Job hunting...how can they pay so little?

[badmigraine 0]

With a beautiful new baby and my wife at home, I can no longer accept the 14-hour workdays I've been putting in at my Japanese company. OK, the hours are to be expected as I chose to become a lawyer and that is what the market expects. But out of curiosity I had a look at some job sites to see about a career change and found that even for what I would have thought were fairly skilled jobs, the wages are very low...so low that it would be almost a volunteer job or even require personal financial contributions from savings (or living with parents rent- and board-free) just to keep doing the job...here's a summary of a few examples:

 

--trilingual (native Japanese, excellent English and French) management staffer, bright and hard-working, sought for Tokyo office of international consumer goods company...monthly salary is 150,000 to 200,000, depending on experience.

 

--bilingual (native Japanese, excellent English) attorney with US or Japanese license, aggressive and detail-oriented with at least 3 years of big-firm experience, sought for patent/trademark department of large cosmetics company...monthly salary is 300,000.

 

--bilingual (J/E) international sales and marketing manager sought as country representative for Japan. Extensive travel and contact with distributors throughout Japan...salary is 240,000.

 

Sheesh...these salaries are the salaries of school-leaver management trainee jobs at Wal-Mart HQ, or the salary of a beginner, 9-to-5 phone answering/typist secretary at a smalltown company in the US... I don't get it. I just don't get it.

 

Are there really people with these qualifications willing to work for such peanuts?

 

How can you live in Tokyo on this salary? You would save nothing, own nothing. You would exist as a kind of minor drone, pouring the long and rich hours of your life into servicing the interests of some non-sentient entity for nothing more than enough food and rent money to get up the next day, the next month, the next year, and do it all over again...to what end?

 

If this were a third-world country, OK, maybe, but this is a rich industrialized nation. The educational level and cost of living are not like in Thailand or the Philippines.

 

I don't see how the job market can rely on workers with such low expectations. Where do they all come from? Is there really nothing more than this for locals?

 

What do the people get who have no trilingual, bilingual or professional license skills? 1000 yen/hr.?

 

But then again, after seeing what my fellow company workers are willing to put up with in terms of 3-hour roundtrip commutes, regular 8:45 to 9 pm workdays, meaningless weekend seminars and all done at the tiny salary of a small-town midwestern shoe salesman at a crumbling old department store, I guess I should re-think my assumption.

 

Maybe the best way to look at is: In spite of all the seemingly expensive costs of setting up and doing business in Japan, this may be the best place to get cheap labor that is extremely obedient, polite, submissive and willing to follow orders no matter what.

 

Sure this model won't work for some types of businesses, but for things like paperwork processing, waiters or back-office functions, it might do the trick amazingly well at fairly cheap HR costs.

 

[Ocean11 0]

You missed one opening in your survey there;

 

WANTED - TRANSLATION OFFICE LAWYER:

Trilingual lawyer (British English [must be able to spell US English], Japanese, Chinese) with proven track record in real-estate purchasing, accounting, telephone sales, high-level negotiation, and pizza making. Must own a wardrobe of bespoke suits and be prepared to fulfill irrational requests immediately without protest.

 

Salary - negotiable, within a range of 10,000 to 10,500 yen. 6 month trial period on 2/3 salary.

[montoya 0]

those salaries seem pretty low for Tokyo.. maybe their intent is to screen out bogus applicants and negotiate the real wage later? who knows.

 

anyway, how about working for as a lawyer for a US-related firm in Tokyo? not exactly a career change, although at least the environment might improve.

[badmigraine 0]

Yeah, US companies operating in Tokyo, that is where I would probably focus my job search. Unfortunately the days of the non-bilingual US lawyer in Tokyo are ending. Many employers already prefer a native J/excellent E bilingual lawyer with little or no experience over a seasoned lawyer with native E and business-level J.

 

The reason is, half of what they do requires J law and J contract stuff, and why would they want an in-house guy who couldn't even read or negotiate legal documents in the local language?

 

The other alternative is to go back to a US law firm's Tokyo office. But the hours there are just as bad, weekends too. A terrible lifestyle. I quit it already to go in-house.

 

In fact, the more I look at job boards and headhunters, the more it seems the available jobs are impossible requests that I am exhausted just reading about. Either these employers have unrealistic expectations, or I am a bigger loser than I thought.

 

There is no place in Tokyo for a 9-to-5 lawyer with dubious J skills.

 

[montoya 0]

I dunno dude, but if you are lacking the J-skills but want to continue working in Tokyo for the next few years, might be time to look into an intensive language course. Do whatever to pay the bills in the meantime.

[Ocean11 0]

Sounds like you're ready for ...

duck \'n rice farming !

 

Young children like ducks. Ducks stimulate the learning centers of developing children's brains.

[badmigraine 0]

Even with native-level J, here in Tokyo in a law job I'd still be working impossible hours. Same as NYC, same as L.A., all the same. The grind. It was OK when I was single, but getting home after 10 pm, it's impossible to have a family life, exercise, read books, study kanji or stay in touch with family. In fact, it's impossible to even be in a good mood. The situation is ugly all around.

 

Time to move on! I'll either be working as a 9-to-5 lawyer somehow, or have a change in career. This one is going nowhere.

 

We're actually looking in Okayama, where my wife's family is. Kyoto or Osaka are secondary options, close enough to family. I could finally have a beer with Ocean on his duck ranch.

 

There is a better motivation than Job Search for studying J...and that is, not to have my own kids laugh at my strange nihongo once they finally learn to talk.

 

[jared 0]

When I first seen the title of the thread and seen who started it I was all ready to laugh at the rich boy who thinks he cant live on 50man a month.

I was shocked!

 

Sounds like you need to start some sort of business and be the one employing the highly skilled and motivated for miniscule sums and charge them out for lots.

[badmigraine 0]

It's a cruel world, Captain.

 

Mogski, who works in my building, is thinking of adopting a 50 yen-per-day budget.

 

He looked at North Korea and saw them eating tree bark. He looked at all the papers and napkins around the office and thought they could be boiled into a tasty soup. There is always shoptlifting, and the endless restaurant garbage cans to go through. The one behind TGI Fridays isn't bad on Thursday nights.

 

He wears his black body armor to ward off hungry crows and blend in, perhaps the locals think he is some sort of giant New Zealand bird come round for the trash can pickings.

 

Tokyo jobs are a cruel story, a story that is not fully known abroad. Many think we have it as easy as the Halliburton contractors and mercenary truck drivers in the now-free and democratic Iraq. Many think our jobs are some kind of exotic historical fiction, like Tom Cruise's job in The Last Samurai. It's just not the case, eh.

 

[mogski 0]

I have decided to start up my own lawn mowing company in New Zealand. Stress free job and you get to ride on cool mower tractor thingys. Added benefit of this job is being able to smell freshly cut grass all day long, listening to ya iPod under them earmuffs, long long lunch breaks hanging rolling in the grass under the sun.

 

Yep, lawn mowing is the way for me.

[sanjo 2]

I like ducks too, giving me some ideas here.

 

I would say most people where I work are on around 150000 a month, they're not all part-timers or arubaito either - here all day. Pretty goddam low, but I'd say that would go way further than the same amount in Tokyo.

[indosnm 0]

I still don't understand how many people in this country survive. They get paid pennies then from that big deductions for insurance etc.

 

Migs, unqualified people would be very lucky to get 1000 yen per hour. Its more like 750-800yen.

 

One thing that really shocked me was when my wife thought that she would try and earn some extra money by doing the at home work. The stuff where you are pretty much a 1 person assembly line. To start off they give you the low price jobs where you might work all day 5+ hours and it might end up earning you 1,200 . Do the maths. is that legal? Sweatshops sound like they get better deals. After a month of working between 4-5hrs a day the ladies might be lucky to make 25,000 a month. Sure it helps but for the labor hours that is just ridiculous.

I mabe my wife stop after 2 days!

 

Is this really an industrialized country? because parts seem like its still in the 3rd world.

[scouser 4]

750 yen an hour is fairly common.

[mattlucas 0]

That's way more than minimum in Canada.

[indosnm 0]

yes, toque BUT don't Canadians get tips?

 

Australias wages are much higher than here and the cost of living is lower ( depending on location) and the lifestyle is better BUt the snow is crap!

[mattlucas 0]

Yah if you work in a restaurant you get a tip. But there are tons of jobs out there that arn't in a restaurant with low wages.

 

Sucks to have to make ends meet in a city like Tokyo on shit for money. Most ALT's get more than that.

[Oyuki kigan 0]

I tried working for a Japanese tour company this summer in vancouver where i had to get my class 4 driver's liscence and speak japanese pretty well exclusively. Tons of responsibilty, several labour code violations, and for the first three months they tried to pay me $2 BELOW MINIMUM WAGE. Not that i am bitter or anything,...

[NoFakie 45]

A lot of people don't have it too good, you know. One in four Americans (not illegal immigrants) in full-time employment earns less than $8.75 an hour. In Britain, the gulf between salaries and house prices, the major cost of living, is huge. I don't know how it's distributed, but the level of total household debt is very high. That's debt on cards, not on mortgages

[jared 0]

I'll wager that not many of the minimum wagers in the US or Canada are Bilingual Lawyers.

[kintaro 0]

Well consider a guy named Nakamura Shuji. He invented important breakthroughs in blue lasers. Before 1999 no one could figure out how to produce a sustained beam of blue laser until he figured out how to produce one for up to ten thousand hours. one of the finest achievements of postwar japanese technology. His employer, Nichia Chemical not only didn't promote him or reward him but they only gave him a measly 10,000 yen for each of his five hundred patents thoughout the 90's. This was b/c he didn't graduate from one of the big name universities in Japan. He quit out of frustration and no other J-firm would hire him. he's living in Silicon Valley now most likeley getting paid his worth.

[indosnm 0]

My J friend is a dive instructor and she lives in Micronesia in a nice place but was receiving only $350 us a month (rent provided). Seems no matter how qualified you are in Japan that everyone earns the same shitty low wage. A dive instructor in OZ is paid pretty well because there is alot of responsibility invloved.

Japanese dive operators have had a bit of trouble recently because they were found out to be paying

the J wage rather than the Oz award wages. kechi fookers.

[sakebomb 0]

Indosnm, my wife does that at home stuff for her 'free money'. The pay is crap, 1 month maybe 10000- 25000 a month. A women doing the same thing was making 50000 a month going hard. Anyway she ended up with serious RSI which required surgery. Needless to say there is no insurance with those jobs. So after busting her a#*e to make peanuts she basically spent it all on medical bills.

When I came to Japan I worked in a restuarant on about 680 p/hr. I have 13yrs experiance in the Hospitality industry, also I have a Diploma in Graphic design. These don't seem to mean shit here, language ability or not. Just to survive I went to the darkside (joke OK) and began teaching english.

But thats life!!

[slow 0]

indo, sake, if your wife has time to do that kind of job, tell them to study something and get certification.

Some of my friends studied hard during they were pregnant or after giving birth. And they got certification of interior coordinator, FP... But they already had another certification, first class architect or real estate dealer, so those certification added value to them. They are ready to get back to work again.

[sakebomb 0]

Thanks for the advice Slow! My wife is saying should should do some study to better herself.

[indosnm 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by slow:
indo, sake, if your wife has time to do that kind of job, tell them to study something and get certification.
Some of my friends studied hard during they were pregnant or after giving birth. And they got certification of interior coordinator, FP... But they already had another certification, first class architect or real estate dealer, so those certification added value to them. They are ready to get back to work again.

Nice advice slow BUT it actually works better for me ( more tax deductions) if she doesn't work these measly jobs that pay pittence (?). She could study, but by the time she finishes we will probably be back in Oz where J qualifications don't mean anything anyway. By that time I will rolling in it anyway so, I'll just give her the time off , because i am a lovely husband.