Howdy.
Basically title.
I’m on a spouse visa, soon to apply for PR. I have a nice direct hire position but am getting tired of the sedentary lifestyle. I’d like to do something more physical for my mental and physical health. I often see job posting for construction/carpentry jobs that pay almost what I make now, with I’m guessing some ways to advance and learn skills. Has anyone transitioned to one of these jobs, and if so what was your experience? Also, I’ve heard of some foreigners farming, but I don’t see any jobs for that so maybe they have their own land.
Any advice would be welcomed.
11 comments
I regularly see foreigners working in construction around my office. I assume they’re here on a marriage rather than a trainee visa given that they’re clearly not East/South Asian (does Japan have a trainee visa with an African country/Indian subcontinent?)
How is your Japanese? Is it good enough to read/understand architectural drawings or at least follow the instructions of someone who does?
yes, people have.
My buddy did this and joined an event production company where he set up and tore down stages and stuff, also to “get some exercise while getting paid” or so the plan went. He quit and went back to an office job after like 8 months. Blue collar work gets romanticized a lot but it is generally not good for your body at all. Over time it just wrecks your joints, your back and knees especially. Absolutely not a good replacement for healthy exercise.
There’s a shortage of construction workers, so you’ll see many construction workers from China/Indonesia/Vietnam etc. Not sure how you find these jobs domestically though.
There’s a lot of those jobs around, so as long as your Japanese is decent you could probably do them. As there are shortages you’d often get trained up too.
Some things to bear in mind though. Some of those may require you to be away from home for long periods of time. I almost took a plumbing job which I’d be fully trained for the licenses etc, but I’d have had to work in another prefecture for about three months. A deal-breaker as childcare was an issue. Often not in the original job description so be prepared! I now work in an office doing a job they suits me more, but would have been up for the challenge if circumstances were different.
I have a Japanese colleague who left my company (office job) to go become a trucker.
As far as I know, he never had any experience in trucking or anything. He joined a major trucking company, and is undergoing training in Nagano last I heard. If you have a spouse via or PR, I think it might be possible for you to get a job doing the same.
I quit my job this Spring and collected 3 months from Hello Work. Hello Work has a job board, and it seems that if they call the company on your behalf you will be granted an interview, and most likely a 3 month trial contract. I was an ag-worker in the USA before coming to Japan, and wanted to return to farming for the reasons you mentioned. My salary is much lower, but I feel stronger and healthier. I also come home with lots of fruits and vegetables. I recommend checking Hello Work or contacting JA if you want to try farm labor.
This doesn’t really pertain to what you’re asking but I did 14 years ago and it was for a white collar job. I’m an American citizen but fluent in Japanese (and also Japanese-American, FWIW). I was an ALT in Ibaraki for 1.5 years and decided to move to Tokyo to try and find a career type of job. Interviewed with a food trading company that had branches in USA. They hired me as 現地採用 and has me work in their Tokyo office for a year before sending me back home to Los Angeles. I enjoyed the experience a lot but it has its challenges.
I had a scaffolding job that I got from hello work, don’t do that it’ll destroy your body. But if you’re wanting to do carpentry I’m not sure if you need to do an apprenticeship or not, maybe check out and see if there’s a local school that does trade courses, in NZ at least there’s a course called ‘pre-trade’ that is 6months long but covers a lot of the first and second year paperwork so most companies nowadays want you to at least have that before you start. There’s a really impressive place near me that is a mechanic school. Otherwise yeah you’ll be fine
I was never an ALT but I was an English teacher. Hated it, moved back to the US, got a master’s degree. Moved back to Japan. Didn’t want to teach again and I found a fishing job through hello work. It was actually pretty nice. Fairly relaxed schedule and surprisingly high pay. I think the higher pay was def a lucky thing. But we recently started targeting a different fish that had horrid hours so I quit. Otherwise my experience with blue collar work has been positive. In my case there was no real training to do. Nothing that would further my career really aside from me being able to buy a boat in the future and be a captain and hire my own worker. Which I didn’t want to do.
Also not really hard on the joints or back at all. Until we targeted this new fish, which required a lot of heavy lifting as we’d have to process and pack our own fish when we got back to port. And the Japanese people I lifted the containers with were shorter than me and had terrible lifting form which also affected me. But it was never debilitating. Maybe if I was still doing it in my 40s and 50s.
There’s a job training center connected to Hello Work that has training courses for various types of trades. You get paid while you’re on the course as well, not much but something. And they try to place you in a job at the end. You can just go into Hello Work and ask what courses they have available. When I looked at it I remember seeing things like welding, machining, electrician, and general building maintenance.