Job Discussion Forums

Omeo · Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 245

Now, I'm not actually planning on this, but just out of curiousity, has anyone ever found work in Japan outside of teaching English? Are there any companies in Japan that want English speakers for any other reason? I still definitely want to teach English, but the idea occured to me the other day and I thought I'd ask. Who knows; there might be an even cooler job out there.

canuck · Joined: 11 May 2003 Posts: 1921 Location: Japan

Chris21 · Joined: 30 Apr 2006 Posts: 366 Location: Japan

There is some non-teaching stuff available in Tokyo that doesn't require Japanese ability... modelling, financial services (i.e Morgan Stanley, Chase Manhattan, etc), multinationals (i.e. Coke, Dell), transcription of Western TV shows (probably pretty rare but I've heard of it)... can't think of any more. The middle two probably require some pretty serious qualifications (i.e. Wharton Business School).

Apsara · Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 2142 Location: Tokyo, Japan

I know a lot of people working in IT for companies like Hewlett Packard, Cisco and Microsoft, and others working in finance. Many of them don't speak Japanese, but they had experience in their respective industries before coming to Japan. Even so, a lot of them did 6 months or so at Nova or ECC while they were looking for their IT/ finance jobs, so they had 3 of the 4 points Canuck mentioned- skill, timing, and contacts.

I used to teach eikaiwa but now teach yoga and I know a few foreign dance teachers as well- we all had all 4 of Canuck's points on our side.