One of the business world's most interesting job categories is design and marketing. And yet the opportunity for English-only foreigners to pursue this career path in Japan is extremely limited - mainly to positions servicing export companies, where the materials...

I find that both managers and our customers fall into the trap sometimes of trying to find staff who are a perfect fit for the task at hand. "Get me some experienced bilingual engineers!" I'm told, "But don't be charging me full fare for them." Well, unfortunately, with the increasing influx of foreign firms wanting to take advantage of Japan's economic turn around, the demand for bilinguals has never...

I'm in my second month of seishain employment with an IT company, but in my fourth month of employment overall (I started under contract in 2005). The company mentioned nothing about a probation period after I converted to seishain, but among the paperwork items...

Every now and again, it seems like every 7-8 years. Japan goes through an economic cycle which stimulates all kinds of events that weren't previously imaginable. For example. in 1989-1990 it was sky-high valuations for land and where land became the main peg for personal net worth, getting loans, and of course making profits. Then in 1997-1999 the stock market made a brief but...