Kyushu is the third largest island in Japan, After Honshu and Hokkaido. It has 7 prefectures, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita, Saga, Miyazaki and Kagoshima. The largest city is Fukuoka City, with a population of about 2.5 million people. Other notable cities are Kumamoto, home of Kumamoto Castle, the third largest castle in Japan, and Nagasaki, the city that was hit by the second atomic bomb in World War 2.

Far from the bustling city life of Tokyo and Osaka, Cities in Kyushu are relatively relaxed and slow-paced. People are friendlier and more outgoing than their big-city counter-parts, although in some cases they are also more direct. However that doesn’t stop people from working a ten hour day plus unpaid overtime, especially when they work at a smaller branch of a large company based in Tokyo, where nationwide, employees are expected to work the same hours.

For foreigners who live in Kyushu, life tends to be more relaxed. There are rarely long travel times to work, and many foreigners life close to their jobs. It is common for foreign workers to commute by bicycle, even if the distance is far. This is because in Kyushu, places are often close enough to each other to not require public transport.

That being said, when it comes to work in Kyushu, there are probably not as many opportunities for foreign workers as there are further north in Japan.

Most English speaking foreigners can only find work as English teachers. While there are other jobs in hospitality, weddings, translators etc, there are not as many regular office jobs available to foreigners, even if they have a good grasp of the Japanese language. Other jobs, such as engineering, usually get outsourced to recruiting companies who find workers in their home countries.

English teaching however, can be fun and rewarding for those who approach it with a positive frame of mind.

English teachers in Japan are not like other ESL teachers abroad. For one, Japanese thinking towards the English language is that it can be mastered if they can memorize all 50-100000 words in the dictionary, understand the literal/direct translation in Japanese, and bundle a few of these words together with some basic syntax. Personally, I think this approach does work when studying Japanese. This might be part of the problem. Japanese ESL students in general, don’t base their language study around trying to communicate.

One reason for this is that for years the education system has taken that approach to English. English education in Japanese schools has focused on the quantifiable approach of forcing students to memorize the reading and writing of specific phrases and words, in order to pass a test, with little attention paid to listening and pronunciation. This has led to countless thousands of high-school graduates who can read and write English fairly well, but have no idea how to speak it.

This doesn’t stop Japanese people from trying to speak English. Many people go to English conversation schools all around Japan, and Kyushu is no exception. The idea behind these schools is to allow students to have a chance to verbally practice their language skills with, in most cases, a native English speaker. Large companies such as Nova and Geos cashed in on this industry, until recently when they both went bankrupt. There are also many small, private schools all over Kyushu, as there are all over Japan. One of these schools is The London Cafe, in Kumamoto City. These smaller companies often look for new teachers just like the larger ones. So if you are looking for a teaching job, be sure to search for the little guys too.

Another way to make money in Kyushu is to work for yourself. Many English teachers all over Kyushu often teach private students. These are lessons where the students pay cash directly to the teachers. The students can get cheaper lessons and the teachers can get paid more for the lessons, because there is no company in between them taking a cut. While this easily sounds like the best way to work as a teacher, it is also the most difficult to start up. Finding students takes a long time, which is why people often work at companies and teach some private students on the side.

If you are looking for a place to find students (or English teachers) in Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita, Saga, Miyazaki, or Kagoshima, then I recommend that you take a look at Kyushu-Teacher, a website dedicated to matching teachers and students. The site is simple to use for both teachers and students. It is free for teachers to apply, and the site makes money by selling the contact information to potential students for a fee. There is no connection to teacher or students once the students have chosen a teacher, which makes it much more appealing for students, who usually have to pay a yearly membership fee or joining fee for similar services. As for teachers, the site allows them to name their own lesson terms (prices, location etc), and doesn’t require any private details other than a contact number and email address.

So if you are thinking of moving to Kyushu to work, please remember that you might have to be a teacher in one form or another, but I am sure you will enjoy it!