Good evening guys. I’m an US licensed dentist. I’ve been to Japan few times before and I’m currently in Japan with a student visa (language school). My Japanese level is somewhere between n3-2 and I can speak pretty well (thanks to my Korean background) but nothing like a business level. My goal is to take n2 this year or next summer.
My plan was to stay here in Japan for 1 year as a long vacation for myself, but I really don’t want to go back..
My family and probably the entire world would be against this idea..but I really do wanna stay here.
I’m not sure what type of Job I could possibly find here that’s at least somewhat related to my profession.
Only job I can think of right now is an English teacher, which I have no experience with..but seriously other than that I cannot think of anything.
I can speak fluent Korean too…not sure if that could take me anywhere, but yes..
There’s no way I’m getting a Japan dental license..
I’ve done little research but it was mainly for MD and couldn’t find much info for dentist.
I’ve heard in some foreign friendly hospital you can just treat foreigners (after passing the exam in eng) but not sure this applies to dentist as well and most importantly so far I haven’t found a such clinic that would want an US licensed dentist.
So what would be my best options to start a new career here?
Is there like any firm or company that can help me finding a job?
Maybe I should be a teledentistry dentist for US office and stay overnight here for working haha (I’m joking but even this option extremely rare and hard to find)
I was looking at the position for US army in Japan as well, but also couldn’t find any offer for a dentist. Maybe they will hire a new dentist in like 5 years or something..
I really need help.
4 comments
Check out USAJobs to see if you could get a job on one of the US military bases.
I had a quick check and found this one for example:
https://www.usajobs.gov/job/665628400
I have heard of people with international medical backgrounds doing well in medical equipment/pharm based sales positions in Japan.
US military based jobs are there. Most of the time they are not open to the public but if you check often, every once in a while they will have medical based positions open.
I have been checking USA jobs for 7 months now and have only found 2 positions that were: related to my background, open to the public, were in a place I would be interested in living in, and were a job position that I would be possibly interested in holding.
Please read our wiki page about being a doctor in Japan: [https://www.reddit.com/r/movingtojapan/wiki/doctor/](https://www.reddit.com/r/movingtojapan/wiki/doctor/)
There will be similar requirements in terms of both language and education for dentistry.
Also: Japan has [too many dentists](https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2008/07/02/more-dentists-than-convenience-stores-in-japan/). The government is actually encouraging people to ***not*** study dentistry because there are so many. Given the glut of dentists available, I imagine it would be difficult for a non-Japanese dentist to run a successful clinic, even if they managed all of the licensing requirements.
>My family and probably the entire world would be against this idea..but I really do wanna stay here.
[Yep.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjZdHdd88jo)
>Only job I can think of right now is an English teacher…
[**NOPE.** ^NOPE. ^^Nope. ^^^Nope.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75aGG27dGUA)
>So what would be my best options to start a new career here?
1. Join a company in the US with a significant dental sales in Japan like 3M Corp. Stay with that foreign company for a few years and transfer to Japan “on The Package” when an opportunity pops up. PROFIT! {Joining foreign company in Japan is much harder and you will be paid less as an “in-country hire.”}
2. Start a post-doc career in dental research in the US and then seek either academic research in Japan (at low wages) or corporate research (high wages but severe competition).
For shits ‘n’ giggles check out:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWlaOa2pqxs