u/Trask87

Often when I see posts about jobhunting or career struggles in Japan, a lot of Redditors will say that people should go back to their home countries, build a career and then return to Japan.

Now, for students I can see why this makes sense, but I have seen the same advice being given to people who are older and have build a family here, especially in the japanjobs sub.

I am just really curious if anyone from this sub has actually followed this advice and I am interested in hearing if it actually helped.

Because when I think about it, it seems like a huge gamble.

If I had to take myself aa an example.

I am a very lowpaid software engineer. I just got the job and so far I am very happy with it, but 2-3 million yen is not that much when you have 5+ years of experience, and I have a child who is only going to get more expensive as years go by.

Now, mastering N1 is one option, but I have read that even that may not be enough, especially when you are on the wrong side of 40, so I am one of those who should probably leave the country if I want any success and provide more money for the family.

The thing is, my wife has no intentions of moving, so if I move I will likely not see my familly more than once a year, and upon returning to my home country I will not only need to find a job. I need to find a job where I can specialize in a skill that will be in demand in Japan or I will need to find a company that I can build enough trust with so it will allow me to work remotely from Japan, and when that time comes I will need to apply for a spouse visa again.

All of this seems incredibly risky and also very bad for the relationship with my child, yet as I said it seems to be a common solution on the Japan-related subreddits, so there must be a few here who actually managed to do it.

How did you handle being away from your family, having to re-apply for spouse visa again etc.?

Maybe I am too dumb to see it.

Coming from Europe I am too familiar for misinfomation campaigns sponsored by foreign powers, but in Europe there is a very clear purpose:

Misinfomation leads to far-right parties getting more votes.

The far-right supports Russia, meaning having them in power will result in no aid to Ukraine.

See, that is easy to understand.

But when it comes to the immigration debate in Japan I cannot see what the goal actually is.

For Russia it makes no difference. The LDP will not change their foreign policy and voters here generally don't care about the war anyway.

Then there is China. Again, it makes no sense. The anti-immigration campaigns only deepens the hatred between Japan and China, and as we have seen it just results in Japan having a less diplomatic stance towards Beijing and spend more on military, so who is the winner here?

Also, these campaigns have done nothing to Japan's reputation. Tourists still flock here in large numbers.

The only ones getting affected are residents.

If anyone is deeper into the political stuff than I am, then I would love to hear an explanation.

Pure luck. That is what it is.

I finally landed a job nearly 1 year after I got fired from my tech job due to the company "focusing on optimizing productivity" (They replaced me with AI).

Over 400 applications, over 20 recruiters who ghosted me. I went to networking events every single week and had to put on a fake smile and pitch myself to people who I would never hear from again after the mandatory Linkedin exchange.

I have been to interviews with over 5 rounds, only to get an automated rejection after spending weeks of energy getting through each round.

Then I got a mail from a high school where the principal was looking for an IT security specialist who could also be tasked with building a new system for the school.

We had one interview, no technical questions. The lady just wanted to meet me and get a feeling for my personality. I was then hired on the spot.

She basically said "Well, even if you don't know something, how will you learn if you never get a chance to work with it?"

I feel like a found a unicorn.

Imagine if every company had this mindset.

I am happy, but fuck I am bitter too.

All that hard work and in the end it all just came down to a lady who randomly found me on Linkedin and decided "Oh, he seems nice".

This market is fucked up

I am a full stack engineer with 8 years experience mainly working with SaaS using mainly Java, Python, React, Vue, SQL, node etc.

In the last 2 years I also began getting into AI engineering.

Unfortunately my company went bankrupt and I was unemployed for 7 months.

I noted down my job hunting which resulted in 436 applications, of which only three led to interviews. I have been working with a total of 27 recruiters, who all ended up ghosting me.

Then finally I was contacted by a school, who is in need of a technical guy to help out set up hardware, solve bugs in the internal system and other tech-related stuff.

It has been a bit difficult to get a clear explanation of what I will actually do, cause no one else in the school has any tech experience.

So I am a bit nervous. I have no idea what I am going into, what programs I need to get familiar with etc.

So I was wondering if anyone here had a job similar to this and share some experiences they had.

Secondly, I still want to go for an actual fullstack engineer role. I already have a 7-month gap. Now I will work at this school, which is related to tech... but not coding.

Is this gonna screw up future chances of getting a programming job?

After over half a year I finally got a job offer from a school in Ibaraki who needs a tech support.

The problem is that I am renewing my spouse visa and have entered the 2 month grace period.

The school had no issue with this as long as I could document the 2 month extension and right to work.

Problem is that I applied online, so instead of the stamp in my zairyu card I just got a mail that immigration told me to carry. While it does mention the application for renewal is being processed, it does not mention the 2 month extension of the old visa.

How do I submit proof of this?

I am a Danish citizen living in Japan, and for a long time I was working on a B2B contract for a Danish company where I had been previously employed as a full-time employee. Initially I actually got laid of due to outsourcing to Pakistan. Then after a few months when my boss discovered that the 10-man team was working slower than I had been, he re-hired me for a lower salary matching Japanese standards.

After the contract ended I tried running similar model by applying to other European companies - mainly those who were hiring outside the EU. At first I tried getting hired for an average EU salary. That didn't get any bites. Then I tried Japanese salary levels like I had done with my previous boss... That didn't work either.

Then I tried an experiment. I tried setting myself as low as the people EU companies hire from South East Asia, like India, Pakistan. It's not a salary I can live on, but I just wanted to see if it all came down to salary. To my surprise, no, it did not have any affect. I actually got replies back from some companies who wrote that while they did hire outside of Europe, it was limited to a few select Asian countries (Again India, Pakistan etc.)

This really made me wonder, if a European company has the option of hiring an overseas European dev to the same price as a non-European from the same area, then why do they still go with the latter? Why not hire someone who is easier to communicate with, shares the same work culture, and is more familiar with local UX preferences and customer needs?

Is it the risk of relying on a single freelancer or something else?

My wife has really bad PPD.

The first month after giving birth was okay, because I made sure to take full care of our baby so she could get full 8 hours of sleep every night and have time for herself, but after I started working it has gone downhill. It's partly my own fault. I went 5 months without a job after getting laid off only to land a job that cannot even cover our rent. I basically went from a 10 mil income to less than 1 mil. Financial troubles are already stressful, but having them along with a newborn is not easy...

I am coming home to a wet crib almost every day because my wife has stopped changing nappies, so the baby is lying in pee and poo for the 10 hours I am away during the day.

He has developed a terrible rash due to this and is in so much distress.

Meanwhile my wife has basically retreated to the bedroom talking with ChatGPT all day. Sometimes during the day she will suddenly explode, banging the walls, throwing books, hitting herself etc.

It usually gets triggered when our baby cries a lot, and one time I had to physically remove her because she was pushing down the baby bottle so hard that he couldn't breathe.

I begged her to seek help, but she refuses cause she say that her depression will go away if I get a highly paid job again, and if I want to avoid her or our baby getting hurt I should come home with 10 mil.

I have known this woman for 25 years, and she has never acted like this before.

I went to the clinic that we both go to and told her doctor about her depression and how she handles the baby. The only response I got was teeth sucking and "Well... women can be like that. It cannot be helped. You just have to endure" and then I was given ointment for the baby.

I tried contacting her family, but it's the same response. "Well, it's difficult right now isn't it? Do your best!"

The only one remotely concerned was her mother, but her "help" consisted of scolding my wife for being immature and went on an hour-long rant about foreigners being too financially unstable. In the end she just made it worse.

I don't know who to reach out to, cause no one seems to take this seriously.

I feel like every health professional I talk to are just nodding and showing sympathy, but no one is actually wants to do anything. Surely there must be women here who get treated for PPD?

Got a mail from a recruiter telling me that she had a good job opportunity for me and would like to set up a meeting, which I did. This is a recruiter that I had spoken to 3 months ago, who ghosted me after I asked for an update about the interview she had promised to set up with a company. So I thought she was getting back to me. I did not know that she had completely forgotten about me.

So the call started. She greeted me, and I greeted her telling her it was "nice to hear from her again". She looked very confused at me, and I then reminded her that we had already spoken 3 months ago. Then she got silent for a few seconds and disconnected the call.

5 minutes later I got a mail from her saying she has no current job opportunities for me and will get back to me (she won't).

This has to be a new low. I am shocked that an adult person calling themselves professional can react this way.

I recently had to change between the Shinjuku Line and the Tsukuba Express.

On the Shinjuku Line they say that Iwamotocho is a transfer station for the Tsukuba Express.

You get off, follow the signs which points you towards the exit. Then you find yourself with no further assistance, and you need to walk several blocks down Akihabara, go through the JR station and then you find the small TX entrance.

Meanwhile on the Oedo line Ueno Okachimachi is not listed as a Keisei transfer station despite having a direct underground passage linking the Keisei, JR and Metro stations

I never understood the logic.

Do you know other weird examples?

I am trying my best not to make this a long wall of text, but it's hard to shorten.

I have been fighting so much my entire life. After my father died I had to take care of my BOPD mother from the age of 14, who taught me that every misery in her life was because of me, but at the same time she told me she could not live without me, and when I was in my 20s and early 30s I truly believed I was worth nothing and that I had to stay by my mother's side to be a good person.

It took my wife 10 years to help me break free. My wife was the only contact to the outside world I had. She was a penpal from Japan that I met online when I was 16, so we have known each other for more than 20 years.

At the age of 36 my mother died and I suddenly had to learn things that people normally learn in their late teens, like how to live alone, pay bills, do basic things etc.

The worst part is that my mother left me with a crippling debt and an almost non-existent career. My mother figured that if she kept me studying she could live on my student loans to pay for her medication abuse. She would encourage me to take an education, and then near the exam she would break me down so I would fail. She did this 3 times, so it ended up taking me more than 10 years to get my current degree which is in computer science.

I did secretly have an online sidejob. When I was 15 I wanted to see a psychologist, but my mother would not allow it, so instead I went to the library and borrowed multiple psychology books. The only way for me to survive my mother's abuse and keep my sanity was to learn how she was thinking, so I got absorbed into psychology, and when I was in my 20s I started doing unlicensed psychotherapy work, mainly for fellow students, but it never became a professional profession.

Anyway, only a few months after my mother died, my wife convinced me to go to Japan and leave my old life behind. I did, we got married, and the first 2 years were great because I could keep my existing job remotely, and that particular job had the nicest boss in the world who knew my story and took me in... but once that contract ended I found myself in a foreign country where I have everything against me. I do not speak the language well enough, I am over 30, AI has entered the market... I was jobless for 7 months until I got hired as a warehouse worker, where I am currently working for a salary that barely covers my transportation costs.

I have a 3 month old baby and my wife has nearly used up all her savings while waiting for me to find a job.

I have done literally everything. I send out applications daily. I go to networking events. I even started my own professional counselling service and have even signed up to be a speaker and promote my work even though my anxiety is nearly crippling me, but it never gets me anywhere, and my wife has gone into depression because of it. It didn't make it better that my student debt started to creep up on us. In fact, my wife went into early labor after she was threatened by a local debt collector who has taken over my foreign debt.

I wanted so badly to overcome all the hardships in my life and have a family. It was the one dream I had, and now I have not only messed up my own life, but I have also made my wife miserable, and my son has to grow up in poverty.

I have fought and fought and fought, but life just keeps kicking me in the face.

From January until June I got messages from three or four recruiters from the big agencies, but usually I had to be the one reaching out.

Now I am getting new messages on LinkedIn almost daily, and they all seem to use the exact same template of questions.

When I talk with them they always seem annoyed whenever I go off their "script". Some of them even re-write my resume to fit the role they are offering me even though it's nowhere near my skillset.

They just come off as highly unprofessional, so I was wondering if there was a sudden influx of recruiters?

It annoys the fuck out of me because I have to constantly filter my messages and figure who actually wants to help me. The native Japanese recruiters are by far the worst, becsuse they will set up meetings only to ghost you on the day of the meeting.

I noticed that unlike most other commutee lines to/from Tokyo the Tsukuba Express seems to have a lot more patrolling around the stations. I often see up to three officers walking around the platforms at Yashio station. This morning there were also multiple officers standing guard at every TX staircase in Shin-Okachimachi.

I know other companies have transport police, but they are rarely seen patrolling, and certainly not in those numbers.

Does the Tsukuba Express have issues with passengers that other lines don't?

Før jeg kommer til mit spørgsmål vil jeg bare nævne at jeg er helt klar over hvor fucked op det er, at mange unge Danskere bliver fravalgt til fordel for arbejdskraft i udlandet som kan spises af med en pose to-kroner. Jeg har selv mistet to stillinger pga. outsourcing. Jeg prøver ikke at stjæle nogens job ved at sælge mig selv billigt. Jeg prøver blot at navigere rundt på freelance markedet og søger noget viden omkring hvordan virksomheder i DK håndterer arbejdskraft fra udlandet.

Så ja... jeg er freelancer. 5-6 års erfaring som fullstack udvikler indenfor Vue/React og Java, og jeg er pt bosat i Asien og betaler ikke skat i DK (fik fritagelse af SKAT).

Jeg sidder på et fælleskontor sammen med andre udlændinge, primært fra Danmark og de andre nordiske lande. Jeg prøver ofte at få kontakt til Danske virksomheder, som er interesseret i en kontrakt, hvad enten der er tale om en enkelt opgave eller et flere måneders langt projekt.

Jeg TROEDE at dette ville være relativt nemt da stort set alle IT firmaer i DK har flirtet med outsourcing af opgaver, primært til Indien og Pakistan, hvor projekterne bliver forsinkede og der bliver løjet om estimater. Har selv arbejdet for en virksomhed i DK der havde et hold på 7 Indere til at arbejde på et system, og der var så mange problemer med kommunikation og spaghetti kode at vi endte med at hyre en Dansk senior udvikler til at gøre rent efter dem.

Så min strategi bygger på, at jeg kan sidde som Dansker i udlandet og håndtere samme kontrakter, men uden de samme problemer med kommunikation og overskridelse af deadlines. Jeg ved ikke om jeg er lige så billig som en Inder. Sikkert ikke... Jeg kører som regel med en timepris på 200, hvilket er hvad jeg tjente imens jeg arbejde i DK (Min månedsløn lå på omkring 30 til 32.000 da jeg var fastansat)

Sagen er den at jeg aldrig har nået til det punkt hvor jeg kan diskutere priser, da jeg bliver afvist med det samme. Ofte hører jeg GDPR og tidszoner som værende de største problemer, men er det ikke også et problem for udvikler i Indien? Jeg kan ikke forestille mig at der er større datasikkerhed der end i Singapore, Korea, Japan osv.

Jeg kan ikke se hvorfor det skulle være mindre attraktivt at hyre en Dansker fra udlandet. Jeg kan måske forstå det, hvis det giver bøvl med SKAT, men som sagt er jeg fritaget og håndterer selv den den lokale skat for selvstændige erhvervsdrivende.

Hvis nogen har noget insider-viden ville jeg meget gerne høre om det bare er helt umuligt for en udenlandsdansker at komme ind i varmen, eller om der er nogle specfikke krav jeg kunne opfylde.

I am on spouse visa and I currently study Japanese at night while working at a factory 8 hours during the day. My main job is cleaning the warehouse facility and prepare shipments. Most is done by manual lifting.

I already had issues with my knees and back before doing this work. I used to clean office buildings for a living before becoming a software engineer cause of chronic pain.

Since I began the factory work my pain has (unsurprisingly) gotten worse, and I am currently getting evaluated for nerve damage, cause I am having trouble feeling my right foot.

As much as I would love to get back into programming I am simply no match for AI and highly professional bilingual foreigners. I did try applying during winter and had a surprising amount of interviews, but I am just too much of a generalist. I will need to finish my studies first.

My wife insists that I can just get hired by Google or any international tech company, which I think is sweet, but naive lol.

So, I was wondering if there are any jobs that I could apply for that do not require constant standing. I am not picky about salary. Right now I make less than 1 million a year.

I know they are frowned upon here, but I looked into the recruitment business, as I had read that it was the new "English teacher" job that everyone could get, but so far they all seem to require N1 or N2. If anyone know of a firm without that requirement I would be happy to look into it.

Up until this point our son has been fairly easy to handle/predict. He would wake up every 2 hours, toss and turn a bit and then make a few small cries to indicate that he is hungry. We would make his milk (mother cannot breastfeed so he is on formula) and we would feed him until he got satisfied and went back to sleep.

This pattern has not changed after 2 months, except the way he is displaying his hunger... He will now toss and turn a little bit like usual, but instead of small cries he is now letting out a deafening shriek. The first time it happened I dropped the bottle and ran like crazy to the living room because I thought something terrible had happened to him, but no... he just want his milk as usual.

The problem with the shrieking is that he is completely exhausting himself. While I cool down the milk he will shriek like crazy until he runs out of air, and then he will go silent and do these small twitches with his head that reminds me of myoclonic jerks (I used to work as a nurse).

As soon as he get his milk, he happily drinks it, smiles and acts like nothing happened before falling asleep.

My wife also got startled by his shrieking, so we went to no less than 3 different doctors and none of them can find anything wrong with him. He is perfectly happy. He just happens to react this way when he is the slightest hungry. It just surprises me because we are not exactly starving him. We are feeding him until he no longer wants more, and he is gaining weight fast.

There are also no issues with gas or constipation. He poops, burps and farts regularly.

I can get used to the shrieking sound, but what worries me is how he almost knocks himself out. My wife and I have tried to prepare the milk and wake him up to feed him before he wakes up himself, but a lot of the time he is still full and not ready to drink.

Can someone tell me if they experienced anything similar?

People often complain about delayed or overcrowded trains, but nothing comes close to what a misery it is to be a bus commuter.

First of all, the majority of busses are not even made for commuting. I cannot understand why you cannot have a check-in and check-out system at all doors.

My morning bus can get up to 20 minutes delayed because if someone in the back wants to get off, he has to work his way up to the front door which sometimes require psssengers to get off and back on. This works on trains due to the wide doors, but on busses everyone needs to leave by the same door.

Also, tough luck if your bus gets full.

I naively thought that surely they would set in extra busses during rush hour.

Nope, at least in Saitama people just line up early in order to get on. With the delays and crowds I learned that I need to arrive at the bus stop 30 to 40 minutes before my scheduled bus to be able to get on.

There also seems to be a lack of common system. The same company can have bus routes that do not take IC cards. Some don't even accept changes.

Timetables are also a hit and miss. I have used bus routes that were not available anywhere online (not in Japanese either). You had to go to the stop and note down the times, and sometimes these times would not even be correct and only locals knew about them internally in the villages the bus was serving.

For a country praised for it's public transportation, it really feels like busses are a complete afterthought.

I am in the unfortunate position that I have to commute between Shinjuku and Yashio in Saitama, which means I have to use both the Oedo Line and Tsukuba Express.

My job only covers up to 20,000 of my travel expenses which is nowhere near the high amount I have to pay for these lines. Combined with the bus fare to work it's almost 1800 yen daily.

I am not very skilled when it comes to navigating transportation here, so I am not sure if there is a "hack" I overlooked.

Are there any parallel lines that can be used to avoid the Tsukuba Line? The Skytree Line seems to be the only option when googling, and it only requires me to catch a bus and figure out which trains run through to the Hanzomon Line.

But if there are other clever alternative routes, then I am open to suggestions.

The biggest culture shock to me after moving to Japan and having a kid of my own here is how disorganized parenting is here. I feel like it's this weird hybrid of letting your kid do whatever they want and while having the same high expectations commonly found in Asian countries.

For example, I know children in general do not always behave the best, but still there are certain basic things that you are taught not to do at a certain age, and from my observation after living here for two years, many Japanese children (boys especially) are not taught any of these.

A woman had parked her bicycle in front of the supermarket and left her small dog in the basket. A small boy walks up and casually decides to abuse the dog by pulling it's ears and slapping it. His mother stood a few feet a way, looked directly at him and did not say a word, and only told him to hurry up when she was leaving.

Another example was when my wife and I were on the train with our baby when again a young boy decided to poke our baby with his fingers and pull his cheeks. My wife had to be the one pulling his hand away and scolding him while his mother couldn't care less.

I have friends who work as teachers, who experience very inappropriate behavior like touching, sexual comments etc. which would be shut down immediately in most other first world countries.

I also noticed that many boys here throw very violent tantrums which include hitting their mothers, yet the strongest pushback I have seen is usually a tired "yamete".

In my country, if a toddler begin punching or kicking the parent will usually shut it down by having a stern but calm talk with their kid.

Here it seems like no one cares.

The only exception seem to be with girls, as I frequently see little girls being scolded or told how to behave. Boys however seem to get a free pass.

But then when it comes to school, homework etc. the parent will come down HARD on them. Not as bad as in China or Korea, but still very strict, and I keep thinking this must be so confusing for these kids. They are taught from a young age that they can do pretty much whatever they want, and then suddenly they are hit with a bag of books and are told to perform and be productive. There is very little transition between the too. I sometimes wonder if this is the reason why many adults here have a tendency to go into berserker mode whenever the slightest inconvenience hit them. They can be perfectly normal one moment and then go into a full blown panic attack when something unexpected happens. This also seems to happen more with men, young and old.