My two cents. The few weeks you spent in Japan on exchange made you interested in the country. This is natural. But remember that "culture shock" doesn't usually kick in until after a few months.

I think your idea of going to Japan and teaching English for 2 years is a good one. You will see the not-so-cool side of life there, go through the Japan-bashing stage (4-6 months in, in my case), and come out the other side of the culture shock (usually one year or more) with a proper appreciation of both the good and the bad. You'll be in a better position to decide what to do.

And if you decide to come back to North America, a two-year stint in Japan will not be career-blocking on your resume.

Sorry for posting here, I don't think another thread in necessary, since I'll be asking the same stuff.

Here's my story:

I'm taking a master's in chinese and minoring in japanese. My course is awful, I'm a 2nd year student and my chinese level is really, really sucky and I'm one of the best in my class, I'd say my level is what you should have after 2 months of chinese study (maybe less, my course is really crappy, we barely have to study for the tests because they are so easy, like １年生向け lol). That said, I've been focusing only in japanese and studying chinese just enough to pass (and I'm well aware my chinese SUCKS, my classmates on the other hand aren't)

My course is 5 years, the 4th is spent in china, and to go there we have to pass HSK 3 (we make these testes weekly and I passed them all, but I know that doens't reflect my knowledge, I understand close to nothing of ehat they're saying, I think I only pass because of my knowledge of characters, from japanese.

But, truth be told, I came to this course mostly for japanese, chinese is a bonus.

Now, I'm so confused, I don't know what to do after the 3rd year.

I'd like to work in japan soon, and I the masters I chose will definitely decide if that's possible or not. Personally I don't want to work with the chinese language, but I do want to work with the japanese language.
I want to study till I'm 22/23, maximum. I'm 19.

My current plan is to finish my current bachelors, go to japan one year to study japanese and then try to apply for a masters there or go straight to a job if possible (translation?). But I want to be able to earn a normal salary, and I'd love to work in Japan, where I could be using japanese all the time. My dream always was office work, like the ones you see in tall buildings, I remember watching american movies as a kid and longing to work in such places. I still retain this dream.

But I really don't know what to do.

Should I continue my plan (written above)?
Should I continue on my course and become a masters in chinese studies?
Should I go to an Internacional Relations masters degree?

What other degrees could I take?

Please help me.

Your life actually sounds pretty good to me
Enjoy your college experience and the time you will spend in China.
Chinese will be more important for someone your age anyways.

But I still haven't decided to go or not, because, I will have a weak chinese level, and I don't really want to stop studying japanese intensively at least till december after taking the 2kyuu. I can honestly say that I don't study chinese for real since like June. My course really sucks and we learn close to nothing here (related to the chinese language anyway).

And I lost all my motivation to chinese studies :|, I'm still in this course because it's only one more 1.5 years (without masters).

I so don't know what to do...

It's difficult. There are plenty of people in Japan who are already billingual no doubt, so it's not much of a selling point. No one's going to care about your major/Masters in the end when it comes to employing a foreigner unless it's something especially technical from a prestigious place. There's bazillions of people majoring in Japanese after all. Furthermore, if you don't have a competitive resume in your own country, you certainly won't be in Japan.

In the end, for a job that's going to offer any kind of a future, you need to ask yourself what you can offer that a typical Japanese person or a 帰国子女 can't. That will generally mean getting experience in your own country first (unless you're going into academia I suppose). Yes, there are exceptions, but if one wants a sensible plan, starting off by becoming a lowly paid migrant worker for the sake of wanting to live somewhere else surely isn't it.

Aside: no one with anything less than native level English is ever going to become a lawyer in say, my country, England. By the time you reached native level (if you did) you'd be far too old to stand a chance in recruitment, even if you did come from one of the top two or three universities in the country.

hmm

what would i recommend...

first of all, you need to look into what jobs you actually want. don't limit yourself to one job, actually look into classifieds to see what's out there. if possible try and interview people who actually have those jobs.

(that's one of the biggest mistakes i made. i took aero eng. because i thought it was fun. it was hell trying to find a job because i didn't know what i wanted to do and i didn't know what was out there, so during school i just didn't focus on anything. in addition, the job i hold now is actually quite boring. cubicle life might be great at other companies, but not mine.)

once you do that, THEN you can actually focus on education to see what you need it for. imo you have no faith in your degree, you don't know what it's for, why do it? one viewpoint might say it's only 1.5 years more, the other viewpoint might say that's a long time that you could use to focus and you could use the time to get better at something more relevant.

just make sure you set up your plans and have confidence in them before you decide to change up your education. switching back and forth and having wishy washy, not well-researched plans and leaving them all half finished is much worse than finishing the 1.5 years of a major you don't like.

igordesu Wrote:In two years-ish I'll graduate with my bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin (not Madison) with a major in English (literature emphasis, not teaching).

Aw, why not?? You should come down sometime and we'll have ourselves a good ol' time.

I'm considering taking a masters in marketing, or some business related masters. I just don't know what, I've always wanted to work in business environment.

Having a bachelors in east-asian studies + a masters (business related) will hopefully get me somewhere. After this I will send my resume to portuguese companies that deal with japan.

Any adviced on a masters? I'm not good with math. I'd love something like managment 経営管理 but I think it has math so...

CarolinaCG Wrote:I'm considering taking a masters in marketing, or some business related masters. I just don't know what, I've always wanted to work in business environment.

Uh

kainzero Wrote:first of all, you need to look into what jobs you actually want. don't limit yourself to one job, actually look into classifieds to see what's out there. if possible try and interview people who actually have those jobs.

"a business environment" is not concrete enough to really set goals and map out your life.

i mean really you can just go to any major company's websites and peruse the job openings to see what's required, what they want, what the job duties are. you can even see how major companies are organized.

and even then, the job duties when you're actually there could be substantially different from what HR puts on their job ad which is why i recommended interviewing people that have the actual jobs.

My main piece of advice before committing yourself to "building a life in Japan" is to come here and live for a couple of years then decide. Your decision to settle in Japan will definitely be more sound if you know what it is like to live here.

Life in Japan is not all good, yet not all bad, and much of the excitement becomes "the norm" after a couple of years. You just need to figure out if the "norm" here is that "norm" you are looking for.

That being said, I hope you find your path in life.

Make sure you go visit and try it out for at LEAST a year.

I don't know many people who went to Japan for a year, came back, then wanted to go back permanently.
It's nothing negative about Japan. It's just Japan gets a lot of hype, that it cannot match.

Deciding to live the rest of your life in a country you've never lived in is like deciding to marry a woman you've never met.

So, yeah, as everyone has said, first live there for a little while. I'd say at least two years, but I'd recommend three or more. One year is not nearly enough to get to get to know what a foreign country is like.

Why not join the JET program after you graduate? That gives you chance to live and work in Japan, whilst studying Japanese. Apply for a small town to get a real feel for the country.

You dream is "office work"? Lol trust me you'll soon get bored of it, please choose something a little more ambitious!

Do not want to ruin it for anyone here who wants to be a lawyer in Japan...but, being a lawyer requests a very high mastery of the language in any country a very high mastery since language is your only weapon as a lawyer , not only should you able to write with zero spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes you should be able to read pieces in very little time , becoming a lawyer in Japan requests allot of work . My advice is be realistic.

But there is an easy way out ...you could like study law and then specialize in International Business Law so that you can work at some kind of international company in Japan maybe.