I work for Costco Canada and intend to do an internal transfer to Costco Japan for my work visa, rather than trying to find a new job abroad. I’ve heard a lot of other foreign workers in Japan reflect that the Japanese work culture is very exhaustive and you are expected to work long hours, no holidays, not use vacation, etc. Since Costco is technically an American company I wanted to know if it holds the same expectations? Costco Canada is very direct in making sure employees have a healthy work-life balance which is why I like working for them. Any firsthand experience or advice is welcome!
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>and intend to do an internal transfer to Costco Japan for my work visa
The first thing you need to do is determine if this is even *possible*.
When you say you work for Costco Canada do you mean you work for Costco *corporate*? Or are you retail employee?
If you’re corporate, it’s possible. There is an Intra-Company Transferee visa could potentially cover you. You would, however, be required to speak fairly fluent Japanese. A brief survey of job postings indicates that Costco’s Japanese office operates in Japanese.
It is ***highly*** unlikely that the company will transfer you to Japan as a regular retail associate. I’m fairly certain that the intra-company transferee visa would *not* cover retail staff.
You would also not be able to go the quit & reapply route, because on both Corporate and Retail jobs listings Costco Japan explicitly says “Spouse or Permanent Visa in Japan is necessary”, aka they do not sponsor visas.
Costco staff are hourly retail workers which most likely doesn’t fall into the visa categories. The only thing that makes Costco stand out is their pay is significantly higher for shop staff like 1600 to 1800 yen per hour and even like 3500 per hour for pharmacy staff. Usually retail staff would get more like 1200 per hour.
In general, (not all but definitely true for the American company I work for) you can get the “American” salary and the comparatively low workload while transferred and physically present in Japan only if you remain officially associated with the US department and budgeting/payroll. Usually they won’t do this unless there is a specific business or strategic reason. In my company of 600 workers or so, only about 8 people fit in this category, mostly are Japanese who were born in the USA and are all director level or higher. Of course you could quit the US branch and re-apply for a job at the local Japan offices, but then you’d get the Japanese salary and worklife balanace.