An interview with an international business person who makes their own career at Japanese company as being a professional business expert.
The interview theme is [My Career Fly].
What is the motivation to work for them? Spotlight their career vision and motivation for work itself.

Vol.1

CF: What do you think about the merits and demerits of working in Japanese companies?

O: Hmmm... I think there aren’t many Japanese nationals who can speak English and experience living/working abroad so I believe this is a chance to grab foreigners to pursue their career in Japan. Since the world is becoming more and more global, international business chances are increasing everywhere, it could also be an advantage and merit for foreign nationals to work in Japan.

For demerit, as I have said before since the Japanese nationals who hadn’t got a chance to work/study outside of Japan, I think it is difficult for them to understand foreign nationals with different backgrounds/beliefs.

So I think in that case there needs to be a lot of cooperation on both sides to understand each other and have proper communication.

CF: Does that mean that you take a lot of initiatives to start communicating with others at your company? How does it go?

O: Yes, I take initiatives to communicate with my coworkers and since Japanese is mainly used for communication in my company, I try to explain myself in a way that is easy to understand so I prepare some script beforehand and practice what and how I would explain things in Japanese. As a result, it helped me and coworkers to have good communication with each other.
I'm glad that my coworkers are quite honest and they have already accepted me as a foreigner and they already know that there are some things I wouldn’t understand.

CF: Thank you for sharing that. You know in the media, the Japanese working culture is deemed to very negative with working hours and full trains, etc. How is your experience?

O: Actually, I never worked in other countries except for Japan.
But, based on my knowledge of Hong Kong they also work quite long hours there too. 

I think there is a fine line between
what is worth and what’s not worth it for overworking.

For me, when I overwork it is because I want to and I love my job as it is very fulfilling for me and I would like to have our business succeed. So in a way, I don’t have any negative feelings towards overworking.

I also think that the Japanese working culture is more implicit. For example, when you propose something, they may not reject you right away, they explain and then reject you very kindly. I think in foreign countries, it’s definitely more straightforward and they say yes/no very clearly.

In Japan, you have you really understand how they express themselves and I actually think it’s the beauty of expression. So when I talk to Japanese people, I try to imitate them and try to strike a balance between foreigners being working in Japan. But when I speak to foreigners, I try to talk more directly at the same time make the other person feel more comfortable.

CF: I see, how long did it take for you to get to a point where you felt like you had acquired that skill?

O: I would say before I worked in Japan, I researched online a lot and try to know how Japanese people do business and their manner, I also used to watch many Japanese tv series, I also have some Japanese friends and my teacher who was Japanese and she would also teach and guide me in terms of Japanese culture and manner, so these gave me a head start.

But when I joined my company, I really tried to observe and instead of speaking first.
Such as seeing how Japanese people speak to each other, try to observe and learn from them is the best way which really helped me, so until now I never had a very frustrating time.

CF: Any advice to other foreigners who are considering to come to Japan?

O: I think before coming to Japan, you really need to think about what you want to do in Japan and why? Just because you like Japan doesn’t mean that your career would flourish here, and I would advise others to find out why and what you want in Japan.

I also believe you have to show others that you have the values - to be prepared too.
Not just because you are foreigner, how you contribute to the company and I think for the foreigners we are special enough to have separate language skills. But I think it’s not enough we need to have other technical skills as well. 

“I want to become a global citizen in the future but my base is always Japan"

CF: So what is your next career fly?

O: I probably said this many times but since I really like alcohol(lol), this year I will take the sommelier test and while developing my career in marketing since I also love marketing.

Japan is my base, but I want to become a global citizen in the future. So in the upcoming years, I would try to go deeper in this industry, because I’m working in other countries I would like them to be connected and linked to Japan even more in the future.

CF: Thank you very much for your time and sharing us with your valuable experience. Good luck with your future endeavor.
We wish you all the best!

(Left)Nomin from Career Fly and (Right)Oscar from Kontatsu
Career Fly is a hub agency that makes everyone's career fly!
We introduce Stem x Foreign talent x Women to Japanese companies. Currently, our data pool consists of 4700 candidates from 80 different countries.