Previously, I wrote about my motivations for moving to Japan. Here, we will talk about how I found a job that would let me stay in Japan.

There are various ways to obtain a visa to stay in Japan. The subreddit r/movingtojapan is a great resource especially their visa wiki. If you are lucky and have Japanese citizenship or are married to a Japanese national, well, you’re lucky and can ignore all of this and move onto the practical aspects when you are on the ground. Another path that might be good, especially if you aren’t confident in your language skills, is to go into a full-time Japanese language school for at least 6 months (minimum 6 months to get a student visa), then apply for jobs on the ground while in school.

One big decision you have to make is whether you’ll find a job while outside the country, or move to Japan first on a tourist visa or other visa and convert it to a working visa. Note that as of August 2019, it does not seem to be possible to convert a tourist visa to a working visa anymore. If you’re in one of the lucky countries (not the United States) that has a working holiday arrangement with Japan, also great! Move here first then figure out your job situation. Otherwise, within the span of your tourist or other visa, you need to find a job, have them issue a Certificate of Eligibility (COE), then apply for a working visa. When you do so, your previous visa is extended by 2 months as you wait for the results of your application, which should come within 2 months.

One benefit of being on the ground already is that employers will more seriously consider your intent to move to Japan, as you are already here and hopefully have a phone number and Japanese address. It also makes it much easier to schedule interviews given that you are already in Japan and can come in physically. The downside is you have the time pressure to find a job within the span of your other visa.

Given that I had a high standard for my working conditions, knew that coming in with an experienced Silicon Valley background would allow me to find better jobs, already spoke a decent amount of Japanese so that I didn’t want to take full-time classes, I opted to look for a job before moving. But how to find what software opportunities were available in Japan? Ideally, I wanted a western MNC with presence in Japan, or a Japanese company known to have good working culture. There are a couple of great guides, such as from TokyoDev and JapanDev that detail how to find a programming job.

I started with the list of big names I knew had some Japanese presence: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Amazon. I also went through my network to figure out additional companies that were here: Square, IDEO, Stripe, CircleCI, Indeed, Cookpad, SmartNews, and Mercari. There are some companies that are known to actively seek out foreign developers, but with mixed reputations about their work culture (really depends on team, supposedly), such as LINE and Rakuten.

There are a few sites and communities that list or expose opportunities:

  • TokyoDev and JapanDev focus on developer jobs and are foreigner friendly
  • Justa.io focuses on Japanese startups but also has some foreign companies
  • HackerNews Tokyo is a Slack community for tech folks in Japan and offers the opportunity to connect with people here

A number of western websites also list Japanese jobs:

  • LinkedIn set your location to Japan and you’ll start getting exposed to jobs and have recruiters reach out
  • AngelList has a focus on startup jobs, with most being global companies
  • StackOverflow
  • The Japanese version of Indeed
  • Glassdoor

Getting on the ground here and going to meetups is also a great way to make connections and find opportunities you might not have known existed. There are general Japan jobs sites too like GaijinPot, but they generally aren’t focused on technology positions.

A couple of tips, especially for software positions. Always go through a referral, even if you don’t know anyone. Reach out people in your network who know people in your target companies.

In any case, it was a long drawn out process for me. Many companies I talked to were not looking for engineers in their Tokyo offices, and instead pointed me towards Singapore. Recruiters were mostly a waste of my time, and lock your profile to the recruiter for the company, unless you get the recruiter to release your profile. For high skilled jobs, it’s unlikely you need a recruiter, as you can do the research of which companies are good and have positions available yourself, and apply directly. I had many companies simply not response or ghost me after initial contacts. I interviewed with a few Japanese companies with which I did really well technically, but failed mysterious on some cultural issue. I got stuck in headcount issues multiple times where I had to wait for headcount to open up. It took me from March 2019 to October 2019 until I finally got an offer that I really liked, with Stripe. Overall, I think Stripe was the best option out there, in terms of compensation (took not too bad of a cut from San Francisco), culture, and mission.

It took even more time after signing my offer in November 2019 to get the visa processed and to finally move over in March 2020. But that’s a post for another time!