I would like to be an English teacher in Japan. Any advice?
 

I would really appreciate it. I'm taking a Japanese course at my school and doing some self-study and I'm from the United States. I plan on getting my Secondary English Education and getting a minor in Japanese. Any advice?:)

For starters, you can take a look at this thread stickied at the top...

http://www.japanforum.com/forum/livi...-jp-2-0-a.html

Other than that, you mostly just need to have a four-year degree. What would you like to teach in Japan? Most foreigners usually end up teaching ESL.

This is such a huge misconception on Japan Forum. I wish its members stopped stating this over and over for nothing is further from the truth. Most foreigners in Japan aren't even English-speakers to start with. How could they end up teaching English?

Foreigners in Japan are:

28.2% Chinese
27.6% Korean
14.7% Brasilian
9.4% Filipino < Very few of them teach English.
2.8% Peruvian
2.4% U.S.
14.9% Other

Data based on 2007 Alien Registration

Obviously you are looking at teaching as a career. Your studies will get you off to a good start, and you can build upon them and work toward a masters degree in education. A garden variety teaching job in Japan pays about $30,000 a year to those who have a bachelors degree, a masters degree will get you a university position which can pay double that amount.

Seems that whenever I look up jobs in Japan that foreigners can do who literally aren't natives, the jobs are usually for those to teach English language. I never said "all", I said "usually".