Everyone who is doing a Working Holiday will sooner or later be faced with the big job search. (Little reminder on the way: ‘Holiday’ is just the second word of the Visa.) Especially those who are doing this in Japan will feel the need maybe sooner as they thought, since living here is equal to loosing all your savings in just one week. Literally, Tokyo is one of the most expensive cities I have ever visited or lived in.
In Tokyo, the term ‘working’ in Working Holiday isn’t just an option
Let me just start with the fact, that you have to pay every. single. ride. on the public transport. I mentioned earlier, that the public transportation-system does indeed work really good here. However, this seems to have a price. And not a small one. The farer you want to get, the more it will cost you. Facing that Tokyo is not a small town, going from A to B will easily cost you (one way) 400yen, which equals more or less 3,50€. Additionally eating out for lunch will easily cost you some 1000yen more, not skipping the fact that you still didn’t have breakfast nor dinner, will make you pay an average 2000yen on only a day. Just eating and moving.
So, yeah, since I don’t have a scholarship or something equal, I was starting my job search from the very first weekday on. But, where to begin?
Different options for searching a job
In Japan, there are many different ways on how to search and find a job as a foreigner. Depending on your experience and especially on your Japanese-skills, you can find a better or worse paid one. It’s also very important the length of your stay. Only being able to stay for three months or less can decrease your chances for finding a good and well-paid job. I had to experience, that many employers want somebody who can at least stay for half a year, if not longer.
Anyway, here are the three most common options to search for and find a job while doing a working holiday in Japan.
1. GaijinPot
The first option, almost every job-seeker in Japan will quickly stumble over, is a webpage called ‘GaijinPot’. Here, they do not only offer any information about events and tourism in Japan, but also a portal where you can find several job-offerings especially made for foreigners. You can make yourself a profile, adding a small resume of yourself and your education- and working history. With this profile it’s really easy to apply for jobs and (depending on your language-skills) the chances of getting answers is quite good.
2. Teaching English
The second, and maybe also the most common, is earning money by giving English-lessons. GaijinPot offers a lot of announcements from (English-) schools. However, the fact that I only stay three months made it a bit harder to find something in this area, since mostly they are searching for people who stay at least one year – which indeed is understandable, if they are going to give you a class on your own.
Anyway, working in schools is not the only option to give English-classes. The internet offers a variety of teacher-search-students-search-teacher-pages. Basically, the system of these pages is somehow comparable with online-dating-portals. As a teacher, you can make yourself a profile, set your available times, favorite places to meet (such like a cafe) and language-levels you want to teach. They do either offer a personal messaging-system or ask you to present at least your email-address. Students will do more or less the same procedure and are now able to find you there.
Some examples are: hello-sensei.com, my-sensei.com or enjoy-lesson.com. However, making a profile there does not automatically equal an instant income. A bit patience is definitely necessary here.
3. ‘Hello Work’ or ‘Foreigners Employment Assistance and Guidance Center’
Another option to search for a job is visiting the ‘Tokyo Foreigners Employment Assistance and Guidance Center’ or ‘Hello Work’, which is basically the same. At this place, they will ask you to fill out some informations about yourself concerning your working- and educational history and language-skills. Usually you should make a reservation before going there, because it’s normally very crowded.
Also, it is important that you’ve yet verified your local address on your Residence Card and at best have a Japanese telephone number. However, I neither have made a reservation nor did I have a Japanese number but still I got a spontaneous appointment. I set down with two sympathetic women – one was there to translate – who were searching some options for me within their databank and finally got me three interviews within the week.
Fazit
In the end, GaijinPot led me to one telephone-interview. Since my Japanese was not good enough, however, they couldn’t offer me the job. Still, they told me to call back when my language-skills have improved so they could employ me then.
In summary, GaijinPot provides a lot of job-offerings, but there is also a lot of concurrence (they will tell you how much people have yet applied and in my cases it was always around 200). Also, finding an English-teaching job as a non-native English-Speaker could be tough, since most companies are searching for native-speakers.
Concerning the English-teaching portals, I can’t count anymore, how many profiles I have made in total. A lot. What succeeded was in the end my-sensei and hello-sensei. However, I did not get overrun by requests. In the end I got three but until now I haven’t met one yet. Concluding this, I’d say it’s a nice opportunity to find something to earn a little money on-the-go, but as I said, you have to be patient and also, not everyone is comfortable with meeting alone with strangers. (However, you can mention in your profile, that you only want to teach groups – which in the end decreases your chances of finding something quick though.)
The most succeed did I have with the last option, Hello Work. What left me surprised was, that those two women – even though I didn’t speak a word Japanese at that time – did not only help me with such patience, but also called the searching employers, making me three interviews. Basically, I didn’t have to do anything more than visiting the bureau of ‘Hello Work’ and afterwards going to those three interviews.
(At this point it might be the right time to reveal, that one of those interviews indeed ended up successful and I am now working at a German Restaurant.)
tabeamari 