I spent last Sunday online looking for employment opportunities in Japan.
The good news: There are plenty of open jobs for foreigners.
The bad news: Unless you’d want to do something else than teaching English…
I’m not good with kids, so I’m not sure a teaching job would be a good fit for me. And also, I’m not an English native, although only “native level” is required for most of those positions. Also, I am confident that my grasp of English grammar – as I had to study it rather painfully – is better than that native’s whom I overheard teaching in Korea once (“We use future progressive to give our speech a more warm and friendly feeling.” Honey, I’ll be believing that when hell is freezing over…)
However, even if you don’t want to teach, there seem to be enough jobs around – but those require rather fluent Japanese, which I don’t think is going to happen within this year.
I could start as a student again. There are student visas permitting up to 20 hours of work per week. But then, I’m not sure I’d want to be a full time student again right now – I believe I’m too old for that – or not old enough? Besides, most classes would be taught in Japanese anyway, and language schools preparing you for university are extremely expensive.
What about being a tour guide? Showing people MY beloved Japan sounds great, no? Well, of course there is an exam for this as well, so you have a basic understanding of the country and the language you want to use, and the exam is – you’ve guessed it – administered in Japanese.
The final good news is that any job I have found so far seems to be very well paid – for Western standards at least. And finding a job may be much easier once I am actually in the country. So I’ve not lost all hope yet, at the start already.
In the worst case, I can always bite the bullet and teach English. Meanwhile, there is always the hope that this blog makes me rich quick… 😉