Hi all, I’m currently in my second year of teaching in Japan and, although I don’t want to keep teaching, I am very much interested in staying in Japan once my contract finishes.
The options I’m interested in are Japanese language school to learn Japanese fully, or a masters degree in international relations (or similar field).
Off the top my head, I think language school will help me find jobs in Japan and related to Japan if I leave, but a masters would be helpful in a more general sense, and I assume I could also learn Japanese as a minor during the course/keep self-studying.
(Also, I already have a masters degree in England, so this would be a second).
My question is, does anyone have any experience, insight or knowledge about either of these 2 paths? Did you have a good or bad experience with either of them, know someone who did?
Sorry for the long question, and thanks in advance if anyone feels like answering!
17 comments
I’m curious – what kind of job do you think you can get in Japan with N1 Japanese ability and a masters in international relations?
I got a master’s in IT online via my home country, then got a programming job. My undergraduate degree was actually international relations.
I think before you enroll in a new master’s program, you should figure out what you actually **want** to do. Getting a random degree and hoping you find a job where it applies later is a risky plan.
My friend got a masters at Waseda in Japan and has been struggling to find a good job since. Says his main wall with applications is not having n1 (despite probably being that level)
What do you mean by the Masters is helpful in a general sense? Assuming you’re not already N1 equivalent, you’re limited to English-language programs available in Japan, which are (usually) expensive and competitive.
I did an English-language Masters program in Japan, and honestly believe that a couple years in language school + JLPT N1 would have been a lot more useful in the job hunt process.
In addition, you already have a Masters degree (although haven’t mentioned what field it’s in). If the international relations course interests you, great, but don’t kid yourself that it would be more helpful for your career in Japan than language ability and JLPT.
If you can afford to go to school for Japanese F/T then go for it.
I will note that no, Japanese is not particularly useful outside of Japan.
>although I don’t want to keep teaching, I am very much interested in staying in Japan once my contract finishes.
Ahhhhhh that explains a lot.
I tried language school in the past (actually, I tried two). I wouldn’t recommend it at all.
If you are outside of the IT field, it is going to be very hard to find a good job without a really good level of Japanese.
It is not a matter of the linguistics alone, it is also that you will need to know and internalize all the cultural norms that are indirectly tied to the language (consideration for others, humility, hierarchy, etc.) .
I can’t say anything about the master’s degree, but it still will be difficult to find a job just by knowing Japanese, however this still gives you a chance to start somewhere and learn on the job.
International relations is probably the most useless major you could pick. I think you need language school to get to N1+ and work on some professional skills. The language is just the starting point, you need something to make a career out of and humanities so if you do a masters do something that leads somewhere.
👋 Went from working as an ALT out of undergrad to Japanese language school, Japanese master’s program, and now working at a large int’l Japanese company. I can answer any questions more indepth but here are a few immediate responses to your OP:
– Language school can help improve your Japanese ability and provide assistance for applying to a Japanese university. Any career help they can provide, on the other hand, will likely not be useful for you.
Most language students are on the younger side and either only here for a season or on their way to higher education. The job connections most schools will have are for more basic part-time work or lower wage work without much opportunity for advancement (like English teaching).
– Getting a master’s in Japan is a good opportunity to get into new graduate hiring (新卒一括採用), for which there are many job opportunities in many fields and very few expectations for prior experience. This is how most people in Japan start their careers.
Some caveats are that your opportunities may be limited by the quality of your school (generally public universities and a select handful of private universities like Keio, Waseda, Meiji, Rikkyo, Ritsumeikan in Kyoto, Doshisha, etc.), as the name on your diploma will be the first and most important thing hiring managers will see. Additionally if you’re well over the age of average graduates, it may disqualify you from these positions. As a non-Japanese person, I think there’s more leeway for the diversity of paths that might have led you to university in Japan.
– You should look into the job hunting system here in Japan (JASSO’s 外国人留学生のための就活ガイド is a very good, comprehensive, and FREE place to start). Generally speaking, what people study at university is almost entirely unrelated to their careers. As long as you have a passion for your studies and can explain how you grew as a person through your research, you’re golden. If you can spin it as relevant to the company to which you’re applying, that’s a bonus. The process is much more focused on what kind of person you are (strengths and weaknesses, charm points, teamwork, etc.) than on what you know, as everyone is trained in what they need to know for the job when they join the company.
For reference, my undergrad and master’s were in comparative politics and Intercultural studies, and now I work as a system engineer. It’s very common to apply for companies under this system as a generalist (rather than for a particular position) and then be assigned into a field via on the job training.
– If you want to do things the British way, applying for specific, predetermined roles, you will be at a severe disadvantage. Due to the aforementioned system, mid-career positions are not nearly as common as new grad. You’d be competing against a bigger, more qualified pool of candidates for a significantly smaller number of positions. It’s likely many non-Japanese applicants would have significant Japanese skills from years spent working, in addition to other qualifications and work experience (which is much more important for mid-career hiring than new grad).
If you want to stay in Japan longterm, I would advise you to take this context into consideration and not limit yourself to specific aspirations like translator or journalist. It’s totally possible to do these things (the efficacy of taking on debt and additional education to get into a dying field like translation notwithstanding), but the system isn’t set up for specialist job hunting. So long as you have an open mind (and finances), it’s totally possible to make the transition via the routes you’ve mentioned!
Hello! I have a Masters in Public Policy from Australia and it’s done nothing for me. All anyone is interested in when I’ve looked for jobs here is my Japanese language proficiency and any previous job experience I have. I reckon your best bet at staying here and making a decent salary is getting that N1 (I’m half Japanese, born and raised overseas but with Japanese citizenship, and I have N2). On your resume you’ll need to convince employers that your 2 years teaching has given you x, y, and z transferable skills/qualities. But again, all that means nothing if you can’t prove your language proficiency.
Language school then masters. You need halfway decent Japanese to survive university. You also don’t want to study in English because you won’t be able to communicate with most of the staff.
It depends on what you want to do and where you want to live long term. Although a masters might be useful in other countries, it doesn’t seems to matter so much here compared with learning Japanese, which will open many more doors as most companies require at least N2/business level Japanese.
For reference, I went to Japanese language school and loved it (Naganuma in Shibuya) and I’ve worked in a Japanese company and foreign (Japanese was still necessary).
Hey OP – you’re getting some useful responses and some pretty snarky ones, despite the clear nature of your question. I almost never post here, just lurk for fun, but let me share my experiences with you here and see if it is at all helpful for you.
I had similar ideas to yours when I first came to Japan. Fresh out of uni, wanted to be a translator especially with fiction or essays as I had studied lit in college and minored in Japanese. After 3 years working eikaiwa full time while doing 20-30 hours of japanese study a week and having no life, I came to the conclusion that there just wasn’t a future in that particular direction. However, by doing that Japanese intensive study, I passed N2, failed N1 by a bit and never went back to it (although, anecdotal as it may be, N2 has gotten me in the door at least for most interviews etc., it’s really just a check to keep people with little/no language skills out where they would be irrelevant).
I ended up continuing to teach, but also moving into some niche fields like test-prep, editing, curriculum development, and on-line education. While working at these jobs I did a distance learning masters in Humanities, since I thought my end game would be getting a job at an international high school. This is not exactly a wonderful or even easy kind of job to nail, and long story short is while I value the 3 years I spent part time studying for the masters, it has done far less for me in my time in Japan than networking, Japanese study, getting real experience, or just applying to things even if I am underqualified for them.
Fast forward and now that corona virus has normalized remote work to some extent in Japan, I am a freelancer who does online language coaching, some content creation, and I also run my own English school on the side. My Japanese skills are useful daily for communicating with various clients I work with when freelancing and for dealing with customers at my business. They have been far more useful than almost any of my higher education, with th exception of bachelors degree that actually got me here in the first place.
YMMV, and you might not think my situation sounds ideal given what you want, but I’d like to stress something that took me way too many years of my life to realize: degrees have diminishing returns, espceially in the humanities/social sciences. I had a recruiter friend of mine give it to me pretty straight when I floated getting an MBA in lieu of finding new work: he basically called it a white collar disease, people being brainwashed into thinking mid-career moves always required new uni degrees, when many fields care much more about work expeirence and ability than schooling.
Sorry if that was a bit rambly. End of the work day here. But I hope there is anything in my story that can help you on your way. Best of luck with it man!
Common progression for transition out of teaching is recruiting. Hays is a big one, but there’s a plethora of others in Tokyo. Have had friends in the executive recruiting space that do very well and transitioned off of JET into that space. You’ve got to hustle though.
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