4 ms·

I was wondering about working in Japan - I'd love to know how the scene/pay/hours/good parts/bad parts/visa acquisition is compared to other countries.

fvbock 16y ago
the visa part can be (as in many countries - except maybe as eu citizen in another eu country) a bit annoying. as an engineer (programmer) you either need a degree or (documented) 10 yrs+ of work experience. if ou fulfill that you basically have to stick to the checklist of what to hand in in what form like sticking to an rfc. reason i mention this is that i heard of/from quite a couple of people who did not - going like "i did not have X so i handed in Y which is basically the same...". does not fly... then you either need a company "sponsoring you' or have proof that you have enough income (ie. several contracts as a freelancer). in the end it is less scary than many posts on the net make you (made me) think.
- cdavid 16y ago
  Getting a working visa is rather easy if you have a company sponsoring you - certainly much easier than for the US for a EU citizen, and much shorter. If the company has experience doing it, it can take less than 2 months between the very beginning and you getting the visa. You are almost guaranteed to get it if you have company sponsorship. OTOH, anything permanent is a chore.
robert_mygengo 16y ago
Bit more background info here (I co-founded the company that the person blogging here is working for, s'pose he'd better answer about the pay :)) http://blog.500startups.com/2011/01/24/how-to-create-a-successful-startup-in-japan-in-10-easy-steps/ http://blog.500startups.com/2011/01/24/how-to-create-a-succe... Visa: If you have a college degree and/or significant experience it helps a lot but we know people who've managed to self-sponsor with just the experience. But working for a traditional Japanese company is normally a soul-crushing experience for foreigners. There are not a lot of startups here :)
- white_devil 16y ago
  How exactly does visa-self-sponsorship work? Is it required that you've had a company-sponsored visa before applying for self-sponsorship (or can you self-sponsor your first visa)? How is it determined whether you are allowed to self-sponsor?
  - patio11 16y ago
    It's complicated. This is one of my favorite hacking-a-non-technical system situations: you are allowed to self-sponsor if you can convince the examining clerk that you are allowed to self-sponsor. Points in favor: you are capable of writing a letter in support of your application which repeat the requirements of the Japanese immigration law and convinces him you pass them, you have contracts and invoices which demonstrate a level of income that the clerk accepts (variously phrased as "enough to live on", "more than the average Japanese person", or "3 million yen" -- he has wide discretion here) plus tax receipts which match them for the latest year, you have an attorney or someone in your corner who knows how the game is played, and in general your comportment and presentation scream Desirable Foreigner. Can you self-sponsor your first visa? Do you want the technical answer or the useful answer here? Technically, yes, I suppose you could. It would help if you have a stamped letter from the Emperor attesting that your freelance web programming skills are the only thing standing between Japan and total annihilation. If you have that letter, I'd give you fifty-fifty odds.
    - white_devil 16y ago
      Are the tax receipts and attorney really necessary? Can you self-sponsor your first visa? Do you want the technical answer or the useful answer here? Technically, yes, I suppose you could. It would help if you have a stamped letter from the Emperor attesting that your freelance web programming skills are the only thing standing between Japan and total annihilation. If you have that letter, I'd give you fifty-fifty odds. I can't imagine what the reason for turning a simple "No" into an outburst of snide verbal masturbation was.
patio11 16y ago
How's working in $YOUR_NATION? A fairly diverse experience, right? You've got scrappy startup programmers and 7-11 clerks and toilet-plunging janitors and people kept on a government payroll for no discernible reason, right? We have those, too. Whatever job conditions you have seen, we almost certainly have someone here. Concrete for techies, work at myGengo is very different than being a salaryman at a particular Japanese multinational I have intimate experience of. That multinational is different from Toyota. Toyota is very much not Sony. There's a raft of Big Freaking Foreign Megacorps in Tokyo and the experience of working for them is, I'm told, not salarymanesque and also different from their home offices.
- aapl 16y ago
  So assuming I would be interested in gaining employment in Japan, which I actually am, working for a BFFM in Tokyo would be one of the better options to pursue? Any particular ones that you have heard to be nice places to work?
  - patio11 16y ago
    From HN meetups, which is most of my exposure to the Tokyo tech grapevine, I have heard good things about a gigantic multinational advertising firm and an assortment of finance companies. Tokyo's a big place and every industry you've ever heard of, and most multinationals in those industries, has some presence there.
    - bluedanieru 16y ago
      How do I get into these HN meetups.
      - gwilkes 16y ago
        I went to my first one last month a week after the earthquake and saw it here on HN. You should definitely come out for the next one which will probably show up here: http://blog.makeleaps.com http://blog.makeleaps.com It looks like the founders of MakeLeaps (po and jason_tko on HN) have been organizing them roughly every two months for about a year now. I was thinking of bugging them pretty soon to see when they were thinking of having the next meetup.
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nandemo 16y ago
The Good: very safe country; Tokyo is an amazing city; public transportation is extensive and fairly cheap (no need to have a car); good, inexpensive food; no tipping; if you are a straight guy, dating will be somewhat easier than in Silicon Valley. The Bad: as Robert says, working at Japanese companies can be soul-crushing; IT salaries are much lower than in comparable US areas; foreign web/software companies' presence here is very small in terms of R&D; rent in Tokyo is expensive; jobs that use English or otherwise hire foreigners are extremely concentrated in Tokyo; most Japanese cannot speak English, you need to learn Japanese; Japanese is not easy; many train lines in Tokyo are somewhat crowded. The Ugly: Tokyo is ugly; you cannot easily get permanent residence even if you're married to a Japanese person, has a job and have lived here for years; most tenants refuse to rent to foreigners (discrimination is not illegal); we are subject to somewhat big earthquakes.
- w1ntermute 16y ago
  > if you are a straight guy, dating will be somewhat easier than in Silicon Valley. Only "somewhat"? Haven't you read Charisma Man? Dating in Japan is like paradise for a nerd if you like Asian women. Actually, even Caucasian women are easier to get in Japan because you'll have no competition because all the other Caucasian guys will be with Japanese women.
  - nandemo 16y ago
    Yeah, I meant it as an understatement (same for "somewhat big earthquakes").
  - bluedanieru 16y ago
    I have never gotten this. And I've been here eight years. You're wrong afaik :-)
- bluedanieru 16y ago
  The rent situation is accurate, in that discrimination is not illegal. On the other hand, it is definitely not something that prevents you from getting a decent place full stop, by any means. And none of my married (to Japanese) friends report any trouble at all, for that matter. And permanent residence is certainly on the table if you've been here long enough. The dating scene is awful though, don't let anyone tell you different :-)
rdouble 16y ago
It's hard to get a visa. The pay is bad and the hours are bad, but you can sometimes skip out early because you're the white guy. I don't think it's even possible to get a visa - I just worked under the table. You can't rent an apartment legally without a Japanese guy signing your lease. The scene is weird. If you're white you get lumped in with the gaijin weirdo underclass by default. You end up meeting a bunch of shady characters who you'd probably never have to deal with back in your home country. One interesting detail is that train fare for everyone with a job in Japan is paid for by their employer. But not you. At one point I was paying 3x as much for the train than I was paying in rent. This is my experience working at a small firm. If you can work for somewhere like Morgan Stanley you'll have good hours, good pay, they'll find you an apartment, pay for your trains, and so forth. You'll still have to deal with the weirdo scene. However, the banking scene is filled with creeps everywhere, so it probably won't be much different people than back home. My advice to any non-Japanese considering working in Japan is to skip it unless you're a "big in Japan" underground celebrity. It would be great to be a semi-famous DJ or artiste in Tokyo. Working a typical programming job... not so much. That all said Japan is a really fun place to hang out. It's just not a really fun place to work. Edit: this was 10 years ago.
- bluedanieru 16y ago
  Wow. Can you be a bit more specific? My experience is mostly opposite to yours in most respects, actually, but I've heard similar horror stories so I'm curious to know how you are (were) trying to get by. I don't think you're entirely typical though. Send me a mail if you're uncomfortable discussing here (although it does seem you've already left?) (The apartment bit is not accurate, btw, and neither is the visa, compared to the States.) At any rate, just a quick point of order that the parent may not be an entirely typical case. I know a guy working at smart.fm (or whatever they call themselves now) and he's having a good time of it.
  - rdouble 16y ago
    This was 10 years ago. Maybe my comment seems too negative. It wasn't really a horror story. That's interesting if you don't need a guarantor to rent an apartment anymore, I'll have to ask my friends over there about that. When I lived there the housing options were either: have Japanese guarantor, rent from Yakuza owned building in Ugusudani, or pay $5000/m for luxo month-to-month rental. I guess the other non-guarantor option would have been to sub-lease from a Japanese person going abroad for a while.

fvbock 16y ago

the visa part can be (as in many countries - except maybe as eu citizen in another eu country) a bit annoying. as an engineer (programmer) you either need a degree or (documented) 10 yrs+ of work experience. if ou fulfill that you basically have to stick to the checklist of what to hand in in what form like sticking to an rfc. reason i mention this is that i heard of/from quite a couple of people who did not - going like "i did not have X so i handed in Y which is basically the same...". does not fly... then you either need a company "sponsoring you' or have proof that you have enough income (ie. several contracts as a freelancer). in the end it is less scary than many posts on the net make you (made me) think.

cdavid 16y ago
Getting a working visa is rather easy if you have a company sponsoring you - certainly much easier than for the US for a EU citizen, and much shorter. If the company has experience doing it, it can take less than 2 months between the very beginning and you getting the visa. You are almost guaranteed to get it if you have company sponsorship. OTOH, anything permanent is a chore.

robert_mygengo 16y ago

Bit more background info here (I co-founded the company that the person blogging here is working for, s'pose he'd better answer about the pay :)) http://blog.500startups.com/2011/01/24/how-to-create-a-successful-startup-in-japan-in-10-easy-steps/ http://blog.500startups.com/2011/01/24/how-to-create-a-succe... Visa: If you have a college degree and/or significant experience it helps a lot but we know people who've managed to self-sponsor with just the experience. But working for a traditional Japanese company is normally a soul-crushing experience for foreigners. There are not a lot of startups here :)

white_devil 16y ago
How exactly does visa-self-sponsorship work? Is it required that you've had a company-sponsored visa before applying for self-sponsorship (or can you self-sponsor your first visa)? How is it determined whether you are allowed to self-sponsor?
- patio11 16y ago
  It's complicated. This is one of my favorite hacking-a-non-technical system situations: you are allowed to self-sponsor if you can convince the examining clerk that you are allowed to self-sponsor. Points in favor: you are capable of writing a letter in support of your application which repeat the requirements of the Japanese immigration law and convinces him you pass them, you have contracts and invoices which demonstrate a level of income that the clerk accepts (variously phrased as "enough to live on", "more than the average Japanese person", or "3 million yen" -- he has wide discretion here) plus tax receipts which match them for the latest year, you have an attorney or someone in your corner who knows how the game is played, and in general your comportment and presentation scream Desirable Foreigner. Can you self-sponsor your first visa? Do you want the technical answer or the useful answer here? Technically, yes, I suppose you could. It would help if you have a stamped letter from the Emperor attesting that your freelance web programming skills are the only thing standing between Japan and total annihilation. If you have that letter, I'd give you fifty-fifty odds.
  - white_devil 16y ago
    Are the tax receipts and attorney really necessary? Can you self-sponsor your first visa? Do you want the technical answer or the useful answer here? Technically, yes, I suppose you could. It would help if you have a stamped letter from the Emperor attesting that your freelance web programming skills are the only thing standing between Japan and total annihilation. If you have that letter, I'd give you fifty-fifty odds. I can't imagine what the reason for turning a simple "No" into an outburst of snide verbal masturbation was.

patio11 16y ago

How's working in $YOUR_NATION? A fairly diverse experience, right? You've got scrappy startup programmers and 7-11 clerks and toilet-plunging janitors and people kept on a government payroll for no discernible reason, right? We have those, too. Whatever job conditions you have seen, we almost certainly have someone here. Concrete for techies, work at myGengo is very different than being a salaryman at a particular Japanese multinational I have intimate experience of. That multinational is different from Toyota. Toyota is very much not Sony. There's a raft of Big Freaking Foreign Megacorps in Tokyo and the experience of working for them is, I'm told, not salarymanesque and also different from their home offices.

aapl 16y ago
So assuming I would be interested in gaining employment in Japan, which I actually am, working for a BFFM in Tokyo would be one of the better options to pursue? Any particular ones that you have heard to be nice places to work?
- patio11 16y ago
  From HN meetups, which is most of my exposure to the Tokyo tech grapevine, I have heard good things about a gigantic multinational advertising firm and an assortment of finance companies. Tokyo's a big place and every industry you've ever heard of, and most multinationals in those industries, has some presence there.
  - bluedanieru 16y ago
    How do I get into these HN meetups.
    - gwilkes 16y ago
      I went to my first one last month a week after the earthquake and saw it here on HN. You should definitely come out for the next one which will probably show up here: http://blog.makeleaps.com http://blog.makeleaps.com It looks like the founders of MakeLeaps (po and jason_tko on HN) have been organizing them roughly every two months for about a year now. I was thinking of bugging them pretty soon to see when they were thinking of having the next meetup.

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nandemo 16y ago

The Good: very safe country; Tokyo is an amazing city; public transportation is extensive and fairly cheap (no need to have a car); good, inexpensive food; no tipping; if you are a straight guy, dating will be somewhat easier than in Silicon Valley. The Bad: as Robert says, working at Japanese companies can be soul-crushing; IT salaries are much lower than in comparable US areas; foreign web/software companies' presence here is very small in terms of R&D; rent in Tokyo is expensive; jobs that use English or otherwise hire foreigners are extremely concentrated in Tokyo; most Japanese cannot speak English, you need to learn Japanese; Japanese is not easy; many train lines in Tokyo are somewhat crowded. The Ugly: Tokyo is ugly; you cannot easily get permanent residence even if you're married to a Japanese person, has a job and have lived here for years; most tenants refuse to rent to foreigners (discrimination is not illegal); we are subject to somewhat big earthquakes.

w1ntermute 16y ago
> if you are a straight guy, dating will be somewhat easier than in Silicon Valley. Only "somewhat"? Haven't you read Charisma Man? Dating in Japan is like paradise for a nerd if you like Asian women. Actually, even Caucasian women are easier to get in Japan because you'll have no competition because all the other Caucasian guys will be with Japanese women.
- nandemo 16y ago
  Yeah, I meant it as an understatement (same for "somewhat big earthquakes").
- bluedanieru 16y ago
  I have never gotten this. And I've been here eight years. You're wrong afaik :-)
bluedanieru 16y ago
The rent situation is accurate, in that discrimination is not illegal. On the other hand, it is definitely not something that prevents you from getting a decent place full stop, by any means. And none of my married (to Japanese) friends report any trouble at all, for that matter. And permanent residence is certainly on the table if you've been here long enough. The dating scene is awful though, don't let anyone tell you different :-)

rdouble 16y ago

It's hard to get a visa. The pay is bad and the hours are bad, but you can sometimes skip out early because you're the white guy. I don't think it's even possible to get a visa - I just worked under the table. You can't rent an apartment legally without a Japanese guy signing your lease. The scene is weird. If you're white you get lumped in with the gaijin weirdo underclass by default. You end up meeting a bunch of shady characters who you'd probably never have to deal with back in your home country. One interesting detail is that train fare for everyone with a job in Japan is paid for by their employer. But not you. At one point I was paying 3x as much for the train than I was paying in rent. This is my experience working at a small firm. If you can work for somewhere like Morgan Stanley you'll have good hours, good pay, they'll find you an apartment, pay for your trains, and so forth. You'll still have to deal with the weirdo scene. However, the banking scene is filled with creeps everywhere, so it probably won't be much different people than back home. My advice to any non-Japanese considering working in Japan is to skip it unless you're a "big in Japan" underground celebrity. It would be great to be a semi-famous DJ or artiste in Tokyo. Working a typical programming job... not so much. That all said Japan is a really fun place to hang out. It's just not a really fun place to work. Edit: this was 10 years ago.

bluedanieru 16y ago
Wow. Can you be a bit more specific? My experience is mostly opposite to yours in most respects, actually, but I've heard similar horror stories so I'm curious to know how you are (were) trying to get by. I don't think you're entirely typical though. Send me a mail if you're uncomfortable discussing here (although it does seem you've already left?) (The apartment bit is not accurate, btw, and neither is the visa, compared to the States.) At any rate, just a quick point of order that the parent may not be an entirely typical case. I know a guy working at smart.fm (or whatever they call themselves now) and he's having a good time of it.
- rdouble 16y ago
  This was 10 years ago. Maybe my comment seems too negative. It wasn't really a horror story. That's interesting if you don't need a guarantor to rent an apartment anymore, I'll have to ask my friends over there about that. When I lived there the housing options were either: have Japanese guarantor, rent from Yakuza owned building in Ugusudani, or pay $5000/m for luxo month-to-month rental. I guess the other non-guarantor option would have been to sub-lease from a Japanese person going abroad for a while.