I’m finishing up my second year on JET, and my goal is to find a job and move to Tokyo after my third year, but I’m not sure what industry to shoot for. I have N1 Japanese and a degree in mathematics, but it seems like all the job opportunities for JET alumni pay less than JET…
Obviously I’m not expecting to make 10mil or anything straight out of JET but ideally above 5mil. Just not sure what kind of opportunities are out there.
Curious to hear other people’s experiences.
31 comments
Your problem is looking for “jobs for JET Alumni”.
Look outside the JET circle, find your own job and you will instantly get more than anything you could find via JET.
Then again, if you’re still young and with zero experience, it doesn’t matter how good your Japanese is on paper, you’re going to need to either work your way up to a high salary or find a miracle job.
Something that they would make more doing outside of Japan, I think…
Former dual math major here, have you picked up any tech skills?
What you do is basically irrelevant. It’s about where you work.
Engineer at Keyence = 25m salary. Engineer at shitty dispatch subcontractor = 3m salary.
Don’t overlook sales. Lots of good money to be made, and the weak yen a godsend for anyone in export.
You better start networking fast and connecting.
It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know
The JET program is designed for foreigners who want to experience Japan and leave. I know of some private schools who don’t hire JET alumni because they don’t have any kind of “work experience” at all except for being the assistant of the real Japanese teacher.
Your best option is so marry a Japanese, get a spouse visa, and maybe try Recruiting, or study coding.
Many JETs move to sales. You can do math, has the language then get a CPA or some sort, there will be broader pool for you to join sale business.
A bilingual math major shouldn’t have any problem finding a decent tech job even with no experience. We aren’t hiring now but that is the type of person we would definitely look at, and likely hire based on personality, communication skills, and general IT competence.
JET is irrelevant, the math degree and the JLPT cert are the nice things to have.
What you need to do is start networking and getting to know who is out there doing what. Put your name out there, let people know your background and what you can offer. There’s lots of tech focused industries that would like someone like you if you can make those connections.
I work in banking and finance. With a mathematics degree, I don’t think 10million would be out of reach but depending on age you’d need to be a side starter. I think finance would be good route for you but would need to read up on banking/finance (math is very simple to be honest).
IT pays 5m and above
IT security for DoD, can work on a military base and make like 90k – 130k USD with just a few years of experience. Goes FAR in Japan. Government job proper won’t allow you to station here more than a few years but you can jump off the gubberment job and hop to a contractor instead.
how to apply? 😅
I do product management /business management roles but I was transferred in many years ago. That’s honestly the best way to get a good salary from the start IMHO.
You have both the language and a math degree, so that is good at least. I would say banking, finance, or tech. It depends on where your aptitude and passions converge.
Work for a US company where I travel internationally and have nothing to do with working for a Japanese company. I just live here and pay taxes here. PR exempt from pension because I pay full SS and Medicare to the US. Exempt from NHI because I have my own international insurance through my employer.
My other American friends who make north of ¥10M all own their own business’, mostly trades industry. One friend who made ¥10M working in IT for a major research org., but packed it in because the same job pays the equivalent of ¥20M outside of Japan. He’s since moved back to Japan, and works remote for a US company.
The cynical old man in me says that with few exceptions, you’re not going to make anywhere near what you would in the “western” world. There are trade-offs that make Japan a great place to live, and everyone has to weigh it up.
I’m a lifer with a decent salary. I work in technology product development. My advice: work on international products or services.
Programming.
You’d be surprised from jobs people have gotten at the JET career fair, but it really depends on your other skills. From what I’ve heard: A guy with high JP ability got into industrial sales (makes more than me), another got into recruiting (with commission, makes more than me), and someone got into game development.
Two things: foreign companies and LinkedIn. This is where jobs are advertised and you can start getting a feel for what fields are recruiting. Forget the JET world and forget Japanese companies if you want to have better potential. Your job is to learn and focus on what skills you need for the industry/profession you’re working for. This might be doable in Japan or for some it might be better to go home do a Masters (no Japan/language/liberal arts) and/or get some experience and return in a mid career position.
My background is upper management in IT industry. Many people do not want to hear this but the future will be in AI and automation, LLM is hot right now and you can make some easy money if you know what the demand is for downstream.
Lots of areas are getting gutted by the generative AI boom. Graphic design, copywriting, marketing, translation. It costs me $0.03 now to get equivalent work that I would have had to pay someone >$15 for.
Obviously tech skills are always good, although increasingly you need to be fairly senior or in management to be strong on the market.
My suggestion is to look at the non obvious areas, especially if your tech skills are not caught up yet. I know of a startup that is hiring people to label natural language data and paying over 10m yen, no coding just need English and be able to label things accurately. Basically tasks that are just beyond the current AI systems or require human supervision
Product designer – remote. 120-150k USD
As others have said, the company you work for matters a LOT.
I work for the Japanese subsidiary of a North American company in a product/project management role. Salary is about 16mil yen. No bonus.
There are people in Japan doing the same job as me, probably working harder, who make 75% less.
It’s also not **all** foreign firms that pay well. I’ve been approached about jobs at other foreign companies where the role would sit above mine in the org chart, but the salary range they were considering was less than I make now.
I know lots of people clearing 20m+ in foreign tech, some of them even under 30 years old. Not all roles are programming, there are also positions like product management, data science, or UX design that pay well.
Obviously it’s not easy to get in, and the ceiling and opportunity is nowhere near as high or plentiful as the US, but it’s not like you’re relegated to be stuck at 5m for life because of working in Japan.
Now a Project manager with a Japanese subsidiary of an American company. 12+ mil now. Started 5 years ago here only making 4 mil. Worked my way up the ladder and switched departments.
Sales
Programmer. On the highest tax bracket just to give you an idea. As others said it’s very polarizing, the same job in different companies can go from 5m to 30m while doing exactly the same shit.
My advice: multinationals in Japan are kind of the opposite than in the west, in the west they tend to be cheap (except a few exceptions) because workers are drawn in by the name. Here most local companies are used to pay peanuts, whereas multinationals pay better from what I’ve seen.
Attorney at the Tokyo office of a U.S. law firm. Get paid same salary as I would in NYC plus an extra $100k expat package. If you can get into a good school, would advise you to go get a graduate degree and then come back for a job. The only foreigners I know here that make more than me here are in investment banking or private equity. So maybe an MBA instead of a JD would have been even smarter.
It is very likely that you will e paid less on your first job post JET (most jet alumi i know got a pay cut across different industries) it’s usually in your second job after jet you can get a decent salary. N1 is helpful but unless you have a specialisation where you have experience in a particular industry it won’t get you far – do some freelance work or volunteer work and build a portfolio.
Go to networking events held by your country’s chamber of commerce or one’s on meetup.
JET alumi chapters such as JETAAWJ hold networking events where they invite alumni who have established themselves in Japan to those events .
Translation jobs tend to pay on the lower scale, IT usually starts on the lower scale unless you have a significant portfolio. Sales is probably the easiest to get into but the turnover also turns to be high. Tourism/hospitality is in demand but pay can greatly vary.
I wrote a post-jet job hunting guide [here](https://firreflly.co/jetjobhunting/) if you’re interested.
Have you considered being an actuary with your maths degree? While still in JET you can sign up and do a couple of exams either from SOA or IFOA. Once you pass a few, the salary is very good. Great job security, especially if you know Japanese. The companies also pay for your further exams and give you study time. Every time you pass an exam you usually get a good raise too.
I know it’s not easy but try to find a niche role and be bilingual. After a few years experience you’ll become a rare commodity. I’m a “safety guy” basically enforcing OSHA/workplace safety stuff and there aren’t many in that field. Recently jumped from a 4mil generalist position to this 8mil specialist position and now 2 other big companies trying to recruit me offering 8-10 mil.
I knit shoelaces by hand. Prior to that I was a part time butterfly wrangler.
Data analytics would be cool for you, start learning Python (to begin).
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As for my area, IT, work for the US as a contractor, earn 18k USD monthly, I have not finished my bachelor and I am in Japan with a student visa to learn Japanese and, I hope to learn enough to get to N1 after 1 year of studying…