J language teacher qualifications?

One thing that has surprised me a lot as a student of Japanese in Japan is the way most or all teachers seem to have a very standardized teaching method.

In promotional material for language schools, the literature invariably emphasizes that all teachers are 'qualified'. But what does that actually mean?

Turning things around the other way, for example, a qualified EFL/ESOL teacher would have a certificate (ok), diploma (best), or MA (ok). How does this qualifications comparison pan out from the Japan side?

When we students read 'qualified teachers' should we feel reassured, or is this as likely to mean a week or so in-house training then off you go with the textbook and nothing but the textbook?

The only way to know what their qualification is to ask the school. Feel free then to assume they're telling you the truth, It does not matter much anyway.

To be called "qualified" as a Japanese language teacher, one needs to pass an exam called Japanese Language Teaching Proficiency Test (I'm not sure of the exact English wording, excuse me), covering areas such as cross-cultural communication, different languages of the world, language learning processes (in children and grown-ups), history of the language, then the language itself, including grammar, phenetics, syntax, etc., difficulties that people of different mother tongues tend to encounter when learning Japanese, then the teaching methods and practices, etc.

People normally attend a full-year course with 50 or so hours of actucal class teaching practice (or at least observation) before they take the exam. Well, some people maybe who attended dept. of education or language in a university need not attend this course I suppose. So I would say when you hear "qualified," you can expect people with "diploma" equivalent.

But the actual curriculum of the language schools might dictate how they teach in classes, so that's a bit different from teacher qualification.