Working as an ALT can be tough because of the available technology in your schools. In some cases:

• You may not have a desk or even a computer. In which case, ask to bring your own and make do (good luck!).
• The computer your school assigned to you is ancient.
• The computer your school assigned to you is completely locked down (cannot install anything).
• The computer your school assigned to you is in Japanese (for obvious reasons).

The first one, I cannot help much with. My advice there would be to pre-prep as many lesson plans as possible, try to anticipate what grammar points are being taught, and print/create all of your materials and handouts at home. I purchased a printer and laminator along with several 万円 worth of art supplies over the years for this very purpose. Expensive, but being overprepared and not having to stress about last minute requests was well worth it.

The other three though, that you can solve yourself. My advice is to purchase a portable HDD (USB 3.0 is ideal), not a flash drive, to connect to your school computer. Flash drives are a no go because they wear out far too quickly for what I’m about to suggest which is:

• Store all of your work files on the HDD.
• Install and run portable programs to use instead of the school’s default software.

There are several advantages to this.

1. The software is in English.
2. You can continue working at home using the same exact software.
3. You can bring your work and programs to every school you visit.

What to Install

PortableApps will be your savior. Download it and install it to your portable HDD. This program offers up to date software (with easy upgrades) that can easily be installed via the program. It’ll also give you a Windows-esque Start Menu to view all your programs from. I suggest installing the following:

• LibreOffice - Open Source office suite containing word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programs. You can have it install in English and instantly be able to make all of your handouts without having to deal with learning Japanese at the same time. I suggest changing the default settings so your page layout matches with the paper size you most commonly intend to print at (A4 or B5 jis).
• GIMP - Open Source Photoshop alternative. It can be tough to learn, but if you need to do anything that can’t be done in MS Paint, this will probably be able to do it. I suggest changing your options to run in single-window mode.
• Firefox or Google Chrome - Better than being stuck on an ancient version if IE.
• VLC - It’ll run any video or audio file out there. Useful as a last resort in case the default Windows Media Player isn’t running your file.
• Skype - If you ever want to try Mystery Skype.
• Audacity - Open Source audio editor. Very good for editing audio clips for use in the classroom.
• cdrtfe - Very good simple program for making burnable CDs/DVDs. I use it to make music CDs.
• fre:ac - Audio conversion program to convert between formats.
• 7-zip - File extractor that supports every archive format under the sun.

In addition to these, you can throw other portable programs in the PortableApps folder and have it show up in the menu. I’ve extracted and repackaged many other pieces of software to make my life easier (ex: Aegisub for making subtitled videos). If I ever find the time to organize and upload those programs, I’ll update this page. There is one piece of software I know people might wish they could run, and that would be Dropbox. And those people are in luck. Just use DropboxPortableAHK to sync your folder to your external HDD. For the techies who run their own Dropbox-like service, ownCloud and Seafile can easily be extracted and adapted to run portably.

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