This is going to be very subjective, but here are my impressions after being back here for almost a year:

Positive developments

Japanese students are losing faith in the idea that chatting with a foreigner in English is the way to improve.

English for actual uses like business and university classes is taking over from hobby classes for housewives.

The big chains are dying but some small schools are booming.

More schools are offering shakai hoken (the national health insurance system). Although the money to do that is often coming from teacher wages and usually costs more for less coverage than private health insurance, schools no longer breaking the law is a good development! It also means that teachers are contributing more to Japan and becoming more part of Japanese society.

Negative developments

Most of the students who are rejecting the chatting with native speakers model are turning back to translation and crappily-produced local products such as NHK (the Japanese BBC – ha!) ones.

Most of the rest are turning to cheap online teachers, usually from the Philippines. That doesn’t have to be a negative thing, but in this case it is just contributing to the rush to the bottom in terms of price and quality.

You can buy an English language textbook in the 100 yen shop for 80 cents!

Some schools are expecting teachers to do online teaching to make up for any hours down.

Even ALT (assistant language teacher in public schools) jobs are now sometimes hourly paid rather than a fixed salary. A lot of the others are now through dodgy dispatch companies rather than directly with the local authority.

Not sure how I feel about it

Regular English classes with a fixed syllabus have started in Japanese Elementary schools, with phonics banned in an attempt to force teachers to take a communicative approach. This means ALTs have more of a structure to work on/ around.

Examples of some of these changes in this teacher’s blog post about the different contracts they were offered.