In the 80s and 90s, I’ve heard that any English speaker could book a flight to Tokyo and find a high-paying job in Japan within mere hours of landing. I know a few people who originally moved here during the Golden Age, and they tell me it was truly a wondrous period.
Even when I took my first few trips here almost 15 years ago, it was great to be a gaijin in Japan (even though there was still only one Starbucks in Shinjuku). Even in Tokyo, the locals went out of their way to make me feel welcome. I was treated like a celebrity wherever I went. Families invited me to visit their homes within minutes of meeting me. I scored a lot of dates.
Sometime during the G.W. Bush Administration, something began to change for folks looking to move to Japan.
For a start, there were a lot more of us. I don’t know the exact numbers, but when I decided to move here in 2003, there were other foreigners everywhere I went in Tokyo. And corporate coffee shops on every corner. There were pockets in the smaller cities and the countryside where non-Japanese were still rare, but you could no longer count on celebrity treatment by virtue of your birth.
Another change was that a lot of Japanese municipalities were in the red. The economic downturn that had hit Japan hard at the end of the 90s didn’t seem to effect the government very much in the beginning, but when it came, it came down hard. Many towns went bankrupt and were forced to ask to be annexed by neighboring cities. These cities were often a lot tighter about expenditures and didn’t see the wisdom of paying 36 million yen a year to recent college grads with no job experience. Private temp agencies began to thrive.
At the same time, the English conversation industry was seeing huge profits. Anyone and everyone who grew up speaking English was finding employment with companies like NOVA teaching cookie-cutter lessons to Japanese students who paid exorbitant prices on long-term contracts. It sounds like a recipe for massive profit in the near view, but eventually, students and staff alike began to take note of what a shifty system it was, and NOVA shifted right into bankruptcy in 2007.
Just when I was looking to return to Japan after a few months back in the States, the market was flooded with thousands of desperate ex-NOVA teachers willing to work for next to nothing so they could afford airfare back home. Let me tell you, it was a challenging job market to be a job seeker in.
To get quality employment in Japan today is much tougher than it was 15 years ago. Hell, even five years ago. There is way more competition, starting salaries are much lower, and being from another country is just not all that special anymore.
So how can you improve your chances? Simple: you have to have a plan.
Beginning next year, English will be a required course of study for primary 5th and 6th grade students. Conversation schools have learned from NOVA’s demise and are adding more targeted services with more flexible plans. They’re also being a little more selective with their hiring.
Thanks to the global economic crisis and the meteoric rise of some of Japan’s Asian neighbors, Japanese companies are placing a premium on language skills. Television programs often feature visits to Chinese and Korean schools full of young children using English at a much higher level than their Japanese counterparts. This is a country that prides itself on 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’m aware it’s been around a while, but for much of the world, instant global communication is a pretty new ability, and most people in Japan are still getting used to it. The exciting thing about the internet is that it’s turning English into the de facto lingua franca of the 21st century (wow, two Latin phrases in one sentence). Japanese people, especially younger ones, want to learn English to communicate online and learn about what’s going on in countries they find more exciting than where they are.
On the subject of excitement, tons of Japanese are really into travel, especially young women. Sometimes it seems as if more than half of the English learners I meet in Japan are young women who hope to travel to places like Hawaii and New Zealand. There is a big demand for people to teach English conversation without all the formal rules everybody hates learning in junior high school.
Maybe you’re not an aspiring edutainment pro. The world is full of various kinds of people who have all kinds of talents and abilities 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 isn’t correct, and it isn’t fair, but there’s a reason that the vast majority of non-asian foreign residents of Japan are language instructors. It’s an easy job to find.
Even if you aren’t keen on teaching for very long, I suggest you try it out, either as a stepping stone to something else, or for supplemental income. Japanese people will probably assume that you are an English teacher anyway, so you might at least make a little money from it.
Still, I know that many readers have higher goals for their careers than to be a foreign language teacher. I know I do. The good news is that there are all kinds of jobs available here. The not-as-good news is that quite a few of them are more difficult to find than the glut of teaching jobs.
Finding employment in Japan is different from finding employment where you are now. Besides the difficulties resulting from issues with international communication, travel, and etc., you also have to interact with Japanese people and their culture (and their stereotypes of your culture).
I’m going to just tell you the bad news first, because it may save you some time if you can’t handle it. The bad news is: you will probably be unable to land your dream job in Japan unless you’ve already been here.
I’m not telling you that you can’t get the job you want, but you can’t expect to apply from overseas with no experience and no Japanese ability and be given a great job with great pay and benefits in an area you want to live in. You wouldn’t expect such a deal at home, so you’d be silly to expect it in Japan, wouldn’t you? I knew you’d see it my way. That’s why I know you want to prepare the best possible strategy 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 simply fly over and begin living the dream right away, but don’t think it isn’t possible to live a totally fulfilling life teaching English in Japan. It is possible, and with the right preparation, it’s inevitable.