So, the past few days have been a huge roller coaster. For the past few months, I've gone from TEFL Org, to XploreAsia, to now getting an offer from Heart Corporation. This offer seemed to actually be perfectly what I wanted. It'd be in Saitama, it'd be at a high school (something I'd asked for), and I'd be tossed into it by September (I wanted to start as soon as possible anyway). I got the offer a couple days ago.
Then yesterday, I saw something weird with the contract just before I finished signing it, my pay was being written as "per day". And when I checked how much it'd add up to, it wasn't much. And that was especially weird seeing as I was told by XploreAsia that I'd be getting ¥215,000 per month because of an exclusive deal they had with Heart. The coordinator from Heart hiring me also said it'd be ¥215,000 per month when I asked him. I found out how it works, that they won't have a real contract until they have a specific school for me so the "provisional contract" is just what I'll have now, that I won't know what my rent and a lot of my expenses will be until they get that specific school ready. But I panicked, read a bunch of horror stories on here about Heart. I basically gave up on the job and almost gave up on teaching in Japan entirely.
Today, I woke up and decided to actually check the cost of living for Saitama. And, as it turns out, ¥215,000 wouldn't be that terrible? That comes out to about $1300 USD and the cost of living there is a little over $1000 USD. I'd been reading here a lot about how the pay at Heart is terrible and while I can see that while I probably won't be "solidly middle class", I can survive at least for the year I'll be on that contract. There's probably some possible bait and switch stuff happening, I don't really know yet. All I know is that I somehow got placed with an offer that fits for me, but it's with the boogeyman of this subreddit. And I just want to know your thoughts on it. I kinda need to make a decision quickly.
EDIT UPDATE:
Thank you to those who gave me their thoughts and knowledge on Heart Corporation. I went into this thinking this was a good offer because of how bad I'd seen others hired by Heart had been treated (I saw someone getting paid ¥90,000 and thought that meant what I got was so good). This whole experience has sorta pushed me off of teaching in Japan in general. I've tried with JET before, but it's just so difficult to be selected, especially from America when you have no experience. I've decided to withdraw from the XploreAsia program and focus on other TEFL opportunities. I'm still a bit confused by the downvotes, I really was just confused about whether it was a good offer or not. Now I know it wasn't.
by Jiggly_333