Some regular readers will be getting sick of my message about the fact that ALL foreigners arriving in Japan need to take time to learn Japanese. But the reality is that the competition for jobs for foreigners has been heating up ever since the government opened up the country to Chinese students some years ago (peaking at 70,000+ students in 2003, but down in 2004 after the murders of a Fukuoka family...

Once you're well rehearsed on what you're going to say in an interview, you can focus on your interaction with an interviewer. Body language is a key feedback mechanism, and will help you change the pitch and tempo of your interaction. Sales people and managers with a sales background learn naturally to read the other...

Getting fired is always a traumatic experience. But for foreign senior executives, the experience is particularly humiliating. Tokyo is a small town, and people quickly notice a high-flyer getting shot down. Also, corporate politics is unpredictable, especially if you're the only foreigner in a Japanese managed company – even a foreign company – in Japan. I find that foreign firms often...

Following on from the topic of off-shoring as a company is that of working remotely as an individual. How do you get and keep a job which lets you live in the countryside, or even overseas? This is a question I have often asked myself, in the delicious anticipation of retiring one day – perhaps to a cottage by the sea, and far from the HEAT of Tokyo. By "remote" I mean far...