Job Discussion Forums

[timothypfox]

Moviefan1987's comment is generally true about finding a good job here. But, I myself was hired from abroad into private high school position. However, this is after upgrading my skills after a previous 2 years at a language school in Japan. I added public school experience, and TESOL Masters.

Really the best leg in to Japan, or first time experience for ESL teachers in Japan, seems to be the JET program from what I hear.

These days it doesn't hurt to really up your skills before considering Japan. This could include taking Japanese lessons, teaching ESL students at a school or even volunteering, and some interest and experience in something cultural that is Japanese such as movies, martial arts, or flower arranging or cooking.

You might even consider public school teaching certification and experience and a master's in TESOL as well.

Those considering Japan will like the unique culture, but may eventually find a more or less single culture society a bit challenging to thrive in particularly if you come from a very internationalized country or city.

[Chroniclesoffreedom]

The discrimination, social segregation, the berlin wall that exists between local immigrants and native locals, however you want to describe it. I think that alone would compel alot of us to leave at some point.

Having a police officer ask for your gaijin card every single time you walk out the door would eventually give you the idea that maybe you're not exactly welcome there. Not to mention that if a local commits a crime against you, it's useless to report it. Cops won't do anything when a crime is comitted against a foreigner. Most of the time anyway.

[ntropy]

As the BBC commentator, John Peel, once said, "Japan is the closest place on the planet you can get to not leaving the planet."

A recent novel I enjoyed about a Japan unchecked is worth a read.

https://www.amazon.com/Pax-Pox-Nipponica-Satoshi-Nakamoto-ebook/dp/B07168W3Y5/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495808602&sr=8-1&keywords=pox+nipponica

[twowheel]

[Maitoshi]

[twowheel]

[rxk22]

I have been thinking, it is so hard to integrate here. I go to my kid's schools, and participate in events. I try to be friendly and all that, but I am just never accepted as a full member here. Despite my pretty good Japanese, most people treat me as a curiosity, or ignore me. It is really hard to live here, esp when you aren't in Tokyo. I just don't see the appeal being here long term. If only my wife could live overseas. I'd move somewhere else, even if it isn't the US. Singapore, or what have you.

[Maitoshi]

There are many Japanese who also feel it is difficult to be accepted as a full member. Some people develop seriously strong relationships with their schoolmates and those are their lifelong confidants. They develop other relationships, too, but it is difficult to compare to those with a very long shared history. I'm sure most of us also have different levels of connection with others, too. If you remain here for quite some time, and hang out with others who have things in common (not just having kids at the same school) I think it is possible to develop strong connections, though a shared multi-decade history will take decades to develop.

[rxk22]

[mitsui]

Yeah. My wife wants to stay. Healthcare is better here and she wants to get out of Tokyo and go back to her hometown.

I just need to find a job in Kansai, which I have been trying to do.
I have applied to a few places and will apply to at least a couple more soon.

If I was back in the US my wife could be unemployed and know nobody, so that would make things worse.

[Maitoshi]

Best of luck with securing a position near her hometown! Getting out of the Tokyo grind should help eliminate some of the "anonymous" feeling, though the degree to which will likely depend on how rural it is. Our hometown is fairly rural, so most people know me or know of me. Sometimes I think it may actually be preferable to be more anonymous, but that's usually only true when I put out the recycling on empty can and bottle day.

[victory7]

I'm hearing more and more stories in Tokyo of aggressive behavior from the Japanese against foreigners. As a tall, strong looking man it hasn't happened to me but I don't go through life using the 'it doesn't happen to me so it isn't true' excuse to avoid unpleasant realities. And I am seeing cases in public where foreign women by themselves are being physically hit by Japanese people.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a Jp woman probably somewhere in her 60s or early 70s - it can be hard to tell as Japanese older people tend to look much older than they kid themselves - nastily elbow a foreign woman trying to make her way to the Yamanote train at Ebisu Station.

Of course as is usual in Tokyo, most of the Japanese here wouldn't dream of doing anything so civil as stepping aside for people as best as they can on a crowded platform or saying sumimasen - the gaijin have to do that, didn't you know....... Yet this Jp woman even surpassed that usual rudeness by the nasty elbow to the foreign woman who wasn't pushing or doing anything wrong.

I was going to step in but the foreign woman told the nasty Jp one who was making her way up the escalator in Japanese that she must not do that. Good for her. Of course she received the staring down from some Japanese but her language was polite although indignant.

More recently I witnessed a hit to a foreign woman waiting to get off a train - the old Jp man struck her on her side slyly as the door was opening, presumably because she as a gaijin and as a woman by herself dared to position herself to the right of this POS of a Japanese man.

Again, this woman wasn't having it and told him in Japanese not to do that and not to touch her. There were less people around and I didn't see the Japanese around try to shame her by staring her down. I was behind and she walked through the barrier quickly but I walked behind the offender and told him in Japanese that if I saw him do this again, I would report him to the station staff.

The common denominator here is that this is happening to foreign women by themselves so the Japanese doing it are obviously cowardly and feel emboldened by the fact that Japanese people in Tokyo clearly lack a sense of civic responsibility - after all this is a culture which loves to portray itself as superior but in fact runs on shaming people who don't fall in line with the majority.

Foreigners can stay in their bubble and pretend that Japan is changing but as a man married to a Japanese with 'half' kids who also sees what goes on everyday, I can state that it really is not.

As somebody with a high level of Japanese language proficiency, I can tell many of you that what I hear everyday coming out of the mouths of the 'kind' Japanese is getting worse and worse compared to the things they were saying when gaijin knew their place and were leaving after a few years.

Many in this society especially in Tokyo cannot handle foreigners being around 2 percent of the population even as foreigners are paying taxes, contributing etc. This is a very bad sign for the future. And have some respect for other foreigners - look around you and speak up when the Japanese haters do the things I mentioned. I have heard of more of these cowardly cases in the last 4 years.

[Shakey]

First, I don't know you, so I don't know if you're full of shit, or not. However, I've seen you post here before and I do not think that you are a troll. Okay, that being said, I'll take your comments at face value with some skepticism.

I don't think foreign women here are being victimized. Gaijin women, especially White, Western, English speaking gaijin women are as privileged here as they are in the West. They have many Japanese, and foreign men, who want to date them and they have many job opportunities, especially in TEFL.

I do not want the Japanese to be fine with foreigners invading their country. I want the Japanese government and the Japanese people to resist multiculturalism and mass third-world immigration at all costs. Japanese people should express their contempt at gaijin fucking their women or trying to change their laws. Japan is an ethno-state. The natural reaction is for Japanese people to be repelled by foreigners flooding into their communities and behaving differently. This is Japan. It's not a multicultural, Cultural Marxist, Feminist society. And I like that.

These things that you hate about Japan are wherein lie your freedom.

[Shakey]

First, I don't know you, so I don't know if you're full of shit, or not. However, I've seen you post here before and I do not think that you are a troll. Okay, that being said, I'll take your comments at face value with some skepticism.

I don't think foreign women here are being victimized. Gaijin women, especially White, Western, English speaking gaijin women are as privileged here as they are in the West. They have many Japanese, and foreign men, who want to date them and they have many job opportunities, especially in TEFL.

I do not want the Japanese to be fine with foreigners invading their country. I want the Japanese government and the Japanese people to resist multiculturalism and mass third-world immigration at all costs. Japanese people should express their contempt at gaijin fucking their women or trying to change their laws. Japan is an ethno-state. The natural reaction is for Japanese people to be repelled by foreigners flooding into their communities and behaving differently. This is Japan. It's not a multicultural, Cultural Marxist, Feminist society. And I like that.

These things that you hate about Japan are wherein lie your freedom.

[victory7]

[quote="Shakey"]First, I don't know you, so I don't know if you're full of shit, or not. However, I've seen you post here before and I do not think that you are a troll. Okay, that being said, I'll take your comments at face value with some skepticism.

I don't think foreign women here are being victimized. Gaijin women, especially White, Western, English speaking gaijin women are as privileged here as they are in the West. They have many Japanese, and foreign men, who want to date them and they have many job opportunities, especially in TEFL.

I do not want the Japanese to be fine with foreigners invading their country. I want the Japanese government and the Japanese people to resist multiculturalism and mass third-world immigration at all costs. Japanese people should express their contempt at gaijin fucking their women or trying to change their laws. Japan is an ethno-state. The natural reaction is for Japanese people to be repelled by foreigners flooding into their communities and behaving differently. This is Japan. It's not a multicultural, Cultural Marxist, Feminist society. And I like that.

These things that you hate about Japan are wherein lie your freedom.quote]

First of all - you need to delete your double post. Secondly, you need to take out the curse words. People who have genuine points to make about any issue never need to use curse words to make a real point. Then again, judging by the oddness of your 'arguments' and your wilful ignorance of how life really goes, I'd say that making real points in your posts is not a priority.

Let me tell you something that is so clear but you don't recognise it - you obviously have few if any Japanese language proficiency skills. That includes listening aibility like that of understanding the everyday Jp conversations that many non Japanes just cannot pick up on.

From my direct experience - some years ago I started to put an end to rude/hostile conversations directed against my then Jp girlfriend, now my wife on trains. Conversations between male high school students, university students, and drunk salarymen. They backed down when I told them in Japanese not to dare talk about me and my girlfriend in that way.

When I taught at unversities with international students as well as Jp students, I heard from some students with real Japanese proficiency that they had to listen to conversations likewise from younger Jp males that included the males asking each other if they had ever or wanted to f----- gaijin females. Not all those conversations were in situations where too much alcohol had been consumed.

The arrogance and ethnocentricity were clearly normal to these males as shown by the fact that some of those conversations took place on trains and subways. In front of everybody else. Of course nobody who was Japanese told them to be quiet or quit the foul talk.

You live in a deluded bubble or want to give the impression to others here or people who just read posts on the eslcafe that these kinds of conversations or aggressive behavior such as pushing, elbowing and striking non Japanese people including foreign women on their own, do not happen. They do - and as a foreigner who has lived here longer than most, I will definitely say that hearing about these kinds of incidents is more usual now than it was more than 4 years ago or so.

Bitter old people are on the rise in Japan - just like the upswing in acts of violence they commit or other crimes they commit. The unpleasant ralities of people murdering old people because they don't want to or feel they can't take care of them are also increasing. I read the news in Japanese - that is where the real crime stories are and the number of crimes is far higher than the snippets released in English language websites and publications.

Are the Japanese justified in their growing resentment of the small foreigner population of Japan? To a rational person, absolutely not.

Unlike other first world countries where millions of foreigners, a considerable no. of them being refugees who require large transfers of tax monies from the host population, go to those countries and are on equal legal footing with the host population, Japan gives very little back to foreigners who are working and pay tax. It also takes less than 20 refugees a year and these receive little in the way of financial benefits and little support such as free language classes etc.

There is no genuine need for any Japanese to feel hostile against working, contributing foreigners including the tiny number of refugees who certainly in Japan have nothing like the generous access to money, activities and the right to simply live in the new country without paying anything back.

The Japanese nenkin systems transfer money from foreigners to the Japanese elderly - and many foreigners on kokumin kenko hoken, for example, earn fairly low incomes. There are only around 2 million foreigners in Japan and many will go home eventually. The problem lies with Japanese delusions that many Japanese accept. The real xenophobia and racism has always been here but it has been masked by the fact that foreigners did not stay long until relatively recently.

Japan is not a special case. It is showing all the signs of the decline that its own hostilities, fears and self-importance have brought about. Demographically it is beyond repair as even if all Japanese couples of younger age have 3 children as the norm in the near future, it will take decades to see the effects in terms of a younger population.

That aint happening. The delusions of Japanese society are also seen in the arrogant declarations by various govt bodies etc that Japan can attract highly skilled foreigners and cherrypick the best to stay and boost the economy etc. What a joke - many international companies have packed up and left Tokyo the past 12 or so years because they see the reality that there is no future in such a capital city and wider society.

Skilled and highly skilled foreigners inside and outside Japan have greeted those Japanese pretensions with the cold hard reality of observations like, 'Great, we really want to carry around a special foreigner card under threat of being detained by the police as our reward for bringing our skills and investing money in Japan. Right.'

Other first world countries have fair and straightforward paths to residency and citizenship for immigrants, especially genuinely skilled ones and investors. Japan will never attract such people even if starts to do something other than publish papers about how it will attract these 'better' or 'best' foreigners. Why put up with such treatment when you can go to other countries and be respected for your skills and money even if those countries also have their problems?

And why the hell should Japan be treated as some precious outpost of the closed country under the shogunate or some delicate entrant into the real world of the 19th century under Meiji? Still? Japanese people have been running off to other people's countries in significant numbers since the 19th century and see no contradiction in living in the USA and other countries when it suits them. They have no right to be justifying their xenophobia and increasing racist behavior in the 21st century.

Japanese go to countries to study, work, live and even stay for a long time or the end of their lives that throughout much of their history were mono-cultural. Does this mean that those countries can discriminate against Japanese people and justify it on the grounds that Japanese people are not from the host country's traditional culture? That they brought the yakuza? - until fairly recently the Japanese police authorities would not even share with American law enforcement the identities of yakuza members so that these criminals lived in, holidayed in and even obtained green cards for the USA.

To use the word 'invasion' or 'invading' like an hysterical, uneducated right wing misfit who blames foreigners for Japan's self-inflicted demographic, economic and social problems is just pathetic. It is bad enough that Japanese people are deflecting their own responsibility for their shortcomings onto the small foreigner population here without reading your junk here.