Direct-Hire ALT Jobs in Japan: Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about working as a direct-hire Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Japan, employed by a Board of Education, not a dispatch company. Questions about using this site are answered here too.
Direct-hire ALT work
What direct hire means, how it compares to dispatch and to JET, and how the yearly cycle runs.
Direct-hire vs dispatch ALT: what's the difference?
The difference is who employs you. In a dispatch job, a private company employs you and places you at schools under a contract with the Board of Education. In a direct-hire job, the Board of Education employs you directly, rather than through a company. Direct-hire roles are public-sector positions, usually posted as a fiscal-year appointed employee, with pay set by the municipality. The support also differs: a dispatch company helps you settle in, with things like housing and paperwork, while a direct-hire Board offers little beyond sponsoring your visa, so you relocate and run your daily life yourself. Dispatch jobs are easier to find and common for first-time ALTs; direct-hire jobs are fewer and expect some experience. Neither is simply better. Dispatch is an easier entry point, while direct-hire means more independence and a closer relationship with the employer.
What is a Board of Education?
A Board of Education, often shortened to BOE, is the municipal body that runs the public schools in a city, town or village. It is the employer in a direct-hire ALT job, rather than any individual school.
In Japan, ALT roles are filled in two main ways. Many go through dispatch companies, which employ the teacher and place them with a school. With a direct hire, the Board of Education employs the ALT itself.
Direct-hire vs JET: what's the difference?
JET is a government programme that recruits ALTs from overseas and handles your relocation, salary, and support, but assigns where you go. Direct-hire is a job you apply for yourself, directly to a Board of Education, so you choose where, but with no programme behind you. Since Boards want people already in Japan with some ALT experience, many start on JET and move to direct-hire once they are settled.
How long is a direct-hire ALT contract?
A direct-hire ALT contract usually runs for one year, following the school year from April to March. Most are renewable year to year by re-appointment, as long as both you and the Board want to continue. Some municipalities cap how many years you can renew, often at around five.
When do direct-hire ALT jobs open?
Most direct-hire jobs follow a yearly cycle for an April start. It runs roughly:
- Postings open: autumn into winter
- Deadlines: late autumn to winter
- Interviews: winter to early spring
- Job starts: April
Timing varies by Board, and smaller openings can come up at other times of the year.
Qualifications, pay and applying
What a Board of Education asks for, what the work pays, and how an application actually goes in.
What qualifications do I need to become a direct-hire ALT?
A direct-hire ALT generally needs:
- A university or college degree in any subject (especially if visa sponsorship is needed)
- Native or near-native English, often from a country where English is an official language
- Some prior ALT experience, since training is often not provided
A few specialized roles ask for an education-related major or a teaching qualification. A TEFL or TESOL certificate helps but is not required.
How much do direct-hire ALTs get paid?
Pay is set by each Board of Education and listed in full on its own posting, so the most accurate figure is always the one on the role you are looking at. Direct-hire positions are salaried public-sector jobs, with pay and conditions fixed by the municipality.
How much Japanese do I need to be a direct-hire ALT?
It varies by Board of Education, but as a general rule you need daily-conversation Japanese: enough to communicate with school staff and run your own daily life. Some Boards ask for a JLPT level like N3; many ask for none.
Where can I find direct-hire ALT jobs, and how do I apply?
You apply directly to each Board, through its own city or education website. ALT Direct helps you find the openings and links to each official recruitment page, but the application itself always goes to the Board:
- Find the posting and open the Board's official page
- Apply through that Board, using the documents it asks for: commonly a Japanese-style résumé (the rirekisho), degree copies, and reference letters if requested, often by post or fax
- Pass a document screening, then an interview, part English and part Japanese, sometimes with a short demo lesson, usually in person but sometimes by video call
Can I get a direct-hire ALT job from outside Japan?
Realistically, this is very difficult from abroad. Boards usually want applicants already settled in Japan, with some ALT experience and the ability to handle daily life on their own. They do sponsor your work visa once you are hired, but they rarely take applicants from abroad and do not cover relocation, so the move and the interview, usually held in person, are at your own expense. Most people get into Japan first, through JET or a dispatch company, then apply directly to the Boards they want.
What makes a Board choose one applicant over another?
Seven things come up again and again, ranked by how much they matter to a Board of Education:
- Already in Japan
- Commitment, meaning you finish the contract you sign
- A car and a licence, which most rural roles need
- Self-reliance with your own daily life and paperwork
- Some Japanese
- Knowing the ropes of how a school day runs
- Flexibility
Each one is written out in full, with the reasoning behind it, on the Get Hired page.
Using the ALT Jobs Map
What the colours mean, how to find what is open now, and how marking a prefecture works.
How does the ALT Jobs Map work?
The map shows every prefecture in Japan as a piece you can pick up. Selecting one opens a panel listing the Boards of Education in that prefecture that have hired ALTs directly, with any open job at the top.
From there you can open a job, open a Board's own page, or mark the prefecture as somewhere you would work. Selecting a piece on the map and picking its name from the list do the same thing.
What do the colours and dots on the map mean?
Two different things are being shown, and they are kept apart on purpose.
Dots say what a Board of Education is doing. A green dot means a Board in that prefecture has an opening now. An orange dot means one closed within the last 60 days.
The wood of a piece is about you. A prefecture you have marked as somewhere you would work is stained a different wood from the rest of the board, and a prefecture set as your home base is stained differently again. Nothing you mark ever changes a dot.
A piece in plain wood with no dot means no Board there is yet known to hire ALTs directly.
What does Recently Open mean, and can I still apply?
Recently Open means the Board of Education had an opening and its deadline has now passed, within the last 60 days. The listing stays visible because a closed posting is still evidence of a Board that hires ALTs directly, and because these roles tend to come round again.
The deadline on the Board's own page is the one that counts. If it has passed, the application window is closed for that round.
What does On Watch mean, and what is a past hirer?
Both mean the same thing: the Board of Education has posted direct ALT roles before and has nothing open at the moment. It is a record of past hiring, not a claim that a role is coming.
A Board that runs a standing register, taking applications all year without a specific opening, also sits here with a rolling intake note rather than being shown as hiring.
The listings and prefecture pages label this On Watch. The map panel calls it past hirer, because on the map the word watch belongs to your own watchlist and one word could not mean two things.
How do I find the jobs that are hiring right now?
Green pieces on the map are the prefectures with an open posting. Selecting one puts the open job at the top of the panel, and opening it leads to the Board's own recruitment page.
The same openings are listed prefecture by prefecture on the jobs pages, which are ordinary pages you can link to and share.
How do I find jobs in one particular prefecture?
Pick the prefecture on the map, or open its own jobs page. Each prefecture has a page listing the Boards of Education there that hire ALTs directly, and anything open at the moment.
Those pages are shareable links, so a prefecture you are watching can be sent to someone else and will open on the same view.
How do I say where I am willing to work or relocate?
Select a prefecture on the map and press “Add to watchlist”. That adds it to your watchlist and counts it toward the anonymous demand total that Boards of Education in that prefecture can see.
If you live in Japan, one prefecture can also be set as your home base, which separates the place you already live from the places you would move to.
Your watchlist and job alerts
Following a prefecture, being emailed when something opens, and turning that off.
How do I get notified when a new job comes up?
Add a prefecture to your watchlist, and email about openings there is switched on by default. A watch covers the whole prefecture, so any Board of Education in it can trigger the email, not only the one you were looking at.
The switch is under Job alerts in Settings, and it can be turned off at any time.
How do I watch a prefecture?
Open the map, select the prefecture, and press “Add to watchlist”. If it is somewhere you would move to rather than where you already live, one short question follows before it is saved.
An account is needed for this, because a watchlist belongs to an email address. Signing in is passwordless: either a Google account or a one-time link sent to your email.
How do I change or remove the prefectures I watch?
The watchlist is kept on the ALT Jobs Map. Open a prefecture there to add it, and open it again to take it off.
Removing a prefecture also takes it out of the anonymous demand total for that area.
How do I stop the emails?
Job alerts have their own switch in Settings, and turning it off stops the mail about watched prefectures while leaving the watchlist itself intact.
Feature announcements are a separate switch on the same page, so one can be off while the other is on. Every email also carries an unsubscribe link.
Why does the site ask me to complete Recruit Me?
Two separate things follow from it. Answering puts you into the anonymous totals a Board of Education sees for its own prefecture, which is what those totals are for.
It also covers alerts about jobs a Board posts directly on this site. Only the fact that the survey was completed is used for that, never the individual answers.
Recruit Me
The short set of questions that puts anonymous demand in front of a Board of Education.
What is Recruit Me?
Recruit Me is a short set of questions about where you would work and when you could start. The geography half is answered by marking prefectures on the map; the rest is a handful of questions in the map panel.
The answers are pooled into anonymous totals for each prefecture. A Board of Education sees how many people are available for direct-hire work in its area, never who they are.
What does Recruit Me actually ask?
Whether you live in Japan, where your home base is and which other prefectures you would work in, when you could start, whether you can drive in Japan, whether you have your own car, and whether you have ALT experience in Japan.
Nothing is asked about your name, your address, your visa type, or your employer. If you are outside Japan, the questions that have no true answer yet are not put to you at all.
Is my Recruit Me information anonymous?
A Board of Education only ever sees totals. Names, email addresses and identities are never shown alongside them, and a total appears only once enough people in that prefecture have answered.
The answers themselves are stored apart from names and email addresses, under a one-way code that cannot be matched back to a person without a separate key held outside the database.
How is the Recruit Me information used?
It becomes a count on the prefecture pages a Board of Education reads. For example, how many people are available for direct-hire work in that prefecture, how many already live there, and how many could start by a certain time.
That is the whole use. Nothing is sold, and no individual is introduced, ranked, or recommended to a Board.
Can I change or delete my Recruit Me answers after submitting?
Yes. Every answer can be changed in Settings, one at a time.
Deleting your account removes them entirely.
What happens after I submit Recruit Me?
Your marked prefectures are kept on the map, under the Watchlist tab, and the totals for those prefectures include you from that point.
Nobody contacts you as a result. Applications are still made by you, directly to a Board of Education, on that Board's own page.
The job listings
Where the postings come from, what a listing page shows, and what to do when one looks wrong.
Where do the job listings come from?
From the Boards of Education themselves. Openings published on a Board's own city or education website are collected, the key details are put into English, and the listing links back to that official page.
A Board can also submit an opening to the site directly, and readers can send in a link to one. Everything is checked by a person before it appears.
There is nothing in my prefecture. Why?
No Board in those prefectures is yet known to have hired an ALT directly. It is a record of what has been found, not a statement that nothing exists there.
Hiring shifts from year to year, so new direct-hire roles can open anywhere. Marking the prefecture adds you to the count for that area, which is what gives a Board there a reason to consider recruiting directly.
How current are the listings, and are they guaranteed?
They are not guaranteed. The accuracy, completeness and availability of any listing here are not warranted, and a posting can be changed or taken down by the hiring organisation at any time without notice.
The Board of Education's own page is the authority on its own posting, and the details there override anything shown here. It is worth checking before acting on anything.
Why doesn't the listing show the salary?
Pay is published by the Board of Education on its own posting, and that is the version that stays correct when a figure changes. Repeating it here would create a second copy that can go stale without anyone noticing.
The link on every listing goes to that page, where the pay and conditions are set out in full.
What if a listing is out of date or the link is broken?
The Board's own page is always the authority. A posting can be changed or taken down at any time without notice, so the details there override anything shown here.
A listing whose source page has stopped working is flagged, and the Board's main site is offered instead. Broken or wrong listings can be reported by email to [email protected].
Can I send in a job I found?
Yes. A link to an opening can be sent in from the contribute page, and it goes into the same review as everything else.
Only the link is needed. A listing that arrives this way is marked as shared by a reader once it is published.
What is on a Board of Education's own page here?
Each Board that has hired ALTs directly has a page of its own, listing what is open now and what it has posted before, with the link to its official recruitment page.
These are reached from the map panel and from the prefecture pages, and they are ordinary pages you can link to and share.
How do I save a job to come back to?
Every listing has a save control, and saved listings are collected on the Saved page under your account.
Saving a job is not an application and is not visible to the Board of Education.
Your account
Signing in without a password, what an account is for, and closing one.
How do I sign in? I don't have a password.
There are no passwords. Sign-in is either a Google account or a one-time link sent to your email address, which signs you in when you open it.
No password is collected or stored, so there is none to reset or to lose.
Do I need an account to use the site?
Browsing the map and reading a listing need no account. An account is needed to keep a watchlist, to save jobs, to answer Recruit Me, and to follow a listing out to the Board's own recruitment page.
The account is free, and it is an email address and nothing else.
How do I change my email address?
Changing the address yourself is not built yet. Email [email protected] from the address on the account and it can be changed for you.
How do I delete my account?
The Settings has a delete control under Settings. It permanently removes the account and everything attached to it: the watchlist, saved jobs, and Recruit Me answers.
Personal data is deleted within 30 days of the request, except where the law requires it to be kept.
Privacy and your information
What is collected, what a Board of Education can see, and how to get it removed.
What happens to my information?
What is collected is: the email address you sign in with, and a display name if you use Google; which jobs you saved; anything you write in an email; and your Recruit Me answers. Server logs record IP address, browser type, pages visited and timestamps.
It is used to run your account, to send the sign-in link and the alerts you asked for, and to produce anonymous totals. It is not sold, rented or traded. Section 1 of the Privacy Policy is the full list.
What can a Board of Education see about me?
Counts, and nothing else. How many people are available for direct-hire work in a prefecture, how many already live there, and how many could start by a certain time.
No name, no email address, no identity. A count is only shown once enough people have answered that no single person could be picked out of it.
Where is my data stored?
The site is hosted in Japan. Some providers used to run it operate elsewhere: sign-in through Google is processed in the United States, and email is sent through providers in the European Union.
Section 5 of the Privacy Policy lists them and states how transfers abroad are handled.
How long is my information kept?
Account information is kept for as long as the account is active. Deleting the account deletes the personal data within 30 days, except where the law requires something to be kept.
Anonymised, aggregated figures may be kept indefinitely, because nobody can be identified from them.
Do I have a profile? Can I upload a CV?
There is no profile and no CV. Resumes, phone numbers and addresses are never requested, and no document can be uploaded.
What an account holds is an email address, the prefectures kept on a watchlist, saved listings, and the Recruit Me answers, which are stored apart from the account and reach a Board only as anonymous totals.
The site is also not directed at anyone under 16, and information from anyone under 16 is not knowingly collected.
What rights do I have over my information?
Under Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information, and other privacy laws where they apply, you can ask for access to what is held about you, correction of anything inaccurate, deletion of your account and its data, and restriction of certain processing.
Requests go to [email protected] and are answered within 30 days.
Visa and immigration
Questions about status of residence, and where the answers actually come from.
What visa do I need to work as an ALT?
That is decided by the Immigration Services Agency of Japan, on the facts of each case. It depends on the role, on the employer, and on the person applying, and it is not something this site can determine.
The Immigration Services Agency publishes the current statuses of residence and the conditions attached to each. A certified administrative scrivener (行政書士) advises on individual cases.
Can I work as an ALT on the status of residence I already have?
Whether an existing status of residence permits this work, and whether separate permission is needed to engage in activity outside it, is decided by the Immigration Services Agency. Nothing on this site settles it, and an answer that turned out to be wrong would be the reader's problem and not this site's.
The Immigration Services Agency answers this directly, and a certified administrative scrivener (行政書士) advises on individual cases.
Will a Board of Education sponsor a visa?
A Board that hires an ALT directly is the employing organisation for the immigration paperwork that goes with the appointment. Boards rarely take applicants who are not already in Japan, so in practice this usually applies to somebody changing employer rather than moving to the country.
What status is granted, and on what conditions, is decided by the Immigration Services Agency and not by the Board. Anything turning on the outcome is worth confirming with them, or with a certified administrative scrivener (行政書士), before relying on it.
Renewals, permanent residency, and bringing family
None of these are decided here. Renewing a status of residence or a residence card, whether time in a role counts toward permanent residency, and whether a family member can accompany somebody, are all matters for the Immigration Services Agency.
The same applies to what happens to a status when a contract ends. It depends on the individual case, and the Agency is the only place that can answer it.
About ALT Direct
What this site is, who runs it, and what it deliberately is not.
Is ALT Direct free, and how does it work?
Yes, it is free. Finding and applying to direct-hire jobs costs nothing, and ALT Direct never takes a cut. Boards can post their openings free too. It is not an agency and does not handle applications. How it works:
- Maps the Boards across Japan that have hired ALTs directly
- Lets you follow the ones you want and track their hiring in one place
- Links you to each official recruitment page, where you apply directly to the Board
- Includes listings shared by the community
What is ALT Direct?
ALT Direct is a free, non-commercial service that maps which Boards of Education across Japan hire ALTs directly. ALTs in Japan can also anonymously share which prefectures they hope to work in, so Boards can see where the interest is.
How it works:
- Browse the map for current jobs
- Add prefectures to your watchlist
- Set up Recruit Me to anonymously show where you would like to work
Applications are never handled here. Every listing links to the Board's own recruitment page, and you apply there.
Is this site legitimate? How do I know I can trust it?
The operator is named, with a working address, on the Trust and Compliance page. The service takes no fees from anyone, and it is funded personally rather than by a business that needs something back.
Every listing links out to the Board of Education's own page, so nothing here has to be taken on trust: the official posting is one click away and is the authority on its own contents.
Nothing is sold, and no individual is screened, ranked, recommended or introduced to a Board.
Who runs ALT Direct?
It is operated by J. Witteman, a directly-hired ALT based in Hokkaido, and reachable at [email protected].
It runs on a purely volunteer basis. Running costs are funded personally by the operator, and no fees, payment or monetary donations are accepted from anyone.
Is ALT Direct a recruiter or an agency?
No. It is an information service, and it is deliberately none of the following:
- Not a dispatch company
- Not a placement agency
- Not taking a cut of your salary
- Not mediating applications
Boards of Education make every hiring decision themselves. No individual is screened, ranked, recommended or introduced to a Board.
How do I contact someone about this site?
By email, at [email protected]. Replies usually come within two business days.
That address is also the route for a correction to a listing, a data request, or anything the pages here do not answer.
I work at a Board of Education. Where do I go?
There is a separate Japanese section for Boards of Education, covering how recruitment works and how to share an official recruitment page.
The operator can also be reached directly at [email protected].
Ready to find your next direct-hire ALT job?
Browse the ALT Jobs MapOr browse ALT jobs by prefecture.
New to direct hire? See the 7 things Boards look for.