Hi experts,
so, I did JET for two years in Tokyo and have moved back to my home country to pursue a career closer to my interests. I'm now a graduate geotechnical engineer at an engineering consultancy in the UK and my undergrad degree was geology! I'm especially interested in contaminated land / geoenvironmental stuff even though my current job is more soil and rock mechanics related and I was heavily considering applying for a MEXT research scholarship next year, but I was wondering if I might perhaps be able to find a job as a geoenvironmental engineer at a foreign company?? EG I know Jacobs is helping with the Fukushima cleanup. I'm really interested in that. MEXT scholarship doesn't award a tonne of money, and even though I'm interested in Tsukuba Uni's environmental science masters, and Kumamoto seems to have a cool course that's right up my ally, living in Tokyo spoiled me and I'd really prefer to live in a city where there is good public transport, but I think on scholarship money that wouldn't be possible.
I have a certificate in N3 but after being away from Japan for a year my conversational ability, which was only starting to become "conversational", has already dropped ppreeetty far.
Does anyone have any experience in this sector? I don't even really know where to look. The example I gave before, Jacobs, I imagine I would need to stand out by being bilingual on top of having all the technical know how to get a job. The very few openings I've found in civil consultancies all require N1 Japanese.. not surprising though. I guess that only leaves the option of MEXT and maybe specifically trying to go research route and upskill my Japanese a lot in the first year.
Any advice or personal experience would be greatly greatly appreciated.
by Septeryx