Hello!
I’ve been living in Japan for a few months now on an engineer visa, working at a Japanese agriculture company in the deep countryside where there's literally no supermarkets nearby.
Before moving here, I had about 3 years of experience in tax and accounting at a Big 4 firm. The work was completely unrelated to Japan (mainly U.S. taxation and basic accounting).
Right now, I’m only at JLPT N3, but I use Japanese every day at work. My tasks are mostly handling COE applications, HR-related work, and admin — which is very different from my previous accounting/tax background. Since this is an agriculture company, they also hire foreigners on SSW and engineer visas to work in rice fields, food processing, and packaging.
The issue is, even though I don’t work in the fields, my salary is basically the same as those roles (I'll also add that I hold a masters degree). It’s only a little above minimum wage — just enough to live on, but not much to save.
Given my background and current situation, I’m unsure about my career path. Should I:
- Stay at my current company for at least a year, even though the salary is very low?
- Start looking for jobs at international companies where N3 might be enough?
- Focus on improving my Japanese to N2 (or higher) first?
- Work on building other skills instead of just language?
I’d really appreciate any advice from people who’ve been in a similar situation!
by Ok_Operation_1435