I’m a student in university and I’m taking a major in east-asian studies because I enjoy humanities and it offered japanese language classes. Considering this degree doesn’t offer any skills, I was wondering If I should switch to doing something useful like a finance degree to be a financial advisor while still taking japanese language classes as out of program credit. That would give me a bachelors to work in japan as a english teacher, but also give me the option of working in my home country of canada. Seems like a win-win scenario? Only thing is I do prefer studying humanities like literature, politics, arts and culture rather than something like finance which I think I still could enjoy as I like the stock market, calculating budget planning, portfolio allocation, etc. Any adivce?
7 comments
This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
—
**Considering working in japan after graduating question**
I’m a student in university and I’m taking a major in east-asian studies because I enjoy humanities and it offered japanese language classes. Considering this degree doesn’t offer any skills, I was wondering If I should switch to doing something useful like a finance degree to be a financial advisor while still taking japanese language classes as out of program credit. That would give me a bachelors to work in japan as a english teacher, but also give me the option of working in my home country of canada. Seems like a win-win scenario? Only thing is I do prefer studying humanities like literature, politics, arts and culture rather than something like finance which I think I still could enjoy as I like the stock market, calculating budget planning, portfolio allocation, etc. Any adivce?
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/movingtojapan) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You need to decide what you want. Your degree is not useful, but it might be fulfilling to you. Is money important? Because that degree is not going to lead you to being wealthy.
What you’re basically asking is what is more useful, a degree that teaches you hard skills or one that does not. Of course, the latter. You need to figure thisout for yourself.
Best to talk to a trusted friend, family member, or academic advisor.
Being an English teacher only requires a Bachelor degree of some sort, so you are good there. Without opening too much of that giant can of worms, English teaching as a lifelong career is something you have to drastically set lower expectations for.
Maybe someone else can offer a better answer but as for finance work in Japan, it is quite a niche job and not as prevalent as the west. In California, where I was originally from, if you ask the average person where is a safe place to invest their money, they would probably say some mutual funds or the S&P 500. Here I think those would be too risky to the average person and they would rather stick to fixed income investments like CDs and bonds. In that sense, I don’t know how easy it is to be a hedge fund manager jobs there are here considering how risk aversion the general populace is. If your Japanese also wasn’t like business level, that may also further hamper that career aspiration.
“teaching” in Japan is not teaching. You wouldn’t have the qualifications and experience to teach. If you fancy a gap year “teaching”, sure.
I mean, this is less about moving to Japan and more about your life and career goals. Be careful of picking a career solely for the idea of getting you to Japan, especially if you’re not sure if you want to live there long term. In any case a job you hate even in a country you love can be unbearable.
If your goal is only to work in Japan for a few years, then I’d take “Japan” out of the equation for your career goals— as you know you only need a BA to teach English in Japan and if you’re fine with doing that for a gap year or two, then great!
If you like the humanities and your current major, then keep at it! The humanities seem to get a bad rap on this sub, but I know plenty of people who were Japanese/Asian studies majors who have wonderful fulfilling careers in their home countries (and some in Japan, but that’s another story). Sometimes their jobs end up related to Japan, sometimes not, but they have a nice career anyway.
def just do a minor in Asian studies and do a major in literally anything useful be it business, finance, or even graphic design. majoring in Asian studies is a bad idea for your purposes.
Having bachelor degree doesn’t mean you can work as an English teacher. You also need master degree or teaching license, or you can just work as a TA.
Finance is okay but if you want to work in Finance sector, you need pretty good Japanese. I got master degree in finance and N2 but I have no confidence that I can work in finance industry. Imagine you go to consult your customers in M&A projects, face-to-face, by Japanese. Tried to find financial position in English for fresher but haven’t found any.
And for new graduate, if the jobs don’t require too technical knowledge or skills, sometimes they don’t really look at what you learn at school. Not all of the jobs like that but quite a lot.