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Getting an IT job in Japan

Speaking Japanese

Japanese necessary?

For most IT jobs, speaking Japanese is not necessarily a must; however it will greatly increase your chances of being hired and well compensated.

Obviously

The obvious reason for this is that non-Japanese speakers will probably only find placement in positions where there will be no need for Japanese, i.e. in a foreign managed company or one where the supervisors have a good command of English and the job description does not include the necessity to read, write, speak, understand spoken Japanese.

95% Cut Off

Unfortuately, this cuts away about 95% (extremely rough estimate) of your job opportunities. Additionally, a proven ability in Japanese will likely to equate to a higher pay scale. Solution: learn Japanese. It will be well worth your investment.

To be or not to be in Japan

Being abroad

Unless your reputation precedes you or you have a skill set that is in such high demand that a company is willing to pay to bring you over for an interview, most companies will look locally before dropping the cash to send someone across the ocean for an interview.

Most land their Job in Japan

You may be able to locate a Japanese company in your home country at a job fair or other event; however, the majority of Japanese companies are, obviously, in Japan. Most foreigners I know working in IT/Computer/Media in Japanese landed their jobs after they got here.

Your Option

A nice option for those who can afford it would be to think about coming over as a student for the first several months and while honing their Japanese skills suss out the job market, go to interviews, and network.

Getting Cerifications

Are you certified in the skills/languages you possess? If so, good - Japanese companies generallly like certifications. Although many extremely talented programmers/administrators/media creators are around that have not bothered/not needed to pick up the certs, it is much easier for a company to feel that they are making a safe bet on someone being able to deliver and be competent enough to do the job at hand when they have the cert in hand.

Networking

Very important in Japan

Networking (people networking) is probably important in every country, but perhaps nowhere as important as in Japan. The ideal way to land an IT job (or any job for that matter) is through a personal introduction from someone inside the company who will help push our application through.

Sounds difficult?

Maybe, but if you can get here and get involved with groups and organizations that match your professional interests, you'll have a much better chance of finding your niche in the IT/Computer/Media job market. Additionally, many companies have candidate introductions bonuses, so there is sometimes something in it for them as well!

Japanese on the Job

Japanese Data

Many IT jobs will require dealing with Japanese data. The first thing that will prove to be a challenge for the uninitiated is having the OS in Japanese. Although you might be able to temporarily get around this problem by using an English system with Japanese support, you will invariably be faced with having to take control of a Japanese machine at one time or another.

Learn Japanese OS

So, probably better than trying to avoid Japanese systems, you'll be better off in the long run if you dive in and learn how to operate a Japanese OS. Of course if you can already read Japanese, it will probably not be too much of a stretch to learn the few rare kanji from the menus that you need to learn.

Flash Cards for Menu Items

However, for those who have weak/no reading ability, you'll probably have to resort to more drastic means such as making flash cards of the menu items of the most important programs that you use and drill yourself incessantly until you master them.

Programming with Japanese

Japanese: Double-byte Encoded Language

The fact that Japanese is a double-byte encoded language that is expressed in one of several different encoding sets (SJIS, EUC, JIS) can be a real pain for the uninitiated.

For Example

For example, when I initially worked programming PERL I was always baffeled why my scripts would fail when I replaced the Roman characters with Japanese ones (the problem was that I was using SJIS encoding which includes control characters such as '\' as part of the double-byte encoding).

Japanese Routines

Sending scripted email, sorting data, gobbly-gook letters, as well as numerous other problems are in store for you! What's worse, the majority of information on how to solve these problems is only available in Japanese!

Books

The best English book ever on double-byte information processing is: CJKV (Chinese Japanese Korean Vietnamese) Information Processing, written by Ken Lunde, the Manager of CJKV Type Development at Adobe Systems. Although not specifically on using Japanese, Jeffrey Friedl's book, Mastering Regular Expressions, besides being an excellent reference book for programmers of practically all languages, also provides some tips on how to deal with Japanese text processing. Additionally, we have created an online forum exclusively aimed at answering questions that you may encounter while programming in Japanese.

Documentation

Another Hurdle

Another hurdle for the IT/Computer/Media guy is the Japanese documentation. Whether this be installing a driver for a printer to reading the manual for a new platform, unless you can proficiently read Japanese you will have to either rely on help from your Japanese/bilingual colleagues or be stuck.

A different Ballgame

Although you may be able to find documentation for most Western-produced software/devices, it's a different ballgame for devices produced specifically for the Japanese market with English documentation appearing late or never. The only real solution to this problem is to learn Japanese...

Japanese-savvy software

Your Favourite Software?

Perhaps you will also experience the problem that your favorite pieces of software will not handle Japanese characters. For example, I primarily code using a program called BBEdit for the Mac. I was a bit bummed out when I realized that BBEdit couldn't open up Japanese files (this has been corrected with recent releases) or that I couldn't enter Japanese text into some of my graphics programs. The best solution is usually to get the Japanese version of the software you need (if it's available).

Buy two Versions

If it's a new piece of software for you, you might need to get both the English (or your native langauge's) version of the software to read the documentation and understand the menus and the Japanese version. Expensive but sometimes necessary for those lacking Japanese reading skills.