If you're a gadget freak, another really excellent tool for learning how to read Kanji is an electronic dictionary. While there are a number of these on sale at any Denkiya-san, the problem is that most of them are made for Japanese users trying to learn English, not the other way around. There is one that stands out, however, and has been long regarded as...

Recently the Nikkei newspaper announced its annual compensation details for directors of 100 Japanese public companies. The amount being paid, mainly to executive (employed at the company) directors was JPY32 million (US$290,000) per year, not an insignificant amount but certainly lower than many other countries for similarly sized listed firms. According to the Nikkei, the highest director payouts were at...

The ideal size for a software sales and support outpost in Japan is about 10 to 20 people. Broken down, the numbers are typically: CEO, PA/office manager, sales manager and 2-3 sales people, engineering manager and 2-3 engineers, marketing manager, and then possibly assistants for all of the above managers. Note that I haven't included an accounting or HR manager. For the first...

A reader wrote to me asking about a friend who has a PhD in Computer Science and who is working as a professor at a prestigious US university. His wife is Japanese and they are thinking about returning to Japan for a while. The friend wants to get an academic job here in Japan and wants to know how to go about it. This is not the first time I've been asked this question, but information about the subject is extremely limited. Indeed, I don't think I've ever seen a traditional academic (university) job in Japan advertised...