What is it like to work in Japan and/or for a Japanese company?
The answer to the question about working in Japan really depends on what kind of job you have. Working as an 英会話 teacher with a bunch of other foreigners is a lot different than working as an English teacher in a junior high/high school. I have had both of those experiences, as well as working for a Japanese company where I am the only foreigner in the entire office. I could honestly write pages and pages about what it’s like to work in Japan, but the short answer is that it’s an experience that can be described by many different, often contradictory terms. It can be incredibly interesting at times having the chance to work with people who speak a different language and grew up in a totally different culture, but it can also be frustrating when people stubbornly subscribe to ways of thinking that are a lot different than what you’re used to. It’s exciting to experience every day in a foreign culture eating foreign foods and speaking a foreign language, but sometimes you just wish you could be back at home speaking English and eating some Kountry Kart (yup, I still remember Kountry Kart). My experience with the Japanese company I work for has been overall very positive, but they are serious about work here and we do not get to take many long vacations. A long vacation in Japan is like 5 days.
Any tips for those who are going to Japan after graduating from UVM?
Just have a plan in place. If you’re doing what I did and going to Japan right after college as an English teacher, just keep in mind that unless your Japanese is extremely good, it is very hard to get out of English teaching without a background in another field. If your plan is to come here, teach English for a couple years then go home, then go for it. However, if your plan is to work in Japan for a long time in a field other than English teaching, you might want to take some time to explore your options while you’re still in the States. Fields like finance and IT are very big here and often do not require strong Japanese skills, but companies usually hire people with experience for those jobs, not people right out of college. I was extremely fortunate to find my current job as it doesn’t require absolute fluency in the language and I didn’t need a lot of experience in the field (which I suppose would be international education), but most people who come to Japan right after college are English teachers and you need to be OK with that if you’re going to come here right after you graduate.
Any tough experiences? Anything you wish you knew before going to Japan?
Answering the second question first, I would say no. I have never thought to myself “man, I wish I knew that before I moved here”. There’s a lot of stuff you think about in terms of the future and how to progress career-wise, but I can’t really think of anything that would be different for me now if I had know a certain thing before moving here.
In terms of tough experiences, you just have to be careful of some of the companies out there in the English teaching world. After the NOVA debacle the 英会話 world is pretty stable with reputable companies like AEON and GABA, but the ALT world can be very sketchy and you need to be careful. Companies like Interac and Borderlink are pretty legit, but I had the experience of working for an ALT company that was incredibly sketchy and untrustworthy. I actually read recently that some former ALTs sued the owner of that company for unpaid wages and I think it has since closed. Most Japanese companies are OK though… that company was owned by some sketchy Egyptian guy.
The language barrier can also be an issue, but that depends on you. Social situations can be fun whether you are fluent in Japanese or can barely put a sentence together, but other things can be frustrating if you can’t speak the language very well.
