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Doing Business in Japan
- sparkzilla 12y agoAn excellent article. Those interested in going to Japan to work, or to start a company should know that, especially in Tokyo, it's not necessary to be a salaryman, or to speak that great Japanese to start a company there. I ran a successful media business with over 30 staff there there for 14 years. There are many, many Japanese who are outside the salaryman system who are happy to work on new and exciting projects, and it's much easier than ever before to get projects off the ground.
- matthewwiese 12y agoFantastic article, read all the way through it.
- tptacek 12y agoThis is the longest setup to the best punch line about Google ever.
- petecooper 12y agoRelated to this, Derek Sivers (formerly CD Baby, now of Wood Egg) has a range of annual guidebooks [1] aimed at entrepreneurs moving to and/or starting a business in Asia. 14 countries covered individually, or the whole range in a single volume. I have read a selection of them, more for curiosity than need, and I'd recommend shortlisting them should a relocation be on the cards. [1] http://woodegg.com http://woodegg.com
- sumedh 12y agoThanks
- gknoy 12y agoFrom reading previous things of patio11's, this has not yet surprised me much -- but I am blown away by the depths of details he's included here. I've only finished the section on the salaryman relationship, and it's phenomenal reading. Edit: the link to "An Introduction to Japanese Society" seems to be broken. Try this if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Japanese-Society-Yoshio-Sugimoto/dp/0521705193/ http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Japanese-Society-Yoshio-S...
- patio11 12y agoThanks, fixed it. I can never remember which parts of Amazon URLs are safe to cut off.
- msherry 12y agoA bit off-topic, but why not make it a referral link? I clicked it (when it was still broken, unfortunately), and imagine others will, too. You have a popular blog with not-insignificant hn traffic, I believe -- I don't think many here would begrudge you that.
- patio11 12y agoI don't take money for promotion, as a matter of policy. Partly that is for aesthetic reasons and partly it is because a reputation as being honest and reliable regardless of short-term commercial incentives is very valuable for me. Also, work the conversion math out if you'd like: 40k visits, 5% will open that link, 3% will purchase, ~8% affiliate fee on $15 book = $72. My weekly rate is $30,000. This post took, essentially, half a work-week to write. It's not worth bothering with.
- Danieru 12y agoWell if it means anything I thought it was a 15K grade post. But I'm concerned that you either woke up at 5am to read comments, or you stayed up all night.
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- crdr88 12y agoI was just reading about what Andreesen had to say why America is a good innovative country. This was a nice supplement. Thanks for the article.
- patio11 12y agoYou're welcome. FWIW, one of the most commonly believed things about Japan (domestically and internationally) that I believe is dangerously false is some variant of "Japan is not good at coming up with original ideas. It is good at perfecting ideas made elsewhere." There exist fields/time periods/etc where Japan has clear sustained leadership in innovation, just as there exist fields/time periods/etc where the same is true of the US. "CRUD web applications between 2004 and 2014" has not been a particularly great example of Japanese technology leadership. Videogames in the 80s/90s/2000s or "Every mobile music device prior to the iPod" or "Robots, 1970 through present, excluding drones 2010-2014" or "Cell phones considered as hardware artifacts, prior to the iPhone turning them into software platforms" are all good examples.
- the_cat_kittles 12y agoits amazing what a few sentences can do to dispel that pervasive belief.
- bstrand 12y agoThe first half is demonstrably false; the second half--Japan excels at perfecting imported ideas--seems more accurate to me. What's your take?
- tsotha 12y ago>FWIW, one of the most commonly believed things about Japan (domestically and internationally) that I believe is dangerously false is some variant of "Japan is not good at coming up with original ideas. It is good at perfecting ideas made elsewhere." Did anyone ever really believe that? When a company is new to a market or behind the market leader they tend to copy the leader and add their own small innovations. That's what the Japanese did in the '70s and '80s. When they took the lead in an industry they were the ones doing the innovation, for the most part. I remember the "Japan is going to take over the world!" days. American companies (and workers) were fond of saying the Japanese never had an original idea, but even then it was obviously sour grapes from incumbents facing determined competition. You hear the same thing about China today, and it's just as wrong.
- robbiet480 12y agoIs there as great of a guide as this for the US? I'm an American citizen (by birth) but have many friends that want to move over for work here and I am a horrible explainer.
- tlb 12y agoI would like a book, Introduction to American Society. While there are thousands of books addressing some slice or theme, I don't know of a single-volume overview.
- ianmcgowan 12y agoThat would be a tough book to write. As a (still) English citizen living in the US for 25 years, the thing that amazes me is how varied everything is. It's less homogeneous than anywhere I've lived or visited, taken as a whole. Can you compare SF to Fort Wayne, NY to Toledo or Chicago to Tallahassee in any meaningful way?
- eastbayjake 12y agoSomeone on HN previously posted "Which of the 11 American nations do you live in?" And while I don't agree with all of these -- Dallas and Austin are certainly not "Greater Appalachia" and probably deserve some kind of Texas "nation" of their own like "Tidewater" -- it's certainly true that "American Society" has many distinct parts. (Moving from Colorado to Connecticut to Mississippi felt like living abroad in three separate countries.) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/wh...
- markolschesky 12y agoIt's not exactly a guide about our work culture, but "Xenophobe's Guide to the Americans" does a pretty good job at succinctly describing some of our cultural quirks. http://www.xenophobes.com/the-americans/ http://www.xenophobes.com/the-americans/
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- jacquesm 12y ago> Your company loves you and wants you to be happy, though, so they’ll suggest two days for your honeymoon, two if a parent passes away, and one if your wife passes away. You can take that Saturday off, too, because the company is generous. There, that’s like four full days — five, if you time it with a public holiday. I can't help but wonder how one would time the demise of one's wife to coincide with a public holiday.
- djloche 12y agoWhile 'your honeymoon' could have been used in place of 'it' - I think in context, 'it' is the only one of the things in the list that is something 'planned'. Perhaps parenthesis could have been used for clarification on this if the main discussion is about the honeymoon. eg. "so they’ll suggest two days for your honeymoon (and two if a parent passes away, and one if your wife passes away).
- cperciva 12y agoThere is some evidence that Americans will schedule their deaths in order to save on taxes (http://www.columbia.edu/~wk2110/bin/dying-final.pdf http://www.columbia.edu/~wk2110/bin/dying-final.pdf). I wouldn't be surprised if the cultural equivalent is scheduling one's death to give your loved ones more vacation time...
- jacquesm 12y agoVery sad.
- sfrank2147 12y agoAs the paper mentions, it's also possible that people are lying to the IRS about the date of relatives' deaths. (I personally think that's the more likely interpretation, but I guess it depends on your priors).
- wildman2 12y agoTL DR; OP is another white guy w/ Asian fetish. Before I even started to read the article I knew op had a Japanese wife, as is the case w/ 100% of these. Also OP is a Japanese-wannabe, aka secretly deep down inside wishes he was Japanese, but he realizes that Japanese society will never accept him as one of their own despite living there for 10+ years and being fluent and literate in the language. I'm surprised he didn't talk about that part.
- smanatstpete 12y agoInteresting read and captivatingly well-written. OT question: How long does it take you to write such pieces? I am trying to better myself in expressing written opinion and looking at these examples I am feeling more intimidated than encouraged. Thanks.
- patio11 12y agoThis particular post took roughly 20 hours, spread over four days. That's rather longer than typical for me -- usually, I get a post out in a single workday, but this ended up being longer than usual and it needed a tone edit or three. (The first draft felt bitter/cynical, which is a piece of my relationship to salarymanhood, but only a piece.)
- aragot 12y agoGiven what you described, I was admirative that you succeded to avoid the "cynical" tone. Good skills.
- jayvanguard 12y agoVery well written and balanced, the time was worth it.
- johan_larson 12y ago"In an ideal world there would be no racists, but in the less than ideal world that you may find yourself living in, at least hope to run into ruthlessly capitalist racists, because that’s something you can work with." Best line in months.
- e_modad 12y agoThe whole time I was thinking "Man, this is crazy, don't they see how that hurts productivity?" And then I thought about Europe compared to the United States. To our European colleagues: Do you think of us as working ourselves to death?
- Cookingboy 12y agoExcept from the actual productivity angle, Silicon Valley (and to a larger extent, the U.S. economy) do have the most to show in terms of final results when compared to the rest of the world.
- _delirium 12y agoBy what measure does Silicon Valley have good final results to show? Simply GDP per capita or something of that sort? I lived in the SF Bay Area for years, and I left in part because it was such a bad place to live, which to me does not seem like a very good showing. I now live in Copenhagen, and if you want to talk about results to show for an economy, Copenhagen is better in every way I can think of. It's just a nicer place to live. It has less poverty, lower crime, lower incarceration, better transit, better healthcare, sidewalks are not covered in human feces, homeless rate is massively lower, housing is more affordable, there is a more experimental startup culture, offices are more affordable, unemployment is low, etc. I can believe that SF is richer numerically, but walking around Copenhagen subjectively feels like a much more economically successful city. SF's is a weird kind of segregated wealth: there are some very rich people, driving expensive cars and living in penthouses, but the area overall has a lot of poverty and a ton of social problems, and does not subjectively feel wealthy to me. If I have to worry about stepping in feces or being mugged, to me that is not a mark of a particularly successful economic system, or the mark of an area that is desirable to live in.
- dashboardfront 12y agoMan. I studied in Copenhagen, and I really disliked the place. It was a sentiment shared by a lot of the international students I ran into, sans the ones on exchange. The variety of stores, the opening hours, the size of grocery, the limited food selection, and especially the unwelcoming culture got to me pretty quickly. How are you integrating into the Danish culture (assuming you're not a native Dane)?
- shinymark 12y agoI lived and worked in Japan for a few years and can vouch for everything the author said. I worked in the game industry in Japan and the salaries were terrible. Salaries were half or less compared to California, while the cost of living in Tokyo was similar (at least back then, it could easily be more expensive in the Bay Area now). I ended up leaving my job to do consulting from home for clients both in Japan and abroad and more than doubled my income. Living abroad was a a great experience though. The process of studying a new language and using it in day to day life successfully was incredibly satisfying. I'd love to do that again in another country.
- 12423gsd 12y agoI wouldn't be surprised if in the US salaries drop in the coming decade. CS classes are incredibly impacted and universities are churning out students. Sure the quality of your average graduate is plummeting too, but that's never completely factored-in when you apply to a job
- hcho 12y agoI would be very surprised if it did. The problem has never been the number of people who can do the job, but who's willing to do the job.
- antimora 12y agoMost CS students at my universities were international students for the past 15 years. Even if all were to stay in the US, the immigration laws for foreign are designed to protect the US jobs. So unless the laws and demand for workers change, I doubt salaries would drop.
- HillRat 12y agoActually, the number of CS and Engineering degrees as a percentage of all awarded degrees hasn't appreciably changed -- 8.1%, slightly up over the past several years but still significantly below the ~9% average of the 1990s and 1985's high-water mark of 14.1%. With CS-related employment growing at twice the projected job growth average, I don't see the modest number of CS grads negatively affecting sector wage growth.
- hardwaresofton 12y agoFantastic in depth guide. The salaries have kept me from returning to Japan for years now. One question - I was informed that only a Japanese citizen (national) can create a traditional company... Is that not true (OP kind of touches it but kind of doesn't answer my question as far as I read)
- patio11 12y agoFalse, though depending on your status of residence that could potentially create trouble for you with regards to immigration. Speak to your friendly neighborhood attorney if you want confirmation.
- glimcat 12y agoAt a minimum, one could start an American company, which could at some point start a Japanese office (with all the accordant overhead in terms of paperwork and politicking, including the usual risk of immigration taking a dim view or otherwise filing your paperwork in the "do not pass go" column). How closely that approximates the desired scenario with regards to e.g. hiring and social signalling is another question. It would presumably be bounded by the status of e.g. Microsoft Japan, which is in turn bounded by Sony. Which is to say, not as good, but possibly good enough for most intents which don't involve hiring new grads shoulder-to-shoulder with Sony.
- hardwaresofton 12y agoYeah, that is the easiest way to do it, and I think with Abe's supposed promises to favor/help startups, this would be a good time for something like that to fly with a 1-5 person "company"
- hardwaresofton 12y agoGlad to hear it!
- rheide 12y agoThis was utterly fascinating. Is there a Japanese version of this? I would love to rub it in some people's faces.
- thedufer 12y agoA truly awful automated translation of the Japanese at the beginning of the post seems to say that he's in the process of doing the translation but welcomes help from someone who could do it faster. So I would assume it doesn't exist yet but will.
- drzaiusapelord 12y agoThis really does sound like working in a union shop in the US, especially as a public sector worker. Seniority, loyalty, etc matter and things like competence and productivity are someone else's problem. Jobs are wielded as political weapons (The Democratic Party leader in Illinois, Mike Madigan famously has a list of every union job he's gifted and calls on favors from that list), etc. Inefficiencies are continually introduced. I find the far-left often bemoans a lack of paternal aspects in US society, by my god, this blog posting horrified me. I would feel to trapped and powerless in that structure. I think it also explains the milquetoast offers, especially in regards to software, these types of companies deliver. There's something wonderfully rebellious and wild about US culture, in general, that leads to enough weirdness that somehow gets results. All the early pioneers of the things I love were pretty out there and let their freak flag fly. I can't imagine personalities like these thriving in that type of environment.
- ry0ohki 12y agoI see what you are saying, but it's also almost the complete opposite of a union shop. The huge differences that you don't have to work outside of 8 hour day (without time and a half pay) and you are also paid more than non-union people, but basically guaranteed pension and job for life if you get in.
- hueving 12y agoThe system you just described encourages incompetence. Drag jobs out to as long as possible to force overtime if you need some extra cash. Don't bother putting effort into your work because you are all but impossible to fire. Additionally, refuse to do things just barely outside of your job scope because that falls under a different union worker's responsibility and you are concerned about growing the union, not doing good work.
- jarek 12y agoLuckily the wonderfully rebellious and wild US non-union culture definitely doesn't encourage incompetence and fraud. That Color thing never happened.
- kazinator 12y agoLanguage lesson, how to answer the bank manager (and not have him believe you): Q: Will you use the card to buy alcohol? A: ゼッテーそんなことしないぞ！ :)
- notastartup 12y agoWhile reading the article, I'm also reminded of the working culture in Vancouver tech scene without any of the benefits a worker might receive in Silicon Valley. Just crappier pay, crazy uncompensated overtime, next to nothing in terms of salary bump. You don't like the long hours of work with meager pay and high living costs? You don't like coming in on the weekend? You don't like leaving at 9+ pm? Quit and good luck finding a job in the tech scene here, forever banished to the life of high hourly wages from contract jobs serving some American overlord, getting paid for overtime, not having to commute for hours in the crap public transportation system.
- raquo 12y agoYou've lost me at "crap public transportation system". Bash Vancouver all you want, but public transit is one of the awesome things about it.
- notastartup 12y agohttp://www.railforthevalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Abandon-SkyTrain-4.jpg http://www.railforthevalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/A...
- raquo 12y agoSo? Outages happen in any transit system. It's not like it happens often. Vancouver public transit is much better than in other cities, especially in North America.
- notastartup 12y agolol then you have not lived here long enough. not many people here really boast about it because we all know bc transit is a dysfunctional garbage trainwreck. yes outages are common, bus drivers are jerks, its filled with weird fucking people all the time. I don't know any native vancouverite who'd claim it was anywhere close to the best. Yeah, it's pretty great if you come from Detroit or some far off remote city in the states.
- html5web 12y ago興味深い記事を書いていただきありがとうございます。
- myth_buster 12y agoI think the trick to have a good work-life balance in Japan is to work for an MNC from a different country. The reason for this is that they bring their own work culture there and don't mimic the Japanese one. This lets you have time to explore the fascinating society that is Japan. If I get an offer to work there again , I would pick it up in a heartbeat (provided my wife agrees to relocate). I'd life altering experiences there. Edit: Just remembered that there was a company policy that no one should stay in office after 6PM in which case your manager will be called in to reason the next day.
- badname 12y agoA bit into the article I had the strangest feeling I was reading a dark Orwellian story. OMG - is _that_ how Japanese employees spent their lives?! I wonder what the suicide rates are over there.
- jacquesm 12y ago> I wonder what the suicide rates are over there. High. Japan is in the top 10 countries world wide, roughly twice as many suicides per million as in the United States.
- whycanti 12y agothe interesting thing is why? did you get rejected by american society (aka girls)? or you just have some asian fetish (yellow fever)? cause the thing I noticed about these posts, is its some white geek moving to Asia, and 100% of the time he has an asian girlfriend/wife native to the country. and then all the people who chime in saying lived there too or currently lives there are in the same situation. deep down inside they wish they really fit in like a local. not a single one of these white guys moving to asia has a white gf/wife.
- dkrich 12y agoThe overall theme (as an American who has never visited Japan) seems to be one of risk-aversion vs. risk-insensitivity. In the U.S., the culture embraces risk and risk-takers, if most of us don't actually live out these ideals ourselves. It seems employees in Japan don't want to risk unemployment, while companies don't want to risk losing employees, while apartments don't want to risk extending credit to anybody who doesn't have a job with a recognized company. In the U.S. it could certainly be argued that we're way too credit and risk embracing. However, it's also very likely that most of our economic growth in the last century is because we've been able to get credit and that we're a society that takes risks. Americans can be irresponsible, but this description sounds like the other extreme.
- jmadsen 12y agoFrom living in Japan for 11 years, I would say that is a very astute observation. Japanese are extremely risk-averse, and extremely safety-minded in general. It is helpful to keep that in mind when considering the "weirdness" of many things they do. Add to this a strong sense of community first - which means that it is more important that you fit into a readily understood place in society, the company, etc. A self-employed foreigner? We don't have a checkbox for him. His name doesn't fit into our kanji boxes. What if he doesn't take the garbage out in the correct manner? It sounds ridiculous, but it's really no more than "that's not how we do things around here" you'll find anywhere, but taken to an extreme. That said, I find most people to be quite kind and helpful. The system is what usually gives the problems.
- akassover 12y ago"What if he doesn't take the garbage out in the correct manner?" Funny example. We stayed at a place rented through airbnb last weekend in Tokyo that had a three ring binder containing only a 10 page guide on how to properly sorry the recycling. And even with that, I'm 100% sure we got it wrong.
- obviouslygreen 12y agoYep, the recycling/trash system is nightmarish. Furnishing a new apartment (they don't typically come with anything, including a washer or fridge) results in a huge amount of packaging (the Japanese absolutely love to box, rebox, bag, rebag, wrap, rewrap, etc.) which makes your first month a very nasty lesson in how trash pickup works and doesn't.
- notax 12y agoBecoming a salaryman sounds about as appealing as doing time. On the plus side conjugal visits are a bit more frequent.
- tzakrajs 12y agoI had much better (unfounded) opinions of Japan before reading this. Now I am sad.
- cthalupa 12y agoI'm not sure sadness or lowering your opinion of the country is necessarily the right takeaway here. I've been enamored in Japanese culture ever since I visited the country, and have gained a handful of penpals in my quest to learn 日本語 - at times we discuss the different in culture relating to employment. To them, the riskiness in American (and to a large extent Western culture in general) is insane. I am not risk averse in the slightest - I've gambled my future on gut feelings and judgement calls for as long as I can remember. But I don't think this makes me better than someone who takes a safe approach to things. Is risk taking inherently better than a safer approach? Why would it be? Our way of life sounds just as dismal to a large portion of the Japanese as the salaryman way of life does to a large portion of Americans.
- tzakrajs 12y agoI love parts of the culture and Tokyo was really fun to visit -- I will definitely will be returning soon. It was disheartening to hear of the misogyny that permeates the work culture there. It wasn't that I think they don't enjoy risk, but rather how they don't seem to exercise choice? I can't imagine being satisfied where things are so rigid. Between their socially conservative laws, the misogyny and rigidity of employment, the idea of working there is really off putting.
- cthalupa 12y agoI'll give you the misogyny, but that is something that is honestly changing - and a lot of female Japanese professionals are actually refusing to date seriously or marry specifically because they don't want to give up their career and are advancing in their companies.
- buster 12y agoHow did you learn japanese? Any tips or recommendations?
- cthalupa 12y agoI'm not patio11, but I've been learning for over a year now, so hopefully I can provide some decent advice. This is purely from a self learner perspective - if you're okay with taking classes, there's a completely different direction I have no experience with. (Wall of text warning) Some general tips first: 1) Pick a method and stick with it. I bounced around from material to material, hoping to find something that just clicked and immediately made me feel like I was making progress. This was never going to happen - you need fundamentals, and it takes some time before you start to 'get it'. This is one of the toughest parts - but probably not the absolute toughest. 2) Learn the writing system. Learn the kana (Hiragana, katakana) first. This will help you in a multitude of ways, and will get you away from the awful romanizations. 3) To expand on two... Do not ignore the kanji. Yes, they seem hard and scary. There's a lot of them. A lot of them look similar. They can have multiple readings. But there's a system to them - radicals - and learning them builds vocabulary. 4) OUTPUT! Something I struggle with to this day. If you spend all of your time ingesting, and not creating, you might be able to read or listen, but then struggle when the time comes to speak or write. I'm not necessarily saying you have to learn how to write all of the kanji - though if you're wanting to live there it is very helpful. Not necessarily a deal breaker if you know the kanji and don't mind being slow at filling things out while you pull up a stroke order guide and butcher the writing - but you need to communicate with the language. Find some language exchange partners and penpals. Write back and forth. Skype. Nothing can prepare you to speak the language fluently except practice. ----------------------- Now, for some specific advice on how I would go about it based on my past experiences: 1) Pick up the Genki series of books. They're great. Two volumes, two workbooks, an answer guide. These are one of the handful of common textbooks for classes, and they have some group oriented activities in them (But there are ways to practice these elsewhere - more on that later!), but they're still one of the most comprehensive end to end guides on grammar and the fundamentals you'll need to know. Learn hiragana and katakana while working through these - after the first few chapters, the roumaji goes away. 2) While working through Genki, start using a SRS (Spaced Repetition System) to learn the kanji. There are a lot of options here. Anki + the core decks is free. It's easy to add new words from other sources - things you're wanting to read, games you're playing, etc. Wanikani is a popular one that runs on a web interface. iKnow.jp is the one I currently use, because it forces you to provide output in a handful of different ways and draw the association in more ways than just character recognition. It is not free. There are community created courses for iknow as well - including ones for genki, so you can use it to learn the vocab for a genki chapter as well. 3) Begin doing some basic output on lang-8 after a few chapters of Genki and a couple hundred kanji. You write a passage in Japanese, and a Japanese-fluent person will correct your mistakes and offer input. In return, you find a passage that someone has written in English and do the same. You can use this for your genki homework/many of the group activities. 3b) Go to the lang-8 group section and check out the skype groups. It might take a bit to find some serious language partners or pen pals, but reach out and start searching. You don't need to be fluent to muddle through some basic conversation. 4) There's some supplemental stuff out there that I've found useful - but they're not necessarily needed. Kodansha puts out a billion books on learning Japanese, and most of them have some value, but in particular, Making Sense of Japanese by Jay Rubin (Haruki Murakami's English translator) was invaluable to me in picking up several concepts that I was struggling with when learning from textbook sources. Japanese The Manga Way is also an excellent resource - it's a serious learner's resource, despite the name, and includes grammatical concepts that are covered up through the JLPT 3 test. It's very grammar oriented, so you won't really learn the vocab like you will with Genki. There's also the "Dictionary of _____ Japanese Grammar" (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced) which are very much reference books. You would not want to try to learn from them, but they can be very valuable when you need in depth clarification on a grammar point. 5) If you're at this point, you're probably delving far enough into Japanese you can find your own way when it comes to learning, but this is probably the most frustrating point for a lot of self learners. Genki was fun, you learned a lot, but you're still probably struggling to understand native material, even things that are written for a fairly young audience. You've put a lot of time and effort into it, but you're not seeing major results. There's also not really a direct sequel to Genki. The same company produces "An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese", but my opinion (Which seems to also be the prevailing one among learners) is that it just isn't as high of a quality textbook as Genki. Less fun. Less effective. There's Tobira - which is definitely a good textbook - but there is a gap between Genki and it. It's not a huge one, and you can definitely be successful starting it right after Genki, but it's a lot harder and you're going to have to be ready to reference some outside sources and ask some questions. Hopefully you've built some friendships with native penpals by now that don't mind answering questions! After you finish Tobira, though, you should be able to begin to see a light at the end of the tunnel. You're not going to be reading native Murakami or Ōe, but young adult level fiction, news articles, etc, should mostly be in your grasp grammatically. If you've been diligent with your SRS, you should have the vocab mostly down. You're still going to need to look things up to understand the finer points or random words you haven't encountered yet. But you're now past the JLPT 3 level, and probably fairly close to 2. From there textbooks are getting less and less useful, and it's time to start trying to immerse yourself in the language as much as you can, and using references for the things you don't understand. You can still pick some stuff up from things like "Authentic Japanese", and if you're taking the JLPT tests, the Kanzen Master series will be a good study guide. If you didn't pick up the Dictionary of [Basic/Intermediate/Advanced] Japanese Grammar series before, you probably should now. Cliff notes: Genki + some form of SRS to start. Keep up the SRS indefinitely to learn new vocab. Start creating output as soon as you can. The sooner, the better. Tobira is a good next step from there, though a little difficult. After that you can keep going with textbooks, but should really be trying to just ingest as much native content as possible and look up anything you don't understand.
- aragot 12y ago> No, really, the most formidable Japanese low-touch SaaS entrepreneur I know figured out how to sell SaaS door-to-door in Tokyo.” Seriously, from all the inefficiencies pointed out in this article, how is the economy of Japan not in the verge of collapse? - They spend hours choosing the text of buttons, - they're expected to learn the Way We Do Things In This Company until their 30s, - they attend work for extended hours, - the workforce capacities are planned dozens of years in advance, - decision-making is centralized in the hands of the major companies, investments are interlocked between company-arranged rents, company-arranged investments and company-arranged paperwork, - and they have competition from foreign products which were produced by more officient economies, e.g. the iPhone I guess there are other employment markets like France and Russia which have friction too, and others like China which may lack the special salt of SV to be exactly as dominating, but how come Japan still succeeds to have major companies and keep selling products?
- x0x0 12y agoThere's countervailing inefficiencies in America. Just to touch on a few: We don't train people; they're expected to self-finance virtually all training. This often leads to a severely undertrained workforce, partially masked by immigration. When potential employees self-direct training, it also leads to mismatches between employer needs and employee training. Following the lead of employers, employees have discovered theres no loyalty at all and hence treat employment as an adversarial relationship. Witness, eg, the bullshit from asshole Mark Suster. Your employer retains the right to drop you for any reason, or no reason at all, with no termination pay or help... but you better not go down the street for a better offer. Loyalty flows upwards only! It's an enormous risk to develop very deep skills in a tiny niche: that niche may go out of need, and as an employee, you're just fucked. No serious assistance retraining. Zero assurance that, after your one year of unemployment benefits are up, society won't shrug and say, "Tough fucking luck; welcome to poverty." The incredible overpriced mess that is us healthcare. We spend roughly 2x as much as anyone else in the developed world, for mostly worse outcomes. With way more friction. The debacle of US infrastructure, particularly in a place like the valley. Poor and overpriced telecommunications. Incredibly high housing costs. Terrible transportation. No real attempt to address any of the above. Endless whining that there aren't enough engineers, but an unwillingness to pay trained engineers from the midwest or west or south enough money to afford anything like an equivalent life. Contrast to tokyo: if an engineer were paid $50k to live in the valley, they'd be living in their car. In tokyo, there's developed enough transportation systems this is manageable. Lack of support for parents: from very modest time off for parents, to expensive daycare ($300-$500 per week for an under-two year old child), to a dozen other issues. One parent takes a huge productivity cut or the parents hire a nanny for $25k+/year.
- beavershaw 12y ago> That said: is racism a bigger problem in Japan than e.g. in the United States? Oh, yes. Unquestionably. This is totally ridiculous. I lived in Japan for a year and as a white male, it was the first time I experienced being on the receiving end of racism. It sucked, but was a good lesson into how it feels. That said, I'm pretty sure minorities in America have to deal with the same experience on a daily basis often with far more tragic results: http://www.vox.com/michael-brown-shooting-ferguson-mo/2014/8/19/6031759/ferguson-history-riots-police-brutality-civil-rights http://www.vox.com/michael-brown-shooting-ferguson-mo/2014/8...
- sosborn 12y ago>I lived in Japan for a year and as a white male Racism in Japan when you are white is not that bad. Ask your Korean or Nigerian friends in Japan what it is like and you will get a much different answer.
- notastartup 12y agoAdd Chinese and other dark skinned Southeast Asians to that list and they will all agree.
- icelancer 12y agoOr being a half-Japanese, half-white American. I seriously believe this is one of the worst racial profiles to be in the land of my ancestors.
- jrockway 12y agoFirst off, this was a fascinating read. I've never worked in Japan (on any permanent basis), but I did go to high school in Tokyo. So this is like another side of the world that I knew existed, but didn't know much about. Somehow Google got dragged into this. Google has some benevolence (advice about how to eat healthy, paid gym memberships, etc.), but it's not quite like the Japanese companies he describes. Nobody is managing your rent, or setting you up with dates. (Too bad, I hate dealing with landlords.) You can quit, do a startup, and come back. People that can't program don't end up doing planning meetings and making spreadsheets. Certainly, if you like your job, your responsibilities will probably expand to take more than the 40 hour workweek. It's been that way everywhere I've ever worked in the US. (I probably err on the side of spending too much time at work, but I'm rewarded in many ways for that time, so I'm not complaining too much. But I'm not the "show up at 9 and set my alarm for 5 and leave when the alarm goes off" type of person.) I worked in the Tokyo Google office for a month last summer. People go home at 6. People come in as late as 2. It's very much like working in the US. I came in on Saturday a couple times and didn't see many other people around. If 60 hour workweeks are endemic to all companies in Japan, the fact was hidden from me. I don't know if working for Google counts as being a salaryman, though, I didn't ask anyone. Japan is a big country. There are certainly paths you can take that lead to 60 hour weeks and low salaries. There are other paths that don't. Edit: and oh yeah, my one piece of advice for living in Japan: just because someone tells you you're good at Japanese, doesn't mean you are.
- jpatokal 12y agoIn general, if somebody tells you're good at Japanese, it means they either a) think your Japanese is awful, but are complimenting you for making the effort, or b) you just made some sort of horribly ungrammatical blooper that reminded them that you're not, in fact, native, and thus need the compliment.
- jrockway 12y agoNot always the case, sometimes the compliment is legitimate. One should probably not take it to mean "you're done studying forever" though.
- bmmayer1 12y agoThis article seems to suggest it's near impossible to leave a megacorp and start a company. So how did the first megacorps get started in the first place? Presumably there is a fair amount of entrepreneurship in Japan, otherwise they would not have been able to achieve their vast economic success. But I'm curious what the traditional path to entrepreneurial success is in Japan, given the way this piece makes entrepreneurship there seem impossible.
- oldspiceman 12y agoThese companies have been around for 150 years. Same thing goes in Korea. They employ a massive slice of the populations of both countries.
- bmmayer1 12y agoWhat about companies like Softbank?
- icebraining 12y agoWell, Softbank's founder is a son of Korean immigrants who moved to California at age 16, attending high school in SF and studying CS at UC Berkeley, after which he founded a company before moving back to Japan. Not exactly the typical Japanese citizen.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> This article seems to suggest it's near impossible to leave a megacorp and start a company. So how did the first megacorps get started in the first place? Japan's main modern megacorps largely are the same entities that were major business from the time of the Meiji Restoration (and some were founded much earlier, and are older than the US), or remixes of those entities that occurred when some of the old zaibatsu were broken up after WWII. They were formed as megacorps, for the most part, through very intense relations between government (both national and clan governments) and business industries, with a major component of that formation being either new or existing private enterprises whose founders had government connections taking over (often, at least initially, by leasing) the facilities of government business enterprises. Those megacorps clearly aren't an indication of entrepreneurship in modern Japan. (That's not to say that such a thing doesn't exist, just that "how did the first megacorps get started" has nothing to say about it.)
- oldspiceman 12y agoI'd love to see Doing Business in Taiwan / Korea / Hong Kong. On a personal note, I found life in Osaka/Tokyo depressing compared to Taipei and Hong Kong. It felt like Japan's time had come and gone.
- tzakrajs 12y agoMay as well be entitled, "Reasons to never work in Japan."
- pheon 12y agoAs someone who also a "foreigner" who also owns and runs a company here in Japan, much of the article was thats so entertaining... now... but was so not funny at the time. Unfortunately the vast majority of foreigners here are 20-something year old assholes who demand Japan to be the same as their home country or clueless tourists enjoying the sights and sounds. Its though this lens that Japanese people experience either directly or indirectly foreigners and like everywhere on the planet, people remember (and exaggerate) the negative aspects like it was yesterday, but quickly forget the neutral and positive experiences. If you can digest the above, then its easier to understand the Japanese perspective which is, all interaction with foreigners has substantial risk attached. All this means is, if a task has a local interaction then its likely got an additional risk management component to it. This risk component is probably different, possibly offensive based on your own cultural norms, but if everyone has the same expectations and culture as you, then your not living in a foreign country.
- fenomas 12y agoDev based in Tokyo since '99 here - this is a great article across the board. If I could offer an addendum, it would be that working for a small non-$MEGACORP company is more common than you might get from the article. I work mainly with web designers and the median engineer I meet typically works at a 5-50 person company, often a startup. Also small places tend to be more progressive than megacorps in some ways (e.g. not expecting lifetime employment, Saturdays off, etc.). But most of the article (company as family, etc.) applies equally to small companies. Also as an aside, there's plenty of modern cutting edge web design here! Many of my JP colleagues have TheFWA awards and so on. It's fair to say that webdev inside the megacorps is behind the times, but I imagine that's true of most places outside silicon valley.
- minikomi 12y agoYep I work for a small design firm doing web, interactive displays etc. Its OK but not great. I'm sure it depends on the company but there's a lot of things which are stressful.. Like, working with [large advertising company] art directors who want responsive design / animations everywhere but also want it to viewable on IE7 on their company provided XP box.. dealing with the multitude of weird Sony/sharp android phones and their respective browser quirks, occasional weekend "emergencies" etc etc
- fenomas 12y agoYeah, I hear you. At least general webdevs usually no longer have to worry about feature phones - now that was a pain. (But even that's not true in the game industry - I know companies who still make a decent part of their revenue doing Flash Lite work. Flash Lite!) There are clients pushing the bar though - Uniqlo comes to mind...
- oliv__ 12y agoSounds like a massive dystopia to me. I don't even get how their country works, it's like a weird totalitarian state
- neil_s 12y agoWhat's funny is that the first part of the description sounds not unlike many of the big-name companies in Silicon Valley (other than the lifelong devotion to one firm). You spend all day there, are regularly expected to work overtime because you'd be letting your fellow employees down otherwise, and now they're even building their own dorms!
- dczx 12y agoThat was an amazingly thorough writeup. I very much enjoyed it. And I no longer want to move to japan...
- ruggeri 12y agoI think this article about Japanese companies' aversion to layoffs was fascinating when I read it a little while back: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/business/global/layoffs-illegal-japan-workers-are-sent-to-the-boredom-room.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/business/global/layoffs-il...
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- bemmu 12y agoI've lived in Japan for 6 years, first exchange student, then self-employed but Japanese wife works for a large company. Just thought I'd chime in. It's really hard to say anything generic about anything though, as I only have very limited personal experiences to draw from. From what I have gathered the parts about Japanese company life are accurate. Yes, coming home at 7pm is "early". Midnight is not out of the question. Not all companies require you to work on weekends, but it's not unusual to get phone calls or be expected to complete some minor work at home. It's possible to get a stable job again after quitting your previous one, although I can believe it would be difficult if you don't have a good reason. This wild concept of "changing your job" (tenshoku) seems to be becoming more common too. Part about company molding you seems true. To me it's bizarre that people get hired to work for a software company, despite having no such background. You could go from a completely unrelated degree to suddenly being a programmer, totally possible. The part about critical Japanese parents didn't ring true to me. No-one has tried to pressured me to have a normal stable job. Perhaps because everyone knows I'd be a terrible employee for a Japanese company, as I like to do things like have hobbies, take vacations lasting for over a week, be paid a decent salary etc. But I think the relationship to work is just different. Yes, people always assume I am an English teacher.
- freddealmeida 12y agoMost of what he says is true for most firms. Non-global Japanese firms. Global firms are moving to larger salaries by far. I was making into the 200K USD range here in Tokyo (non-finance tech) so I would disagree that ALL salaries are suppressed. It is just a cultural point to ask for less money in Japan. Most firms also have very low revenue points in comparative markets abroad. So one could argue this is market pricing. Japan is still half the size of the US by population but with an economy that has been stagnant for many many years. Like anywhere in the world, you get what you aim for. Of course this does not take away from some factual statements he made. It is very hard to hire in Japan. Business practices are archaic in many ways. Technology is outdated (so few people know anything of Meteor, Angular, Go, D, R, etc). I still prefer it though in many ways. There is a order to social life here that you don't have in the US or Europe. A tacit agreement to work together. Sadly not always in a productive fashion, or even healthy, but still to a fashion.
- captaintacos 12y agoSoftware engineer here living in Japan for about the same time as the author, and with almost the same work experience. This article totally nails it. I have bookmarked this so that every time a non-Japanese comes to me looking for advice related to moving and working in Japan (which I should mention, does not happen as often as it used to) I can just send them straight to this article.
- ddellacosta 12y agoI really enjoyed this piece, there was a ton of truth in it and some really funny anecdotes. I've been lucky to only work for a Japanese company for a short time, and it was in fact a rather unusual company, so I haven't had to suffer through a lot of the other salaryman pain described in the piece, although without a doubt this is an accurate description based on hearing stories from many friends and family, both Japanese and non-Japanese. However, I would caution against making this kind of comparison: That said: is racism a bigger problem in Japan than e.g. in the United States? Oh, yes. Unquestionably. First of all I don't think the piece makes any egregious mistakes in how it discusses racism--I want to make that clear. But as with many complicated things, the answer is "it depends," and in this case it specifically depends on who you are. (As a white guy living in Japan,) I think it's really hard for a white guy living in Japan to get a sense of how to accurately compare--as a random but probably highly pertinent example in the case of their respective countries--the experience of an African-American with that of a Zainichi Korean. The U.S. has a history with regards to those of African heritage, and Japan has a history with regards to those of Korean heritage, and those are both enormously complicated things. So I think it's simply best to acknowledge, "yeah, Japan has some stuff to work on, just like the U.S. does, and probably everywhere." But I can say that it's absolutely the case that a white dude really doesn't have it that rough, and the racism I've experienced up until now (after 3.5 years here) is on the level of persistent annoyance, and I think Patrick absolutely nailed the most annoying thing I encounter day-to-day, which is this: Imagine walking the tax return for your multinational software company into the local tax office and being asked, in a clerk’s best speaking-to-a-slow-child voice, “Who can I call (mimes phone) if I have a question (shrugs) about this paper (points)?” ...it makes me want to scream on a bad day, but I think he's also entirely correct that Few things in life are worth fighting over. Fights that are worth fighting are usually worth winning. At some point, your response just ends up being a shrug and the familiar Japanese "shouganai..." (EDIT: a little for grammar and to clarify quoting from the piece.)
- VexXtreme 12y agoI've lived in Japan for years now and some of the things you wrote strike me as ridiculous. If you have to bend over by bringing tax returns to your gf's family in order to convince them to like you, you seem to have a problem. No sane person should ever put up with that treatment. I've dated a fair bit of beautiful and totally awesome Japanese women and I've never heard of anything like that before. Too bad all that money can't buy you confidence and a spine.
- atmosx 12y agoProbably the most interesting article I've read in a while. It was eye-opening in so many respects! Congratulations to the author for the deep in-sight view and easy-to-read narrative. EDIT: Although probably not as interesting as Japan (because of the huge culture difference, to Greece/Italy/EU to which I'm accustomed) I'd love to read similar articles for other countries like New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Russia, Brazil, etc.
- guard-of-terra 12y agoEmployment in Russia is a pretty boring topic. You send in a resume, get interviewed and hired, work for a few years and then leave for fresher experience, more money or maybe abroad. Nobody expects much loyalty or lifetime stability because of all the history. For foreigners regular employment may be tricky: you would be expected to possess some unique skills not present in native workers, otherwise it's simpler to just hire them - language and cultural barrier is a thing. But if you do, you may perhaps aim higher. Oh, and the whole employment in Russia is widely uneven, wages unpredictable, conditions wildly vary, life quality is love it or hate it. If you really enjoy chaos you could probably try.
- throwaway081114 12y agoA bit off topic but I went to Japan for the first time earlier this year and really enjoyed it, specially the food!. Since I've been back I've been thinking of working there for a while as a dev, I know a friend of a friend got recruited by Rakuten but he is much younger than me and speaks Japanese. Considering that I'm in my 30s, not white or asian,can't speak, read or write a word of Japanese and 10+ years of experience as a dev in Australia, USA and Latin America, what are my chances of landing a semi decent job in Japan and is this a good idea? I am specially concerned about the low salaries,being overworked, xenophobia and not being able to learn the language, I feel too old for these kinds of adventures but I haven't stopped thinking about this possibility since I got back.
- crishoj 12y agoPerhaps going as an expatriate for a western-based company would be a viable option for you. This way, you would be employed on western terms, with western salary, and in all likelihood have your relocation and accommodation taken care off. Also, there's a higher chance that local language skills aren't a strict necessity.
- radikalus 12y agoHas anyone recently launched a new startup in Japan under Investor/Manager visa? I've never seen so much conflicting information regarding what's necessary. I'm in the super early stages of rolling out an Asia office and would massively prefer to be in Tokyo but the hassle level feels like 10x HK/Sing. =\
- moriokumura 12y agoAs a Japanese born and grown-up 27 years exclusively in Japan, I completely agree with the article. As a programmer and would-be entrepreneur living in Japan, finding good prospective co-founder, investor, or mentor in Japan is really hard. Finding Japanese girl who acknowledges entrepreneurship is also hard, unless you're already very successful or wealthy. I'm shocked when I know how ideal Silicon Valley's culture and environment are for start-ups. I want to work or start business at SV, not in Japan, though I have not lived there. That's why I'm reading HN and found this post.
- srem 12y agoI'm sorry for picking this out from an otherwise great article (though I disagree on a few other minor points), but I can't let this slide: > That said: is racism a bigger problem in Japan than e.g. in the United States? Oh, yes. Unquestionably. I disagree. I disagree so very much I don't know if I can even put it into words. Being the "wrong" race in the US can be a matter of life and death. It's not even fair to compare racism on that level to the kind that exists in Japan. Do I really need to talk about how pervasive racism is in the US? And how extreme it is? Pick your poison: income, education, prison sentences, violence, etc. This should be common knowledge by now. Please, please don't downplay it. It's huge. It's interesting nonetheless. You really can see a difference between whites and non-whites when they talk about racism in Japan. There's a reason why there's such a difference of opinion. Growing up having the race advantage all your life and never giving it much thought, only to move to country where it no longer applies is a huge shock to many people. Really. Ask non-whites what they think about racism in Japan. I think you'll find that most people will tell a very different story. It's usually something along the lines of, "The amount of ignorance is astounding sometimes, but I haven't really felt hatred/hostility directed towards me because of my race, which is refreshing." The ignorance is certainly bad, though also isn't all that surprising if you've had no meaningful conversations with someone of a particular race all your life. Yes, if you're talking about anti-discriminatory laws, there's a world of difference. They're almost non-existent in Japan. Anti-discriminatory laws didn't come about in the US overnight. A lot of people suffered and fought a long war before we even saw a positive change. Again, not exactly fair to compare the two countries here. It doesn't make it right, but let's put it in perspective please. The US has a very, very dark history regarding race, and it's not even close to being over. There's also one other important difference in my opinion. In the US, you're dealing with extremes on both sides. People who absolutely abhor you for being a certain race or having a certain sexual orientation, and others who will loudly defend your rights and speak out when they see injustice. In Japan, you don't have much of either. Which is worse I guess depends on your perspective... but it shouldn't be too surprising why a lot of people think the former is worse. Hostility is a very difficult thing to deal with.
- asdfologist 12y agoThis is so wrong I don't know where to start. Have you lived as a non-white minority in both Japan and the US? I have, and so have many friends and family. We can unanimously attest that we're far better treated in the US than Japan. But let's put aside personal anecdotes for a second. In the US, how many minorities serve as executives of large companies? The number of black, Indian, etc executives in a company like Google probably outnumber what you'd see in all Japanese companies combined. How many minorities serve in the US government? How many serve in the Japanese government? How many minorities do you see working in the US media? What about Japan? I can go on all day.
- vram22 12y agoI agree with some of the other commenters who said that it would interesting to see articles like this about other countries. IIRC, someone posted a link on HN a few months ago, to a blog in which various people wrote about their experiences in living in different foreign countries. Forget the name of the blog right now. The name might have been a play on a word related to travel.
- vram22 12y agoAh, found the name of the blog, in my email where I saved it - istorical.com (no leading h - that was the word play I remembered :). Here's an HN comment where I saw it, and that links to some posts about specific countries on that blog: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053338
- mathattack 12y agoI have had a long standing cultural fascination with Japan, that included over a dozen trips, and 9 months of living there. Some observations: 1) He's true on who to hire. At one firm I worked for, the women were MUCH more competent than the men. Why? Because they couldn't compete for the male top graduates with Sony, Phillips and Toyota, but they could get the top women. They also have their share of misfits and a group of folks who flip between multinationals. It seems to work. 2) You can never be Japanese if you aren't born Japanese in Japan, so the large company policies just won't make sense. As others have stated, best to work for multinationals. 3) The stereotypes become less and less true over time. Are the business steretypes of the US in the 70s and 80s still true today?
- known 12y agoBrilliant article.
- ebellity 12y agoLove the small bank anecdote