Back in the day, I’ve heard that any English speaker could jump a flight to Tokyo and find a high-paying gig in Japan within mere hours of clearing customs. I know a few people who originally moved here during those Golden Years, and they tell me it was truly a special time.
Even when I embarked on my first few visits to Japan in the late 90s, it was surreal to be an American in Japan (despite the fact that there was still only one Starbucks in Tokyo). Even in Tokyo, people went out of their way to be nice to me. I was treated like a celebrity everywhere I went. Families invited me to stay at their homes within minutes of meeting me. I scored plenty of dates.
Sometime around the G.W. Bush Administration, the environment began to change for folks looking to move 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 other foreigners everywhere I went in Tokyo. And Starbucks too. There remained pockets in the smaller cities and the countryside where non-Japanese were still rare, but you could no longer count on celebrity status by virtue of your birth.
Another change was that a lot of Japanese municipalities were in financial trouble. The economic downturn that had hit Japan hard at the end of the 90s didn’t seem to effect the public sector very much at first, but when it came, it came down hard. Many towns went bankrupt and had to negotiate to be annexed by neighboring cities. These cities were often a lot tighter with budgeting and didn’t like the idea of paying full-time wages and benefits to entry-level teachers with no teaching ability. Private dispatch companies began to pop up everywhere.
Meanwhile, businesses based in English education were experiencing rapid growth. Anyone and everyone with native-level English was getting hired by companies like NOVA to teach cookie-cutter lessons to Japanese customers who paid exorbitant prices on long-term contracts. It sounds like a model for massive profit in the short run, but eventually, people began to notice what a bad set-up it was, and NOVA fell into bankruptcy in 2007.
Just when I was thinking about returning to Japan after a short hiatus back in the States, the market was inundated with thousands of desperate former NOVA teachers willing to work for peanuts so they could afford airfare back home. Let me just say, it was a challenging job market to be competing in.
To find quality employment in Japan now is much tougher than it was back in the day. Honestly, even just a few years ago. There is a lot more competition, beginning salaries are much lower, and being foreign is just not all that special anymore.
So how can you improve your chance of finding work? Quite simply, you must prepare.
From 2010, English will be a required subject for elementary 5th and 6th graders. Conversation schools have watched NOVA’s collapse 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 uncertainty and the meteoric rise of some of Japan’s Asian neighbors, Japanese businesses are placing a premium on language skills. Television programs often feature visits to Chinese and Korean schools full of happy students speaking 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 not have noticed, but there’s this thing we call the internet now. Yes, I’m aware it’s been around a while, but for most people in the world, instant global communication is a very new development, and most Japanese are still learning to use it. The exciting 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 find out what’s going on in places they find more exciting than where they are.
Speaking of excitement, many Japanese are really into travel, especially young women. At times it seems 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 big demand for people to teach English conversation while skipping all the formal rules everybody hates having to study in junior high school.
Not everyone is someone wishing to become an edutainment pro. The world is full of various kinds of people with different talents and skills and likes and dislikes. Unfortunately, most Japanese people have the image that all non-Japanese people are white Americans who exist for the sole purpose of teaching English. It is wrong, and it’s silly, but there’s a reason that the almost all non-asian foreign residents of Japan are English teachers. It’s an easy job to get.
Even if you aren’t interested in being a teacher for very long, I suggest you try it out, either as a path to something better, or for additional income. Japanese people will tend to assume that you are an English teacher anyway, so you may as well profit from that assumption.
Still, I know that many readers have higher aspirations for their futures than to be a foreign language teacher. I know I do. The good news is that there are all kinds of ways to get paid for being here. The not-as-good news is that some of them are more difficult to find than the ubiquitous teaching jobs.
Finding employment in Japan is not like finding employment where you are now. Besides the difficulties resulting from issues with international communication, relocation, and etc., you also have to deal 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 from making a mistake if you can’t deal with it. The bad news is: you will probably not be able to find your dream job in Japan unless you’ve already spent some time here.
I’m not telling 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 get 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 another country, right? I’m sure you would agree. Which is why I know you want to prepare the best possible plan to get yourself to Japan so you can start looking for the job you really want.
Times have changed, and it’s no longer enough to simply fly over and begin living the dream right away, but don’t assume it isn’t possible to live a totally fulfilling life doing what you truly love in Japan. It is quite doable, and with the right strategy, it’s inevitable.
