I’ve worked in Tokyo for a Japanese company for ~3 years now, and it’s interesting seeing other takes on the experience. For the most part, the particular company you work for makes more of an impact on your work experience than what country you are working in. I have a better work situation now than I did with any of the companies I worked for in San Francisco (not to say they were all bad). Our dev team mostly works remotely, very few meetings, great coding practices and workflows, etc…
As for the “gaijin” parts of the article… Japan is 98% ethnic Japanese and 99.5%+ culturally Japanese. Even in Tokyo, non-East-Asian foreigners make up significantly less than 1% of permanent residents. There’s no way to shake “foreigner” status unless you look the part, but that’s just part of the life you choose moving to a foreign country. If that bothers you as much as it does the author, then I would not recommend moving to Japan. Personally, I don’t mind, and I participate in a number of communities and activities where I’m often the only non-Japanese in the room.
Feel free to ask any questions if you have them. I really love life and work in Tokyo, and even though it’s not for most people, most of what you see written about it is negative, since it’s often from people who are leaving (and almost always voluntarily).
I’ve worked in Tokyo for a Japanese company for ~3 years now, and it’s interesting seeing other takes on the experience. For the most part, the particular company you work for makes more of an impact on your work experience than what country you are working in. I have a better work situation now than I did with any of the companies I worked for in San Francisco (not to say they were all bad). Our dev team mostly works remotely, very few meetings, great coding practices and workflows, etc…
As for the “gaijin” parts of the article… Japan is 98% ethnic Japanese and 99.5%+ culturally Japanese. Even in Tokyo, non-East-Asian foreigners make up significantly less than 1% of permanent residents. There’s no way to shake “foreigner” status unless you look the part, but that’s just part of the life you choose moving to a foreign country. If that bothers you as much as it does the author, then I would not recommend moving to Japan. Personally, I don’t mind, and I participate in a number of communities and activities where I’m often the only non-Japanese in the room.
Feel free to ask any questions if you have them. I really love life and work in Tokyo, and even though it’s not for most people, most of what you see written about it is negative, since it’s often from people who are leaving (and almost always voluntarily).