Is it a good idea to move to Japan now?

Because from my perspective things are looking bleak over there, and no I don't mean fukushima and stuff, I mean the almost 250% of GDP debt and the epidemic of underemployment you hear on the economic news almost 24/7 (that and the PM being a complete moron).

So honestly, would you say its a bad/terrible moment to move to Japan?

 

Is it a good idea to stay in your present country now?

 

A foreigner's (financial?) success in Japan will probably have less to do with the economy, more to do with their: Japanese mastery, employable/entrepreneurial skills, social skills and connections, appearance, location and initial bank balance.

 

Well put. This could be said for ANY country honestly.
Not to mention the visa(s) and the immigration nightmare that will ensues.

 

I'd move there if I ever got the chance to.

 

All that's what matters when the economy is good. When the economy is shit, that has much less to do with it. Well, they matter but won't save you. Are there jobs in Japan? Yes, a handful. Are you going to get one without a decent command of Japanese? Probably not. The 90's are over. You may get one of the oddball jobs where they don't mind if you can't communicate with a majority of the office. I just met a guy from Google Japan and he said they have teams of engineers who don't even work on Japanese products. These jobs are rare though, and even more rare is finding a foreign (or even English-friendly) cumpany like Google who has a larger presence in Japan than Singapore or (AFAIK) HK.

Of all the items Calpis listed, Social skills, appearance, and location (IE, living in Japan) are necessary to get a job... even without threat of nuclear disaster or the whole roof collapsing. Connections don't play nearly as big of a roll in getting a job in Japan when you're not Japanese. Initial bank balance as well is an oddball. When applying for long-term visas they just check to make sure you live above the poverty line which is amazingly low. Something like 3.5 million yen a year.

If you want to move over, bring it on. Just be ready to teach English for a long time, and maybe leave when you get sick of looking for a job in your field. I know many people who have left Japan due to lack of gainful employment... and some looked for 12 months. One for 18. And these were guys that lived here for easily over 5 years.

Japan is not a hot bed of forward-thinking companies that love to hire young people with fresh ideas. Quit the opposite. They like to hire young people who follow directions for almost no money. With fewer young people every year, this means the aged ideas outweigh the new ones. We can debate what this entails for Japans future, but I don't think it's pretty. At some point the immigration flood gates will open, but that could be past our lifetime, and the first people to get those jobs will be Japanese speaking people that can work in the elderly care sector. They will need high paying jobs to generate taxes, but unless Japan starts reinventing itself as international so it can compete w/ Hong Kong and Singapore, they're not going to get anywhere. The last guy that said anything remotely akin to this was Ishihara (governor of Tokyo) and he was a nationalistic dip shit. So yeah, there's all that.

I hope things turn around, so my son can enjoy something that resembles the Japan I enjoyed. So, let's put a pin in that.