I'm a South African citizen and I was wondering if it was at all possible for me to successfully land a English teaching job in Japan. I have a degree and and work experience in IT. I can speak Japanese (not perfectly though!)... I will be taking a 3 month advanced Japanese Language course in Tokyo soon, so that I have some experience staying in Japan and having conversation with Japanese.

Basically, what I want to know is... will I have a fair chance as an African, or will my CV/resume just be glanced over before hitting the trash can?

Many schools in Asia require a photo along with the application for a job.
There are plenty of stories of discrimination based on race (asian and colored).

However in the end you never no until you try. If you have experience teaching ESL under your belt, this will definetely be in your favor as well.

Good luck on securing that job

I'd say your chances are probably higher, as you speak Japanese. I taught business English in Japan, and most of my colleagues didn't any speak Japanese at all. Neither do I. Have you considered the possibly of working in IT? Most English teachers in Japan don't get paid an awful lot.

I have to agree with the previous two posts. As ex-NOVA, you are way better off as an IT guy than you would be teaching English. The collapse of NOVA has put teaching jobs in short supply, so you are way better off working in IT anyway. To be totally honest with you, if you are a WHITE South African, landing a teaching job wouldn't be difficult normally, but if your a BLACK South African, you probably would have siginificant difficulty getting a teaching job. Someone will want to argue this with me, but I've been here for 10 years and probably know better.

Cheers.