Geo Travel Blog

Back in the day, I’ve heard that any English speaker could book a flight to Tokyo and score a high-paying job in Japan within just a few days of landing. I know several who originally moved here during the “bubble” years, and they tell me it was truly a special time.

Even when I embarked on my first few visits here almost 15 years ago, it was great to be a gaijin in Japan (even though there was still just the one Starbucks in Shinjuku). Even in Tokyo, everyone went out of their way to be nice to me. I was treated like a celebrity everywhere I went. Families invited me to visit their homes within minutes of meeting me. I got plenty of dates.

Sometime during the turn of the century, things began to change for people thinking about moving to Japan.

For one thing, there were a lot more of us. I don’t have any statistics handy, but when I relocated here in 2003, there were blue-eyed Americans everywhere I went in Tokyo. And corporate coffee shops too. There remained pockets in the smaller cities and the countryside where non-Japanese were still few and far between, but you could no longer expect celebrity treatment by virtue of your birth.

Another change was that most Japanese towns and cities were in financial trouble. The economic downturn that had hit Japan hard at the end of the 90s didn’t seem to effect the government very much at first, but when it came, it came down hard. Many towns experienced financial collapse and had to negotiate to be annexed by neighboring cities. These cities tended to be a lot tighter with expenditures and didn’t see the wisdom of paying full-time wages and benefits to random foreigners with no job experience. Private dispatch companies began to pop up everywhere.

At the same time, the English conversation industry was seeing huge profits. Anyone and everyone with native-level English was getting hired by companies like NOVA teaching laughable lessons to Japanese customers who paid exorbitant prices on long-term contracts. It seemed like a recipe for success in the short run, but eventually, students and staff alike began to take note of what a shifty set-up it was, and NOVA fell into bankruptcy in 2007.

Exactly when I was looking to return to Japan after a few months back home, the market was flooded with thousands of desperate former NOVA staffers willing to work for peanuts until they could afford airfare back home. Let me tell you, it was a difficult job market to be competing in.

To obtain quality employment in Japan today is much tougher than it was 15 years ago. Hell, even five years ago. There is way more competition, beginning salaries are much lower, and being foreign is just not such a big deal anymore.

So how can you increase your chance of finding work? Simple: you have to prepare.

Before long, English will be a required course of study for elementary 5th and 6th graders. Conversation schools have learned from NOVA’s collapse and are adjusting their services with more flexible plans. They’re also being a little more selective with their hiring.

Thanks to the worldwide economic crisis and the incredible rise of some of Japan’s Asian neighbors, Japanese businesses are placing a premium on language skills. Television shows often feature visits to Chinese and Korean schools full of serious students conversing in English at a much higher proficiency than their Japanese counterparts. This is a country that takes pride in its business savvy, and they do not want to lose to China.

Also, you may think this is news, but there’s this thing called the World Wide Web now. Yes, I know it’s been around a while, but for much of the world, instant global communication is a very new invention, and most people in Japan are still getting used to it. The cool thing about the internet is that it’s helping English become the de facto lingua franca of the 21st century (wow, two Latin phrases in one sentence). Japanese people, especially younger ones, want to understand English so they can communicate online and learn about what’s going on in places they find more exciting than where they are.

On the subject of excitement, tons of Japanese are interested in travel, especially young women. Sometimes it feels as if more than half of the English students I meet in Japan are young women who want to visit places like Hawaii and New Zealand. There is a huge demand for people to teach English conversation while skipping all the confusing grammar everybody hates learning in junior high school.

Not everyone is an aspiring edutainment pro. The world is full of various kinds of people with all kinds of talents and skills and likes and dislikes. Unfortunately, many Japanese people have the image that all non-Japanese people are white Americans who are born simply to teach English. It is wrong, and it’s silly, but it’s also why the almost all non-asian foreign residents in Japan are conversation instructors. It’s an easy job to find.

Even if you aren’t interested in teaching for very long, I suggest you try it out, either as a stepping stone to something else, or for additional income. Japanese people will tend to assume that you are an English teacher anyway, so you might at least profit from it.

Still, I can see that many people have higher aspirations for their futures than to be a foreign language teacher. I know I do. The good news is that there are a variety of ways to get paid for being here. The not-as-good news is that some of them are more difficult to even find than the ubiquitous teaching jobs.

Finding a job in Japan is different from finding employment where you come form. Besides the difficulties associated with international communication, travel, and etc., you also need to interact with Japanese people and their culture (and their stereotypes of your culture).

I’m going to just let you in on the bad news first, because it may save you from making a mistake if you can’t deal with it. The bad news is: you will likely not be able to land your dream job in Japan without having already spent some time here.

I’m not going to tell you that you can’t get the job you want, but you shouldn’t hope to send a resume overseas with no experience and no Japanese skills and be offered a great job with great pay and benefits in an area you want to live in. You can’t expect such a deal at home, so you’d be wrong to expect it in another country, right? I knew you’d see it my way. That’s why I know you want to come up with the best possible plan to get yourself over here so you can start looking for the job you really want.

Things aren’t how they used to be, and it’s no longer enough to just show up and begin living the good life right away, but don’t think it isn’t possible to live a wonderful life doing what you truly love in Japan. It is possible, and with the right preparation, it’s very probable.