How I got a job in Japan (not teaching English)

I had romanticised living in Japan quite a lot. After studying here in 2023, coming back to the Netherlands did not exactly cure that problem. I wanted to return and build something more permanent: a career, a life and a channel that I could actually make from Japan.

There was just one fairly important detail to work out. A job.

I wanted something connected to the work I was interested in. Teaching English was not the route I wanted to take, and my Japanese had become rather questionable since coming home. So I had given myself a nice, easy starting position.

I documented the search because I wanted to know whether I could make it work. Looking back, I also documented quite a lot of waiting for emails.

My first plan: apply to everything remotely interesting

I started where you would probably expect: job boards. Find something interesting, send an application, repeat. Surely, if I kept going, something would happen.

After a week and twenty applications, I checked the results. Not one company had replied.

No interview. No exciting next step. Just silence. Which is a difficult result to turn into an inspiring YouTube montage.

It was tempting to conclude that finding work in Japan was impossible. But the more useful conclusion was that I did not really know what I was doing. I was sending applications and hoping someone would somehow notice what made me worth hiring.

Job boards did not produce a result for me at that stage. That does not mean they never work. It meant that my approach needed more thought than “send another one”.

A recruiter pointed out the obvious

I spoke with a recruiter who had considerably more experience of the Japanese job market than I did. Admittedly, that was not a particularly high bar.

The part that stuck with me was that I needed to show what made me different. What could I actually do? Where was my work? Why should a company choose me?

I had experience creating content, but I was not doing a very good job of making that relevant to an employer. I was treating job hunting like a gacha game: hoping for a five-star pull while submitting a one-star CV.

I needed to give someone a reason to be interested, beyond the fact that I really wanted to live in Japan.

Wanting to move was my motivation. It did not automatically solve a company’s problem. Annoying, but fair.

Ten companies and more silence

My next idea was to approach companies directly. I researched businesses that seemed interesting and tried to work out where I could contribute. Fewer applications, more effort into each one.

This felt much more sensible. I could look at their content, understand what they were doing and explain why my skills might be useful.

I contacted ten companies. Most did not reply. One did get back to me within a few hours, which was briefly very exciting.

They were not looking for someone.

So the improved strategy had not suddenly fixed everything. I had put more thought into the applications, but I was still sitting there without a job offer. At that point, it was getting quite easy to take the whole thing personally.

The opportunity came through the channel

Then I got a lead through someone who had found my content. We arranged a conversation, and eventually the discussion turned into a possible opportunity.

It was the first time the search felt like it was moving beyond me introducing myself to an inbox.

But I did not walk out of that conversation with everything magically sorted. First, I had to show that I could contribute. We agreed that I would help remotely with content and strategy.

That gave me a chance to demonstrate the work rather than only describe it. The videos and projects I had been making were useful here: someone could see how I worked and what I might bring to their business.

The channel was not a carefully engineered recruitment campaign. I had been creating and sharing things because that was what I wanted to do. Somehow, that ended up opening a door the applications had not.

Eventually, there was a job offer

After months of trying different approaches, conversations and working through the details, I found a company willing to give me the opportunity and support the visa process.

And the job was not teaching English.

I was genuinely grateful. It is a big thing to have people put that trust in you, especially when you are preparing to move your life to another country.

There was also a lot less instant relaxation than you might imagine. Once the opportunity became real, there were documents to prepare, arrangements to make and a move to organise. Getting the offer did not mean the rest of life quietly organised itself.

Still, I could finally tell my mum that I was employed. A strong development for the family’s confidence in my decisions.

What I would do differently

I would put more effort into meeting people in the field I wanted to work in, much earlier. Not sending strangers a message and immediately asking for a job, but having actual conversations, taking an interest in their work and letting people get to know mine.

I would also make my work easier to see. A relevant project, a portfolio or an example of something you have improved gives a person more to respond to than a list of skills.

And I would spend less time assuming that more applications must mean more progress. Sometimes the thing that needs changing is what you are sending and who you are sending it to.

None of this means a channel, a connection or a portfolio guarantees a job. My experience involved timing, other people’s trust and a fair amount of luck. I would be leaving quite a bit out if I pretended I had discovered a reliable formula.

It was possible. It was also hard.

For me, the route into work came through content, a connection and the chance to prove what I could do. Someone else’s route will look different.

What I hope you take from this is that my first unsuccessful approach was not the end of the story. I changed what I was doing, asked for advice and kept making work I could share. Eventually, that led somewhere.

If you are in the middle of your own search, I know the silence gets old very quickly. Try to learn something from it without deciding it tells you everything about your value as a person. I was not particularly good at that part either.

And if you want to see the actual attempts, conversations and increasingly stressed version of me preparing to leave, the full video is at the top of this page. Hopefully, it saves you a few of my mistakes.

Watch the original video on YouTube →