Wanting to move

Lets say I've just got my degree(in whatever) so I can legally work, and I want to finally move to and make a life in Japan. What are the procedures to take? Should I find a job from here(America) first?(note: I do not plan on being a teacher or anything, just a normal ole' shop or something like that) How should I go about getting an apartment? What kind of documents should I have with me? Tell me everything! Thanks!

Do you have Japanese ancestry that will allow you to get a Japanese passport? If not, even if you do have very fluent spoken and written Japanese, I'm afraid you won't be able to get a job in a "normal ole shop".

The pay for retail staff is only about 900 yen per hour, which is not enough to meet the Japan Immigration requirements for a working visa. It also makes no sense for an employer to go to the trouble of arranging the documents for a foreigner to be able to work there if a Japanese person can do that job.

That is why most people who come to Japan work as English teachers- because unless you have experience and qualifications in a field like IT or finance, English teaching is about the only thing an employer here will hire you to do.

The only non-Japanese I have ever come across working in stores here were Chinese or Korean people who had most likely grown up in Japan- their Japanese was fluent but I could see from their nametags that they weren't in fact Japanese.

you don't want to work in a shop. you can just as easily teach english for 3 or 4 times the pay and the work is much, much easier.

if you do have a degree, you can do almost anything - you can come to japan on a visitor's visa, start applying for jobs right away (make sure to bring a suit for interviews, forget working if you don't have a suit!) and then wait for someone to hire you and sponsor your working visa. basically you will not have a problem finding a job if you are a native english speaker and don't act like an idiot during the interview. there are more english schools than grains of sand on the beach.

alternatively you can attempt to get interviews with the major english schools that hold recruiting sessions abroad. this is more difficult and may necessitate your flying across the continent to go to a recruiting session with no guarantee of being hired.

you can also try the JET programme.

i recommend just going to japan and applying here, you're far more likely to get a job that way.

bring at least 3000$ in cash and convert it to yen in japan. convert only a little bit at narita as the exchange rate is worse there than in other parts of tokyo - there's an exchange in akihabara with excellent usd rates.

find a gaijin house or friend to live with initially. there is a new koya in tokyo and kyoto which is around 20$ a night.

good luck.

I already know of some good (non-teaching) jobs that are willing to hire a foreigner. But with whatever kind of job I end up deciding on, what I want to know is should I apply while I'm still overseas or wait till I'm already in Japan? Or would it not make any difference?

I just got back from Japan like a week ago. On the flight home I was talking to a lady that is in HR for the U.S. Military. I myself am not interested in the military but I asked her how I can be in Japan with the Military and no go to war or do the Military game. She told me there is a military civilian deal that all you have to do is work a job in the military for only one year, just some mundane job like lunch server or janitor. Then you can live in Japan after that one year as a military civilian. Most military vets end up opening bars around military bases so that could also be a possibility. They also work at bouncers at the clubs in Rponghi (or however it is spelled). Anyways military could be compared to selling your soul to the devil for some people so it just depends how bad you want to get over there.

zetsubou, surely that depends on the individual employer. If you have found an employer willing to hire you from overseas and take care of the documentation before you arrive, by all means take that route, as then you will have guaranteed employment when you arrive and possibly also a place to live already set up.

You will need to contact the employers of the non-English teaching jobs you have found to see if they will hire you from overseas or whether they need you to be in Japan for an interview (this is the norm for most jobs except with the big eikaiwas).

It's better to be in Japan and apply for jobs because emplyer may want to interview you. But if you're still oversea it's going to make it difficult. So my answer is go Japan with tourist permit for 90days and do job search. Of course you need to find a place to stay in advance while you are still in your homeland.