I have been offered another 7 hours a month work in the last week- some months I had up to 7-8 hours a month but it had dwindled again lately (I had more over the summer-filling in for others etc) and I only had 4 regular hours a month so it is nice to know that there will be a bit of extra cash coming in.
Four hours are 2 x 2 hour sessions a month on Saturday`s (one is on the same Saturday as my other 2 hours of classes) from the same lady that offered me the original Saturday work. They currently have a teacher doing those classes but want me to take over after the baby is born and want me to be an assistant teacher until then- I said that is fine as long as they have no issues with the 2 months I am in Australia or the month I will probably need off in March for the baby and that is all fine. The pay is 2500yen an hour but will be more once I take over the class full-time and teach it by myself. Both kids classes too which is good!!
The other 3 hours are English conversation with a group of 3 people (one of whom is in my Saturday mum`s class that I do once a month) that requires no prep, they want to come to my house (fine by me) and just chat for 90 minutes once a fortnight on a Wednesday from 10:30-12:00pm.
Kind of bad timing with heading to Australia but both know I am heading back home and everyone knows I am pregnant as well (and have a son at home) and are all very understanding. 11 hours a month is perfect for me! Plus with 6 hours of it on Saturday`s it means Shun can watch Noah (at least most of the time) and the rest at my house (except for 1 hour a month I do in Myoden but I can take Noah with me or leave him at home if Shun is around).
I was kind of worried that it would cut into “family” time since really all we have together is our weekends but honestly Sunday`s are still always free and 2 Saturday`s a month are also usually free and one of the Saturday`s is only the morning (10-12pm) so it doesn`t really make much difference.
So basically that bring my monthly earnings for 11 hours a month (of those 11 hours, only 4 hours require preperation, the rest prepare themselves or are just conversation) up to almost 40,000yen which is a nice chunk of extra change to have floating around 
. Would be nice to add one more private lesson after the baby comes perhaps that I could do at home that would be weekly- an extra four hours a month would mean I could DEFINITELY earn 50,000yen or so…
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I crossed absolutely NOTHING off my 101 things in 1001 days list in September. We are now 12th October and I haven`t crossed anything off for this month yet either and I doubt that I will be crossing anything off anytime soon. But at least I have done my monhtly update.
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I am just a twenty something Aussie girl living in Chiba, Japan with my Japanese husband trying to make sense of the crazy Japanese world we live in! We welcomed our first son in December 2009 (Noah) and a second son in January 2011, 2 months premature (Shion). I am working hard at raising them to be confident, bilingual, happy kids!
That is a nice chunk! Eikaiwa really is lucrative. The not having to prepare classes – awesome. Most weeks I get to Tuesday morning and think how did another week go by and I’m not prepared for T, W and T classes. I have to actually prepare for these and if I was more organized preparation would be so much easier. It’s hard because a lot of private English teaching lands in the evenings or the weekends by default due to work and school. My kids classes are all at that funny time of day 4:30 – 5:30. I refuse to do weekends but when the kids get older maybe I’ll think about it for more carribean slush fund money
Yeah, I am happy with it. The extra money is good in that it means I won`t have to withdraw my own spending money from Shun`s paycheck (you know, books, lunch dates, etc etc)…
English conversation lessons with adults are okay (and definitely lucrative like you said)- I much prefer kids BUT of course kids classes take a lot of prep usually- I actually enjoy the prep but of course when you teach privately you do not get paid for it. the good news about the extra four hours of kids classes for now is that since I am an assistant it will be no prep for me until my hourly rate goes over 4500yen an hour when I take over the class from current teacher- even then the class has been going for awhile and I have a lot of materials I could probably use. Would just be a matter of making up the sheet for the students to take home with what we did in class. The good thing is that 6 hours a month are for the same lady (5 hours kids classes and 1 hour for mums class) and she is lovely- Japanese and she just started this as her hobby trying to find affordable classes for her kids (who ended up hating English and no longer participate) and she organizes the space at the community centers and corrospondance with the students and their parents and just pays me in cash.
If I owned my own house and had the space I think I would do something similar to your- kids classes (and just have my kids join in, or if MIL lived close enough get her to watch one or the other on alternate days- problem now is she works at a hoikuen for the morning shift and late afternoon shift, likely, right when I would want to teach).
The other 3 hours I am adding should be interesting- she assures me they want “free conversation” but their level is low so I guess we will have to do some prep or at least come up with a topic etc. But a 90 minute free conversation lesson is quite long- I told her we can sit around having coffee and that as long as they don`t mind having a dvd on in the background for Noah that he should be fine. The good thing is the timing- he will likely be napping when they arrive and once he wakes up he doesn`t need a bottle or lunch until they leave at 12…so that is good.