Dear Kevin,

I believe you that you run your business with integrity and generousity and that it was unfair to you that a teacher left without giving reasonable notice. I agree that a great deal of the negative attitude about English school companies is put out by ignorant people. Many English "teachers" in Japan don't really care about teaching well but have other priorities.

This being said, I myself have very little good to say about any of the English teaching companies I've worked for. I've been forced to do unpaid over-time in violation of my contract, I've been treated like a dog by managers. I've been lied to. One company used a lot of fine print to reduce my paycheck as much as possible. One company reminded me about the rules in my contract whenever I needed help with some time off, even when there were no classes scheduled... but would repeatedly pay me late out of it's own necessity, hence violating the contract freely.

I have not worked for a company in Japan that offered me the reasonable amount of respect a human deserves. These companies are all out to make profit, and many do so by trimming our paychecks and giving us unreasonable amounts of work to do so they don't have to hire an adequate number of employees.

And sure the students call us "sensei". Some of them (the younger ones) might put there fingers up our butts for sport and the teachers who are allowed to manage the kids just laugh about it. Many of them do really want to learn. Some even give us the benefit of the doubt that we are capable of teaching. Most talk to us because we are foreigners and the only value we are to them is that we can speak English correctly. It has nothing to do with anything else. That is why it is easy to get a bad job in Japan.

I wish to god my experience had been better. I love Japan... I don't think I'll ever risk working for a Japanese company again.