Hello everybody,
I would like to find a job in Japan and am currently wondering how to go on about that. A bit about me (throwaway because I doxx myself here (if anyone I know sees this, hello ^^)), I am currently 23 years old and in my second semester of my physics masters. Which means that if everything works well, I could manage to graduate my masters by march 2026, being 24.5 years old then.
I was born and raised in Germany and also spent my university life there. In total, I did two gap years already, where in the first one I visited a language school in Japan for a few months and the second one (officially the 4th year of undergrad but I was already done with my courses) spent as an exchange student at one of the big national universities in jp.
My Japanese is decent (I have N2 and currently working towards N1), but a bit rusty at the moment since it's hard to get enough speaking practice back home. But I'm confident that I will get to N1 level during 2025 if I continue studying. Furthermore I have full working proficiency in English, am native in German (and around A2/B1 in French in case that's of any use).
My problem now is how to approach job hunting. I feel that if I don't move directly after graduation, I won't find a job in Japan anymore, and it will also be way harder to integrate the older I am (I feel like I'm already at the upper edge here). Do you have tips on how to go on about that. As a physicist, I don't really have a lot of marketable skills (I focused a bit on data science and machine learning / artificial intelligence and am fairly proficient in python, but that's kind of it already. Also I'm definitely not the top student of my class and my grades reflect that. In order to get better at what I'm doing, I'd need half a year more probably, but then I'm afraid I'm too old. And most of the R&D roles probably want someone with a bit more experience or a better cv than I have when it comes to 新卒.
The other thing is that in Germany, it's kind of the opposite from Japan that it's not really important where you studied but super important what you studied and which skills you actually have. And everyone kind of spends most of their 20s in university. And tbh, if I wouldn't have had that pressure, I would honestly have preferred to not study physics (which I find too abstract and draining and actually interests me less than I originally thought), but study humanities, economics or at least engineering instead of physics to have something more applied/people-oriented. If I stayed here, I would have the chance to pivot and change fields (which even here would come with some career setbacks probably), but I feel that would diminish my chances to go abroad due to my age then. I mean deep down I want to do something with actual humanitarian impact, but I think it's hard to get to that point, especially with my background. There's one second masters in governance I could do and get admitted to, but this will come with an additional two years of workload. So I am not sure if the fields I could apply to now actually represent my interests precisely. But it would be better than nothing at least, and I could maybe still change fields later on.
So in case I'd apply for 新卒 roles, how would you recommend me to do that? Is that even possible from abroad? And how would you say are my chances to get a job as a foreign woman in general?
I'd be happy for some hands-on advice 🙂
by Ok_Introduction_8618