Teaching English in Japan on the JET Programme

For many English speakers, Japan starts in a junior high school staff room in a town they had never heard of. Here is what the JET Programme looks like in numbers.

Who comes

Pay and contract length

Pay before tax is about ¥4.02 million in the first year, ¥4.14 million in the second, ¥4.26 million in the third, and ¥4.32 million in the fourth and fifth. Appointments run one year at a time; reappointment is generally up to twice, for three years in total, and exceptional participants can stay up to five years (JET Programme).

After JET

When the contract ends, some stay in Japan to teach, translate or join Japanese companies; many go home. There is no official statistic on how many stay, so the simulator treats this as an assumption.

What the simulator assumes

The special edition uses the participant mix, pay and contract rules above. School life events, Japanese progress, the choice to stay and later careers are game assumptions.

Source: JET Programme official website (countries and FAQ).

Now live it. Born in Japan is a free life simulator built on Japanese public statistics. Start the special edition and live this life one year at a time.

Start the special edition → Or be born at random

More guides

• Working in anime and manga in Japan: animator pay, hours and the comics market
• Oda Nobunaga: a timeline of his life from Okehazama to Honnō-ji
• Studying in Japan as an international student: numbers, work rules and staying after graduation
• How to become a sumo wrestler in Japan, and what the life is really like
• Tokugawa Ieyasu: from hostage to shogun, a timeline of his life
• Tokyo time machine: the city through the ages, from before Edo to Reiwa
• Japanese yankee and bōsōzoku culture: a short history with real numbers