Interac Japan is the fastest realistic way into a Japanese public school classroom if you hold a bachelor’s degree and have never taught before. It places more foreign teachers than any other private company in the country, sponsors your visa, hands you a furnished apartment, and asks for no Japanese at all. What you trade away is money and control: pay sits well below JET, raises do not exist, and your day-to-day depends more on which branch you land in than on the company name. This guide covers the requirements, the real application timeline, the pay, and where the job leads. For the wider picture of every route in, start with our guide to teaching English in Japan.
Key Takeaways
- Interac is Japan’s largest and most established ALT dispatch company, and a legitimate, low-barrier route into the country for first-time teachers.
- A bachelor’s degree in any subject and native-level English are the real requirements. A TEFL certificate is not mandatory, but it helps you stand out.
- Your day-to-day experience depends heavily on which branch and which schools you get assigned to, often more than on the company name itself.
- Most people treat Interac as a one to two year bridge into Japan rather than a long-term career.
How we research this guide
We build these guides on more than official sources. We also pull firsthand accounts from Reddit and YouTube, because people who have actually done the thing often know what the recruiter pages leave out. We verify what we can, but treat every personal account as one person’s experience: trust it, then verify it against your own situation.
What Is Interac and How Does It Work?
Since 1972, Interac has been placing foreign teachers in Japanese public schools, and it is a legitimate, legally operating company rather than a scam. That is the question most applicants are quietly asking before they upload a passport scan, so treat it as settled.
The arrangement is called dispatch. Interac hires you, sponsors your visa, and places you in a public school as an Assistant Language Teacher, or ALT, working alongside a Japanese teacher of English. You spend your days at the school, but the school is not your employer and neither is the local board of education. Your schedule comes from the school while your pay, contract, and rules come from Interac.
Interac employs nearly 3,500 staff across 13 offices, around 3,200 of them non-Japanese. The workforce also skews more settled than the backpacker stereotype suggests: the average ALT is 33 years old, the split is roughly 55% male to 45% female, average service is just under three years, and the longest-serving teacher has been aboard for 25 years!
Size cuts both ways. Being the biggest makes Interac the default option rather than a premium one, and long-serving ALTs tend to reach for the same resigned phrase. One multi-year ALT on Reddit called it a “necessary evil,” livable for a short stay and not a place to build a career. Whether that is fair is what the rest of this guide works out.
Interac Requirements: Who Can Actually Apply
If you hold any bachelor’s degree, you probably already qualify. Interac’s requirements are lower than most applicants expect, and a teaching background is not one of them.
| Requirement | Detail and reality |
|---|---|
| Bachelor’s degree | In any subject, from an accredited university. Your major does not matter. |
| Native-level English | You must speak English at a native or genuinely equivalent level. |
| 12 years of education in English | A minimum of 12 years of schooling conducted in English. |
| Under 60 years old | A firm upper age limit. |
| Health check and drug screening | You must pass an annual health check and a drug screening. |
| TEFL/CELTA, experience, driver’s license, basic Japanese | Listed as advantageous, not required. |
The one area worth reading carefully is where you are applying from. Interac recruits from native-English-speaking countries, which for our purposes means the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa. Your country of residence can matter too, because the company needs the right recruiting license for wherever you actually are. As a concrete example, Interac does not hold a license to recruit directly out of Ghana, though it will still hire Ghanaian nationals living elsewhere. If you are in one of the Big 7 countries you are almost certainly fine, and if you are somewhere less common, confirm they can recruit from your location before you invest time.
Does a TEFL Certificate Help Your Interac Application?
No, you do not need a TEFL certificate to apply to Interac. Yes, having one genuinely helps. Both are true, and the gap between them is where you decide whether to get certified first.
The company lists TEFL and CELTA as advantageous rather than mandatory, and the applicants who have walked through the form on camera land in the same place. Rafael, a former dispatch ALT who screen-records the Interac application on his Adventures Of Japan channel, recommends selecting “TEFL” as your certificate answer and notes a certificate “might get you considered before” applicants who have none. Ask Adel, going through the official requirements page line by line, puts it more bluntly: you effectively “either need an English teaching certificate or a TEFL certificate” to be competitive, even though it is not formally required.
A certificate is not a gate. It is a tiebreaker between otherwise similar candidates, and a signal that you are serious.
If you want that edge and would rather walk in already knowing classroom basics, our 120-hour TEFL course is the employer-recognized standard and the one most Interac applicants need. If you are weighing online teaching too, the 180-hour course adds specialist hours for that path.
The Interac Application Process, Step by Step
Interac’s hiring runs on a fixed seven-step sequence. Here it is start to finish, with the timings that actually matter.
| Step | What happens | Rough timing |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Online application | Submit the entry form, resume, and cover letter on the Interac site | ~20 to 30 minutes to complete; confirmation email within 1 hour |
| 2. Phone interview | A recruiter screens you by phone | Respond to scheduling emails fast or the application can close |
| 3. Video interview and demo | One-on-one video interview plus a submitted demo lesson video | Scheduled after you clear the phone screen |
| 4. Head-office review | Tokyo managers review your file, documents, and demo | Internal, no action needed from you |
| 5. Written offer | You receive an offer naming your region and arrival month | You decide whether to accept |
| 6. Certificate of Eligibility | Submit physical documents for your CoE and visa | Start roughly 4 to 6 months before arrival |
| 7. Orientation and training | Multi-day training near your arrival point; staff help set up your apartment and residency | Just before your start date |
Two timing realities sit on top of that table. First, the interview process itself runs about 44 days on average according to Glassdoor, but total time from application to your first day is far longer once the visa is in the mix. Overseas applicants aiming for a spring (April) start generally apply the prior May through November, a fall (August) start means January through March, and anyone already in Japan is hired year-round.
Second, the paperwork step is the one people underestimate. Treat the Certificate of Eligibility as something you start around four to six months before arrival and you will avoid the scramble that catches spring-intake applicants.
How to Apply to Interac: Your First Steps
Everything starts with the Interac form. The form takes 20 to 30 minutes and runs in two parts, personal details then work and education history, with your cover letter and resume uploaded as files and a prefecture-level region preference at the end.
Get these five things sorted before you open it:
- Pick your intake and work backward. Apply May through November for an April start, or January through March for an August start. Already in Japan? Hiring runs year-round.
- Write the cover letter against the actual job. Read Interac’s job description page for the schedule, salary band, and contract dates first, then write to that instead of to a generic teaching job.
- Scan your documents now. Resume, degree certificate, and passport. The Certificate of Eligibility stage asks for physical copies later, so know where the originals are.
- Answer emails fast. Recruiters schedule the phone screen by email, and slow replies can close an application before you have spoken to anyone.
- Plan the demo lesson video early. Five minutes of a simple, high-energy elementary or junior-high activity beats a polished lecture.
One more note from Rafael at Adventures Of Japan: acceptance is genuinely unpredictable, so apply to several dispatch companies at once rather than betting everything on Interac. The strongest alternatives are covered further down.
Interac Salary and Pay: The Real Numbers
The “official” Interac salary number and the number that lands in your bank account in year two are not the same number. That gap is where most of the confusion online comes from, so here are the figures side by side.
| Source or figure | What it represents |
|---|---|
| ¥2.4M to ¥3.0M per year | Official Interac gross range, paid as ¥200,000 to ¥600,000 per month depending on role |
| ~¥215,000 per month | Guaranteed monthly floor reported by an ALT who had just accepted an offer |
| ~$1,400 to $1,700 per month | Real-world reliable starting take-home, per a route-comparison video |
| ~¥335,000 per month | JET’s first-year salary, the highest of the beginner routes, for context |
That $1,400 to $1,700 range comes from Ishbel Rose’s comparison of the Japan teaching routes on the Teach English Abroad channel, which puts Interac and Borderlink in the $1,400 to $1,700 range and JET on top at around ¥335,000. Interac also looks low next to “average Japan salary” stats for a structural reason: as one former dispatch-company manager on Reddit explains, Japanese permanent (正社員) pay ramps up steeply with age and tenure, while Interac’s contract pay stays flat.
Then there is the year-two squeeze. Because you have no prior-year income on record when you arrive, taxes and insurance are minimal at first, which feels great. One Interac ALT on Reddit put it plainly: it is fine for year one, then in year two “all of your government stuff kicks in” and money gets tight. DaveTrippin calls the same thing the second-year trap, when residence tax and full health insurance and pension premiums land at once.
Finally, cashflow at the start. Interac pays on the 20th of the month after you work, so your first paycheck arrives roughly six to eight weeks in. Plan to cover your first two months out of pocket, and bring around ¥500,000 (about $4,500) in accessible cash for startup costs.
What Working for Interac Is Actually Like
On paper the day is tidy: weekdays 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, three to five classes of 45 to 50 minutes, on a one-year contract that runs April 1 to March 31 and renews. What the contract does not tell you is how much of the rest of the day belongs to you, and that is the variable worth planning around.
Go in clear about the role. You are an assistant, which in a busy school means real co-teaching and in a quieter one means delivering a handful of lines and sitting back down. One ALT wrote up his year on Reddit in exactly those terms: the gig was “a walk in the park,” but “you’re not actually a teacher, you’re a speech parrot.” When he spent the downtime studying Japanese at his desk, the school flagged it to Interac, he was told to stop, and he was marked down for not showing enough enthusiasm.
Read that as intel, not a warning. Desk time is the biggest swing factor in the job, it is set school by school, and it is an answerable question before you sign anything. Ask your recruiter what your base school expects during non-teaching periods and whether independent study is fine. The ALTs who get the most out of the year show up with a plan for those hours: JLPT prep, an online qualification, or side work (one ALT on Reddit describes getting Interac’s approval for paid private tutoring alongside the contract). Teach in Japan with Matilda’s “STOP Before You Sign” covers the rest of what to pin down, including whether Saturday events are paid.
Housing is the consistent part. Around 99% of new ALTs land in a furnished Leopalace apartment with the basics already in it, at an average rent Interac’s own account puts near ¥51,000 a month. One quirk to expect: an “NHK guy,” a public-broadcaster fee collector, will knock repeatedly asking you to sign a viewing contract, and you can refuse. Start-up support is the part that swings by branch, a theme we return to below. Tokyo reportedly sent one ALT a helper for a full day of errands; another branch essentially said “good luck.”
The students are the part nobody argues about. The same ALT who called himself a speech parrot said he genuinely enjoyed teaching the kids, and Vicky of The Grounded Journey, a long-term ALT, calls connecting with students the most consistently positive part of the job.
Interac Reviews: Common Praise and Complaints
Your experience with Interac depends less on Interac than on which branch you land in. That pattern runs through nearly every review thread, which is why reading Interac reviews as one big average is misleading. Here is what shows up repeatedly on both sides.
| What ALTs praise | What ALTs complain about |
|---|---|
| Strong initial training and orientation | No raises, ever, regardless of tenure or skill |
| A safe default for first-timers with no Japanese | Restrictive rules that limit independence |
| Transport paid on top of base wage | Some ALTs still report docked or pro-rated pay |
| Job security and structure of the largest provider | Workload swings wildly by number of schools |
| Now pays full salary in August and holidays | Quality varies sharply from branch to branch |
The complaints are real but specific. A former branch manager on Reddit recounted telling angry veteran ALTs directly that the role is “entry level” and raises “would never happen.” Paras in Japan, who left Interac after six years, hit the same wall despite strong Japanese. And while Interac’s official policy is no pro-rating, at least one ALT reports being docked pay anyway.
Three variables drive most of the variance, and they are the ones worth asking about before you accept a placement. Branch quality is the biggest: Osaka, Hiroshima, and Kita Kanto all drew positive mentions, while others did not. Workload is next, since ALTs can be assigned anywhere from a single school to as many as 17. Onboarding support is the third, ranging from a full day of help to none.
The most useful framing comes from Upendo Nice’s “How to Choose the Best ALT Company”: separate a bad branch from a bad company. Most Interac horror stories are really branch stories.
Is Interac Worth It? An Honest Verdict
Interac is worth it as a one to two year way into Japan, and it is a poor bet as a career. Pay is modest, the ALT role is capped by design, there are no raises no matter how good you get, and veterans, former managers, and ALT YouTubers converge on the same advice: use it as a bridge. The soberest one-line version, from a long-serving ALT on Reddit, is that it is a “necessary evil,” livable for a short stay before you pivot to something better.
Plenty of people make it work anyway. Vicky of The Grounded Journey has run a stable, financially secure family life on an ALT salary for over a decade, and she is candid about what it takes: a rural placement over big-city life, controlled spending, deliberately building community, and a plan beyond the ALT role.
The better way to read the pay ceiling is as a starting position rather than a dead end. DaveTrippin and Paras in Japan both used Interac exactly that way, with Paras moving into a direct-hire Coordinator for International Relations role at a town hall once he was in-country, on better pay and without the dispatch restrictions. The ceiling is real. So is the door the job opens, and being physically in Japan on a working visa makes your next move far easier than applying from abroad ever could.
Alternatives to Interac If It’s Not the Right Fit
If any of those downsides are dealbreakers, you are not stuck choosing between Interac and giving up on Japan. At least five other routes lead to the same classroom, with different trade-offs on pay, autonomy, and how hard they are to get.
| Option | Type | Best for and key trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| JET Programme | Government program | Highest beginner pay (~¥335k/mo) and flights included, but competitive and locked to a fixed annual cycle |
| Altia Central | Dispatch company | Pay slightly above Interac and a simple apply flow, but needs 5 documents including 2 reference letters and an essay, and no re-contract bonus |
| Borderlink | Dispatch company | Easy form-based final interview, but bundles transport into the wage and pays nothing in August unless you opt into a deduction |
| Heart Corporation | Dispatch company | Another of the majors, but a more bureaucratic 6-section form plus a financial-reserve screen |
| Eikaiwa chains (AEON, ECC, GABA, NOVA) | Conversation schools | Adult and evening focus at ~$1,600 to $1,900/mo, a different rhythm from public-school ALT work |
| Direct hire / Board of Education | Direct employment | Best pay and autonomy, but usually needs Japanese and is easiest to land once you are already in-country |
The comparison people most want is Interac versus Borderlink. Interac pays transport on top of your wage and a full August salary, while Borderlink folds transport into the sticker wage and pays nothing in August unless you opt into a ¥10,000 monthly deduction to self-fund it. That is why Interac gets called the more stable of the two on Reddit, though branch quality still swings the real experience more than the brand does.
Two more things. Apply to several companies at once, as Rafael of Adventures Of Japan advises, since you cannot predict who picks you up. And smaller regional competitors sometimes pay more with weaker support: Paras in Japan names a company called Joy Talk paying roughly ¥20,000 to ¥30,000 a month more than Interac did in his area, though he expects worse support.
For a fuller, neutral route-by-route comparison of every way into teaching in the country, see our guide to how to teach English in Japan, or go deeper on the top-paying route in our JET Programme guide.
Sources and Resources
Here is where to go next, sorted by what you need.
Communities
- r/teachinginjapan: the main hub for first-hand, branch-level Interac and Borderlink experience, salary reality checks, and contract questions.
YouTube channels worth watching
- Adventures Of Japan: screen-recorded walkthroughs of the Interac, Borderlink, Altia, and Heart application forms.
- Paras in Japan: six years at Interac and the move to a direct-hire government role.
- The Grounded Journey: a long-term ALT on whether the job is a dead end or an underrated opportunity.
- Teach in Japan with Matilda: how to read an ALT contract before you sign it.
Job boards
- GaijinPot Jobs: the largest board for foreigners in Japan, and where many ALTs find a better second job later.
- O-Hayo Sensei: free newsletter listing 100+ teaching roles per issue.
Official and research sources
- Interac’s official site and the Link Japan Careers FAQ: first-party requirements, salary, and contacts.
- Glassdoor’s Interac page: 942 reviews and 159 interview reports, the source of the roughly 44-day timeline.
- ESL Authority’s Interac guide: a third-party cross-check against official claims.
Interac Japan FAQ
Is Interac legit, or is it a scam?
Interac is legitimate: a large company founded in 1972 with roughly 3,500 staff that sponsors visas and pays reliably in most branch reports. It is not generous, and long-term ALTs often call it a “necessary evil,” but it is legal and functional, not a scam.
How do I apply to Interac?
Start on Interac’s official how-to-apply page, where the entry form takes 20 to 30 minutes and needs a cover letter and resume uploaded. Apply May through November for an April start, or January through March for an August start. A phone screen, a video interview, and a recorded demo lesson follow.
How much will I actually take home working for Interac?
Officially ¥2.4M to ¥3.0M per year gross, or a reliable starting range around $1,400 to $1,700 a month, with a floor near ¥215,000. Real take-home shrinks in year two once residence tax and full insurance kick in. That sits below JET’s ~¥335,000 and roughly in line with eikaiwa pay.
Do I need a TEFL certificate to apply to Interac?
No. A TEFL certificate is advantageous, not required. The hard requirements are a bachelor’s degree in any subject, native-level English, and 12+ years of English-medium education. A certificate is a soft tiebreaker between similar candidates, so it is a smart edge. Our 120-hour course is the standard option.
How long does the whole application process take?
The interview process averages about 44 days according to Glassdoor. End to end is much longer once visa processing and intake timing are added. Start your visa paperwork 4 to 6 months before arrival, and for an April start, apply the prior May through November.
Interac vs Borderlink, which is better?
Interac is generally the more stable. It pays transport on top of your wage and a full August salary, while Borderlink bundles transport in and pays nothing in August without an opt-in deduction. Branch quality, though, swings the real experience more than the brand does.
Is Interac a career or a stepping stone?
A stepping stone, by near-universal consensus. Most veterans, former managers, and ALT YouTubers treat it as a one to two year bridge, then move on to direct hire or a better-paid role. Some build a long-term life on an ALT salary, but only with deliberate trade-offs.
Where does this post come from?
This post was originally published at Teaching English in Japan With Interac: The Complete Guide on the TEFL Hero Website.