Becoming a professional expatriate

JET seems to be a fairly popular way of getting your foot in the door in Japan. Like asnozz and Zilog Jones, I'll also be graduating in 2007 (although I'll be 23) and looking to set up shop over there. Are there any gaijin-specific non-teaching jobs available that don't require shit-hot Japanese that I could get after JET? I can get by with my current level of nihongo, but straight translator jobs are beyond me and taking blatant advantage of my ethnicity (white British) seems quite amusing.

 

JET actually has some non-teaching Jobs you could look into. Few, but they exist. I had a friend that did some crap for the world cup as a Jet. She had to work her ass off but arguably more fulfilling than being a mouth piece.

 

Hey Phinn, if you don't mind me asking which uni are you at? As I know there are Japanese Job fairs at oxford, soas, etc. I went to one last year (although I am ages away from graduation) there was a massive range of jobs on offer, not just simple jet ones. ie Proper salaryman things for big companies. Though most need a decent level of Japanese, some are willing to do graduate training that including Japanese tuition.

If not, then go to some of the asian job recruitment fairs held in London, you are most likely to find something more interesting than teaching English etc.

 

University of Sheffield. They've advertised similar things in my department (East Asian Studies), but I didn't realise there was any flexibility on your language ability. I'll have to check that out, thanks.

@GaijinPunch: Sounds interesting, I'll have to ask about that, thanks.

Edit: Crap pay, but not bad in subsiding your dream 'selling stuff on eBay' job. That, and you get paid to play video games all day long

http://www.koei.co.jp/english/html/joboffer/g.html