Hi everyone, I had been offered a place at Keio University’s English program in economics, which I declined to head to the UK to study at LSE.
My long term plans are to move to japan, and I applied to Keio with the intent of moving there. However, after a lot of reconsideration and talking with my school and parents and also looking at this sub, I decided to hold my plan of moving to japan at this stage, and decided to take up the opportunity in the UK.
I hope I did not shoot myself in the foot by doing this. My plan right now is to learn Japanese over the next 3 years during my degree, and continue to learn beyond as well while I work in the UK, gaining experience. I intend to work in finance in Japan, and will try to work at foreign companies there.
Do you all have any advice on what to do over the next few years, so I could maximise my chances of moving?
4 comments
Well speaking bluntly one thing is that your LSE degree will probably stand you in better stead and be more prestigious when the Keio one, so in that sense it’s a good decision.
What country are you originally from? I ask because doing a working holiday visa after you graduate can be a great experience in terms of spending time in Japan as a young person, working hard on perfecting your language skills and, most importantly, giving you a sense of if you’d actually want to move there permanently. If your country has such an agreement with Japan I’d advise looking into it.
And in the meantime really push yourself on the Japanese studies since whatever you end up doing, whether it’s just the working holiday or whether it leads to something more permanent, it’s a great skill.
With an LSA degree you’ll be well placed for a future career as a graduate with a decent company, so don’t stress too much about the future yet.
As you said, learning Japanese to a half decent standard if you can in your free time (3 years is plenty of time to get to N3 standard at least, N2 if you dedicate a lot time to it). Other than, keep an open mind. When I studied Japanese at uni everyone in my class in the first year planned to move to Japan at some point, but I’d say only about 10% of them ever actually made it to Japan – life gets in the way and plans/interests change *a lot* during your university years, so don’t stress if what you think you want now is different to what you want in 3 years time.
As I said, if you do still want to live in Japan after you finish at LSE, you’ll be as well placed as anyone to work for foreign company. And if not, you could also do a working holiday in Japan to test the waters and see how you like it.
you’ve actually chosen the option that gives you the best chance of moving to japan on a v comfortable salary. the strength of an econ degree at the LSE completely eclipses that of any program taught in a japanese uni, much less one conducted in english. work on that language proficiency, get a first, and finding employment will be a breeze if you aren’t a complete walnut. if you get hired into a competitive grad scheme in london and can stomach a couple of years there, even better.
it’s possible to get a tokyo finance job fresh out of uni but odds are those will be for japanese trading houses etc (do not recommend). just do some time in london first; the value of that training and experience is impossible to overstate.
source: also studied in the uk at a ~good~ uni, have a few mates who read econ and are now doing PE/VC work in tokyo. others went into management consultancy and are in the local outposts of MBB. spoiler: money good but lives are kinda rubbish. good luck!
If you’re smart enough to get into LSE and if you gain fluency in Japanese by learning then you will defo not have a problem with finding a job in Japan.