is why i want to share it today with you guys in this video whether you want to teach english in japan or not i think it's a fantastic critique on life in japan it might put

you off teaching unfortunately but for the most part i think it's fairly entertaining and honestly if you find the absence of mcdonald's french fries terrifying wait until you hear some of the stories in this video so here is guys welcome to the ramen shop the greatest teacher of english the world has ever seen pete premier 2. i'm the greatest the great i've been mildly sarcastic i fear for the future of our children's that's uh you're a good teacher though right i'm great uh i'm all right i try hard if i had children i would want

you to not come near exactly i think that's yeah thanks buddy but you've had a hell of a career i know you haven't told me everything about your career but you've taught me snippets yeah for what i can gather peter's had like the most ridiculous teaching career i've ever heard from anyone and in this video we're gonna sort of talk through that of the five jobs you've had five jobs ten years and three of those jobs were pretty horrendous what i understand absolute [ __ ] some of the worst jobs anybody could ever ask for

all right all right so you came to japan in 2011 right that's right right after the tohoku earthquake that was in march right yeah so my application was kind of lost in the earthquake and so uh we had to wait until we got news and we i arrived in april two weeks after and uh just two weeks after the yeah devastating so before that though why did you decide to come to japan the all the question everybody wants to know why did you come to japan well i majored in acting in the united states and

you you can imagine like uh al pacino and robin williams if you combined both of those you get like daniel day lewis i was neither of those i was the bottom but i loved acting it just didn't pay the bills and i had been to japan twice to visit um a host family because we hosted a japanese student when i was in college and i they lived in yokohama i came here visited them it was amazing i absolutely loved it visited two more times and i decided all right after i graduate college at 26 i

am well i'm a great teacher though i can tell them what not to do i decided i i want to go and give this a three year trial run that was my minimum so the first contract that i got was three months so three months three month contract it's very hard back in 2011 we think of how many opportunities we have now to get jobs back then you had to sign up for a newsletter called like ohio sensei and they would send you an email of the the posted job uh like that are available and

very few of those were available to people who were not already in japan right so the one i i applied for was a placement company on a three-month contract to the beautiful beaches of joadsu oh no joyce is in niigata that's a nighttime the only thing it's famous for and i went through it on jenny across japan is the biggest nuclear actor in japan what really hashiwazaki reactor what with joey yeah but like that i i really don't like that part of japan it's got some of the highest snowfall on the planet it actually has

the the record snowfall of japan happened in niigata actually um they didn't really tell you that when you arrived so i was expecting a kind of you know malibu or some sort of like okinawan beautiful sea of japan uh it was not right so it was very different i took this job in joatsu the earthquake got lost in it i couldn't confirm whether i had it or not but ultimately i did make my way here and i came here with all of my earthly possessions which was my teenage mutant ninja turtles pillow um some blankets

and uh a good pillow is very important and um that was it i threw away everything else how much money did you come with well so i brought five hundred go i think i came with about three thousand dollars that's what you're supposed to do um it's called planning uh so learn from from this so it must have been a pretty hardcore time to come to japan i came in 2012 one year after the earthquake you're coming straight off the tail end one month after and you're literally landing in a nuclear disaster zone by all

accounts yeah there was some concern from my family and friends but i think that i'm pretty much a disaster zone in general so they were like just go and chase your dreams and i felt like this was very naive i felt like maybe if i moved to japan i can be part of like a rebuilding process turns out i contributed almost nothing it's contributed to the decision yeah it was like it was basically i paid my taxes which is the best i could do um so i got there and we had a two-day training to

kind of get acclimated uh it would be an overstatement to say that they were under-prepared they were they were it was a disaster their building was completely disheveled they were still papers all over the floor from the earthquake and they had not a lot of time to recover and get all these contracts sorted i did not come on a work visa they assured me that this was in the process of being made and i was on my tourist visa oh my god um but we had the two day training and uh apparently there was only

really one thing they wanted us to learn and that was and this is a very obvious thing to any normal intelligent person don't mess with the kids or be attracted to them lesson 101. that's the fact there to teach that's pretty alarming it seems like rumor is that the previous people who did not finish the year because we had that three-month contract we were replacing them was because of some uh inappropriate behavior or could have been with another teacher or something i don't know but basically it was be professional they tasked me with a map

and a washing machine we threw it in the back seat of the uh this car they gave me and they said all right you're driving west for about eight hours so we were supposed to meet into mcdonald's but i was four or five hours late because i was lost in the mountains of japan and so we they actually were meeting at an apartment right beneath mine i did find it eventually and it looked like it was a scene from some sort of uh you know guy richie film there's like a one swinging light bulb and

uh they have this big map of joetsu the town we're teaching in and there's like eight other teachers in there because there's nine of us total and they were showing us on the map here are your schools it wasn't just one school there was uh one guy had like five schools another guy had three and we were trying to figure out where each one was and i couldn't find my color-coded i was like the pink dot and there was no pink dots so i was like well am i even in the right city who are

you guys chilling to their own place am i even who are what's going on um and we were looking all over this map and i was like it's not here and so we we kind of unfurled the map oh no off the table and lifted it up and sure enough over there was my seven schools seven in the middle of nowhere 40 minutes up in the mountains barely on the map five elementary schools and two junior highs and those were actually very unique because uh those were very rural very one of the schools had 31

students total jesus christ one first grader a school is to be liberal well the 31 student school it was endearing uh when you got there the there's like a chicken coop and we could i could name a chicken welcome peter he's a chicken yeah i named him uh gregory peck and uh they couldn't pronounce that very well greg was fine gregory but i remember the first time i went there they had i guess like an auditorium when these kids were all waiting and they they sang the school song and the national anthem beautiful there was

this one kind of portly kid he was like a fourth grader right and he was like holding this rope and he was like watching me from the minute i came in and i thought he was maybe uh they're gonna give me a new i don't know i was hoping for that uh he was holding the rope and on the american lab but he was like checking the principal and checking me and then checking the principal and they said like in japanese welcome to the school not a lot of english there and they gave him like

the signal and he yanked the rope down right and he was huge on this this giant handmade banner unfurled from the the rafters right and it said welcome petter that's like ah well that's not my name i'm peter it was p-e-c-t-e-r 500 miles in a car with a washing machine just i couldn't get your name wrong and i don't want to be associated with petting or any of that so i was like that's what got the last teacher yeah i was like okay i was like thank you very much every day at that school started

with us running around like a wheat field for exercise most of my lessons there were about agriculture and about um teaching kids english words like tractor and things but dodgy banner aside yeah how was the school how was the experience of you know being this crazy little mountain community for three three months three months i will say this of all the experiences i've had in the past ten years that first three months was the most memorable and exceptional good and bad uh time in japan i've ever had my entire life a lot of the things

that i taught i never expected i was teaching kids uh how to plant well they taught me how to plant rice i should say yeah that sounds like a parody of like what would you be doing in japan planting the rice is planting rice or did you teach them anything at valley did you teach them about kansas i i but it is more about being an ambassador a lot of your job ends up being unless you become more experienced at sharing american culture and to be honest they did not have an opportunity to meet foreigners

very often sure and that's what teaching a lot of the teaching in japan is about certainly on the jet program they're like you're an ambassador for the uk it's more just introducing people to the world outside japan the the kids themselves were very eager to to learn and when you you got to understand when you go into the classroom you have an advantage that none of the japanese teachers have you're unique you are interesting and you're in kansas well not me i meant other like you i mean space japanese english teachers haven't even left japan

i don't mean that japanese teachers are not interesting but i mean that your classes are something unique in the school so the kids look forward to your lessons in the end of the day i i got a lot when i left they were very kind and they they wrote me little notes and oh so you there three months presumably you you enjoy japan you wanted to stay how did you stay on past those three months did they wouldn't they keep you well they jets came in they they're the official and the big government brought in

the big guns they're the teachers and i was like oh well here we go we got a little yeah goodbye peter so the remember the guy i told you about the swinging light who was helping our agent yeah when you first when i first arrived he ended up wanting he was kind of impressed with uh some of my abilities uh as a snake oil salesman and he he offered me a job where we would be working inside of a mall uh toyokado which is kind of like a big chain of small still enjoy still in

joatsu and uh i would be fronting and the only international teacher at this this school that we're inventing from scratch uh my advice is first don't ever do that this was a bad idea this is a terrible idea don't count on me don't follow a shady man into a shopping mall and um i said i'll do it as long as i don't have to make the curriculum i don't feel comfortable you've left your rural mountain life behind you've planted the rice and now you're you're off to the city yeah after the city of georgetown not

very good city i liked it a lot good and uh the snow hit and uh they warned us you know the snow like you said is very very heavy in there and they said uh this this neighbor of mine said you you need to be careful when every couple hours you should open your door and clean out the snow and i was like a couple of hours and i was like i'm from kansas man we've had ice storms uh he was right because um there was like my bicycle was outside i took a picture of

it and there's like a little bit of snow on the tires the next morning i couldn't even open my door to get out you couldn't open your door it was snowed in i had to go through the window go around and clean the front of the door and the picture of the bike it's like up to the seat nearly and that was like in six hours of snowfall that is terrifying so i had to walk to the ito yokado every day which was uh normally like a 15 minute walk but in snow land it's 35

minutes this is pretty wild though you're in japan you've had your three month experience now you're fronting a dodgy english language what even is this isn't a school is it like an english conversation we had a very strange system where you bought points and you could exchange your points for lessons with me long story short the guy was legitimately insane he had several domestic issues with his wife he uh would go on shouting tirades and worst of all we we got a lot of money up front by promising these point systems you know like people

would buy a thousand dollars worth of points right i'll use these throughout the next year he lost it all on pachinko yeah and that was also he did pay me sometimes late but that was a huge issue is like i could not see that this was going to be a long term so your boss was a man with a gambling addiction and a question of understanding of english did he yeah his english was pretty good he had lived in california for a while yeah and so he he seemed pretty knowledgeable but um certainly he was

a shady businessman so it takes some degree of banter to convince people but like much like your channel your thoughts it was it was it was really rough and working inside of that eikaiwa was a lot of broken promises i told you i didn't want to make the curriculum so luckily they he had tasked his brother to write who seems very like energetic i want to write it the brother of the gambling man yes and uh i was like all right man let's see what you got and i was like all right so one of

the lessons we're gonna do is like you're at an airport right and i'm gonna help you like check in your bags or stuff that you may actually use using english sure can you write me an a b dialogue he was like oh okay and he would like type away giggling for hours and he'd print off these sheets it'd be like hello hi i'd like to take a flight please okay where are you going do you have a banana i'm hungry and you're like what what does this mean right here is this a mistake he was

like keep reading he's like no bananas on the flight sir really time to die or something like he would and i'd be like well what is that you point out like pull out a gun he's like it's funny these are omoshiro these are interesting and i said uh no no this is wrong or we'd go to the grocery store and he'd be like uh how can i help you he's like i have a shoe on my head and you're like what why was he writing this [ __ ] this is like this is a script

for you to practice with people coming in this was supposed to be actual teachers in real life everyday english and he really really was in on being like a comedian what a [ __ ] but so like you know that i knew that this was not gonna last and he said okay it's time to recontract so i guess it actually may have been a little over a year i think i stayed there for 12 months or i can't quite say like voice in your head like i need to get out of here i need to

stop doing this well the big concern was when you looked at the coffers and there was a lot of this is very this is a very specific situation but me and the other co-workers there we were like this is really bad we've lost all of our money he's gambled at all you haven't been paid in six months i'm still getting paid but none of this is working none of this is good so i was like all right uh i i need to uh that's it so yeah yeah so we i i left him behind i

decided to come to tokyo on a bus i heard that there was an opportunity how did you quit i told the guy i said look i really appreciate what you've done for me please don't kill me but i'm going to transition into something i want to move to the big city this has been a good experience man did he get mad at me though really oh man well didn't you why wouldn't you like what about all the money you [ __ ] away on pachinko i you know i'm not a very confrontational person um i

didn't know how to handle that and plus he had the he had the the big thing was he had been really slow about renewing my visa right and so with that running out that was my big concern and i was like have you done this yet and to do that he had to probably show them some of the company details which the company wouldn't have lasted very long what did he say when you left this this incredible organization uh i believe he had a lot of choice words that i was uh one of the biggest

frauds in english teaching history correct i mean but i think there is some validity this is so awful [Music] how did you find an opportunity in tokyo i think you know the secretary of that that that aikaiwa she had found me an opportunity by searching because she wanted me to get out she was like looking out for me she helped me get out i took a bus stayed with a friend and i must have looked desperate bags under my eyes disheveled uh not so different than now i suppose was like your first time in tokyo

properly um well other than visits yeah i'd never i never we didn't even spend any time there that was my first trip there yeah so there you are in the big city there i am in the big city of the worst company in the world has helped you out what happens next i go to this place and i'm i was it seemed perfect it was a it was a it was an eikaiwa an english conversation school that was predicated on english through drama oh that's perfect drama teacher drama teacher and i was like okay i

could do this and they said all the lessons are already pre-made here are all of our materials we want you to teach these age ranges from literally zero to to adults i said uh please i i really need this job and this guy david the british guy he must be good well he looked at me right in the face and he right in the eyes and he said welcome home wow oh great going worst shot we've ever had this is the worst jumping shot i've ever had by far hands down 10 out of 10. absolutely

no no i will plant rice i will put shoes on heads but uh it was the worst job i've ever had and there's really like two or three examples why one of my classes was called joyland it was a four hour class on tuesdays and thursdays the kids were two years old very cute the kids are adorable we had one assistant and entertained for four hours this is insanity it's extremely hard to do this and uh you have to learn all these things where you can can i show you the yum yum song uh i

will just briefly you gotta make your o's like this you go oh yum yum yum yum yum yum yum i'm very shoot me in my face let's eat it was terrible it was that kind of material right glad your drama degree was pretty good yes yeah or i was teaching them your breath and one particular class this woman came in still visibly pregnant right like nine months pregnant and maybe eight and she was like i want to take the class with you and i was like me and i was like okay well when you're we

we recommend about six months after the child's born you know then there could be some you have some time to develop with the child sure and she was like no i want to take it now and i was like well the baby is not born yet she was like it's fine i want you to do it and uh we did this whole lesson several times and she would sit there with the baby and her tummy and she would i would teach at colors and everything was like through gestures so i'd say like red and then

she would say like are you ready red and then she'd feel and she was like and i'd be like uh green and she'd be like green and she'd be like you know and i remember after like blue or something the [ __ ] is turquoise i don't know and she was like blue blue and she was like i think he said it and i was like i i don't think that's possible i think if i would have killed myself at this point this is [ __ ] insane so yeah i was teaching you were teaching

a fetus this is the level it's got to oh my god and there was there was one bringing back the shades on the heads it gets worse um there was one particular class i'll never forget i might need a visual demonstration if you would i think uh can i grab this thing over here is it all right yep i'm gonna grab this oh gun i'm a bit worried by this prop baby right this is the mayonnaise the mayonnaise mascot baby yeah i don't know what you have is that he's baby it's the mayonnaise baby and

uh this was not the one we used at the studio i had a different doll this is the baby you taught colors we had to teach this class oyako and this is a different different parent usually 99 of the time it was a mother and the child who comes during the day this one particular time it was uh the dad and i'd never seen him in the class before and he was visibly nervous and he didn't speak english particularly well which is okay because it's to learn it's for both and um one of the particular

things we were doing is this is this activity called wiggy waggy and it's important it's these are educational things wiggy wacky well it's wiggy waggy wiggy waggy jelly in the bowl and the idea is is you have the kid who's maybe one or nine months or something like that and you know i have my little demonstration thing and i'd say like ah wiggy waggy wiggy waggy jelly in the bowl and then the dab should he was like what is this teaching with children you know it's a warm-up activity so we're getting them kind of mobile

we're getting them kind of ganky because when they're they're kind of scared when they're kind of scared seeing you like yeah you'd be around but you know so the dad was like wiggy waggy wiggy waggy jelly in the ball and i was like you're not buying anybody properly you gotta do it properly so i was like listen i i was like look we're just trying to make the kid feel comfortable so we need to do this together yeah and he was like oh not a huddle okay i'll do it and i was like all right

let's let's make it a bit a little bigger so i took the little thing and i said you know now wiggy waggy wiggy waggy jelly in the bowl that's what we do that's what and he was like okay so he has this kid and he said to his credit wiggy waggy wiggy waggy jelly in the and the kids [ __ ] on his face yeah like just straight straight from above what i never forget it he had i'm not and this is not for all viewers but he had poop dripping from his nose i'll never

forget it i was still holding the baby thing looking like oh my god and the fumes started to hit and i remember looking up i saw his thing and his eyes were like just huge like shocked and i remember the kid was like giggling like like the baby clearly knew him he actually did not say anything he touched his face saw the poop put his kid down and i said uh let's we kind of spent the class cleaning up i remember looking at him i was like we still have 30 minutes left he was like

i'm leaving i was like okay and i was like i hope you had a good list and there are no refunds thank you for coming here to have a nice all right bye and uh believe it or not they never came back i wonder why but these are these funny stories let me give you some actual information about what these kind of jobs entail they're really tough a lot of those eight iowa classes make you work throughout the year they're very brutal schedules i just want everyone to know that you end up working six days

a week a lot you end up spending a lot of your time there and the energy to teach children of that age up for those 50 minutes over and over it's really hard and those kids do get to know you and they are really cute and they're adorable and they do learn a lot and like we did play all the colors we learned well no no we would actually do like full plays one in particular i remember uh we did like this three little pigs with the big bad wolf you know and i was the

wolf and these kids we had like nine pigs though and um i made a mistake i had a nomikai which is a drinking night the night before i had a birthday party right i didn't remember we had the performance that day i thought it was a week later i show up to the studio drunk as a skunk it was awful and i'm ready to do my part as the big bad wolf and oh my god this is such a small room very tiny right and all these parents have like their ipads and they're recording and

i just look miserable and i remember this one kid was so excited in his little pig costume he ran up to me and hugged me and then he went oh and he said in japanese oh you smell like dad and then i remember dad dad was recording he was like what and i was like uh let's get started kids i'll huff and puff okay here we go little pigs little pig yeah it was it was a nightmare but like you know you smell like that you smell like that i'll never forget that how did you

drunk them oh no you know it's it sounded like the only way to get through this utter [ __ ] show yeah it was still a good performance but um so the the thing was uh after a year i felt like okay the eight highway business is no longer for me it was the unhealthy position i was gaining weight i was miserable and it was just the hours was just like the low point of your it was time in japan i would say it was the absolute lowest i've ever felt in my entire life jesus

and that's sad because i was living in a cool place and i had and you're in yokohama right yeah it's pretty great beautifully cool place to live yeah and i had good friends and i it was just that job was really tough so be ready to before you sign your soul over to these companies you have to make sure yes japan's amazing yes it has cool stuff but it is a lot of work and uh i've never been more broke in my entire life i in particular there was one of those summer months where i

couldn't make it as it turned into october and you have literally no money literally none uh you go on things like egg diets or rice diets where you make a doughnut yeah you're a chicken man i understand that i have to go before it's cooked you gotta go like it's just scrambled eggs and rice because that's the cheapest that'll be good for a few days but i did it for six weeks oh my god it was i think it's what gave me a cholesterol problem and there was one particularly low moment where i could not

even afford toilet paper i had to go to the local park and steal a rule it was it's dire it's it's absolutely dying so an opportunity came up where i was looking for more money more stability something long term and i got hired at a private high school in tokyo and uh the pay is significantly better i applied for the job and you know it's actually interesting i i went to the the screening process because they did not have like you can't just go in they hired a company to screen out the bad employees i

tricked them so i go in there and the guy was like i wrote on my resume i worked in joatsu for a year and i've been a high school teacher for three and there was just a year that was blank wiggy waggy here i just left that wiggy waggy yeah i was like i don't want to mention that and the guy was like yeah well did you what were you unemployed for a year in japan i was like nah it's just you know bad [ __ ] and he was like well i kind of would

like to know what'd you do and i was like well i worked at this real [ __ ] place called alg or whatever and he was like oh yeah i wrote all their materials and i was like oh damn it and i was like wait i don't mean you your materials were bad he was like listen if you survived a year doing that i think i can trust you to pass you on so this interview's done so we just ended up talking well so i was very lucky i ended up taking the job significantly better

pay and a really interesting stroke of luck is that i got to teach the senior class for the last five years of actors and idols and musicians so real actual actors and idols you teach some pretty famous people right i do and it's been a very satisfying experience because i get to teach them kind of western acting styles or or really more performative english than the testing english so that was that was awesome so a happy ending yeah and then i quit all of that this year so i'm done i'm done teaching and you quit

so after five years doing this yep i've done that for five years why did you quit though if it's such a good job well you know i see what you do you make it look so easy you're such a big tough guy no i'm kidding to be honest i've always you've been a huge inspirational source in this regard japan is a place where i genuinely believe whether you're teaching or you're making content or you're doing trades or whatever it's what you want to make of it right there's a lot of opportunity here for you to

be self-employed and you encouraged me along the way to why don't i go back to my more performance roots and i i started a ill-fated and stupidly named twitch channel that you you've never been a fan of the name but that has allowed me to transition into something i feel far more proud of you're giving up job security at a private school with the prestigious students to be a twitch streamer now that you were like that i feel like i've made a terrible error uh the last thing i'll say is the expectation versus reality it

will give you an opportunity to be in this country and maybe find something that you want to do but take the job seriously oh yeah a lot of people don't a lot of people certainly i did um you had some bad teaching materials you should check out his video i did some bad teaching materials and actually i had the same situation as he did i mocked uh a textbook and it turned i remember talking to one of my uh uh japanese colleagues he was an english teacher and he was like oh my friend wrote that

book and i was like oh god because the english was wrong was that the like a magic yes it comes from a japanese textbook i remember that but well done pete if you have any questions repeat write in the comments guys let us know i'm sure he'll be happy to answer away more word but uh do go and check out pete on premiere 2 twitch that's the one and um you can help a poor man today well it's it's one of the best twitch channels i follow i think it's one of the only ones i

do like three shows yeah and i can't say thanks enough for letting me come here to the studio again not at all but thank you pete for more pete check out premiere 2 check out our trip to hokkaido and check out pete when he came to the studio with natsuki and connor and got a tour it's a good film speaking of our trip to hokkaido i've got this great plan where we're going to travel by everyone easternmost point of japan it's going to be great