“Help Japan” By Using Our Job Listing Business

Let’s Japan has blasted Gaijinpot.com and English teaching companies for tying their job listings to post-earthquake relief efforts:

“Shame on these schools for using a disaster to promote their businesses. This ad campaign is not about what you can do for Japan–it’s about the schools desperately trying to find teachers. I have a feeling that nobody wants to work anywhere near Fukushima.”

From what I’ve heard, quite a few foreign teachers have fled the country because of the earthquake and nuclear accident, so there probably is a shortage of English teachers. However, it does seem pretty tacky for profit-making ALT dispatch and eikaiwa companies to boast about how becoming their employees will help “Japan.”

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14 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - April 10, 2011 at 5:41 pm

Categories: Foreigners in Japan, Teaching English Tags:

Dev

You think thats bad, what about other ways people are “helping” Japan?

Anyone can see the irony in the image seen in this article, and the fact that this is goign up for auction to “help” the victims??: http://www.honolulupulse.com/blogs/gametype/gametype-gamers-want-to-help-japan-too
crazytimes

F-cking disgusting
http://hanlonsrzr.blogspot.com Mr. S.

I know the international schools are well short of teachers. Know of one which lost not less than 20% of its staff. And know of two others which tried to poach me from my job because their administrators had my contact information. I’d imagine not a few teachers will ride it out until summer and not renew. Hell, I know three teachers so panicked they traded in Tokyo for Toronto! Having lived there, that is indeed desperate.
- jcpb
  
  Between those two cities, I’d have picked Tokyo right away. The mass transit systems here in Toronto suck, and even that is the only most positive thing I can say about it.
Craig

I feel sorry for the suckers who sign up to interac and then get shipped off to fukushima
Colin

I don’t find this all that bad, though i might be missing something.

When I read through the postings I didn’t see anything that I would deem wrong. They seemed to be pulling people not as direct aid to Japan, but rather as indirect means of being part of the Japanese rebirth. I’m not in Japan right now, but when I first heard about the earthquake, all I could think about was, despite everything happening, I was to be in Japan. I wanted to be in Japan, and to experience the extreme change the country is sure to go through in the coming months and years. No, i probably wouldn’t be direct aid, but to be a working member of the Japanese collective would be enough for me.
- iago
  
  The extreme change has already happened. Anything going forward is going to be gradual.
- kujirakira
  
  I get the impression that you have to have been an eikawa teacher yourself to get it.
  I perused the site over there and looks like a lot of rotten eggs.
  Basically the short story is that English teachers in Japan are treated little better than unskilled labor. Being that most of them come from middle-class families with 4-year degrees in a society where they are “the man” per se, it’s a hard pill to swallow for them to instantly be reduced to a minority and unskilled labor.
akatsuka

The advert might not be in the best of taste, but why should Japanese kids in areas unaffected by the disasters be deprived of learning decent English? I’m not saying the people who come over will be great English teachers, but one or two will be.

Kujirakira-san
The job is what you make it. If you think of yourself as an unskilled laborer, then that it what you shall be. (Speaking generally, not you personally). English teachers, take pride in what you do, even if it is only for yourself.
- kujirakira
  
  The job is what you make it
  
  Agree entirely. I spent several years in Japan in another line of “work” where we used this phrase a lot. Some good friends are or were English teachers in Japan.
  
  But online the community seems like a very bitter group, and I believe a lot of that has to do with expectations. Going by Japanese language courses I’ve taken in college, I’d bet a lot of them went to Japan with anime and picturesque quaint shrines in mind. Being that most of them have 4-year degrees, I’m going to guess that they weren’t expecting a position which, in many ways, sounds like a modern blue collar job to me.
  People who come without grand expectations and put their nose to the grindstone seem to do well with it, however.
Fat Tony

I don’t think this is too bad. Adding to the tax base and confirming for your friends overseas that Japan isn’t a scary place is a lot better than, say, buying a Mossimo or Ralph Lauren polo shirt made just for the occasion. Those are the types of companies that exploit the crisis for brand recognition.
Alec

I think there must be a lot of schools in trouble right now, so don’t think this kind of copy is exploitative. There are many worse examples of people taking advantage of the tsunami.
Kevin

What is wrong with this? Nothing! As long as they are trying to get teachers back to replace the ones that fled. I don’t think this is exploitation. There are areas of Japan that aren’t even remotely affected by the radiation and I know a lot of teachers who have fled. It IS helping Japan. Getting back to some sort of normalcy. This includes their children going back to school and learning again.
- Jay Smith
  
  I think you have to have worked for Interac to know that it is certainly exploitation.

“Help Japan” By Using Our Job Listing Business

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