Plans Moving Forward
 

I am currently a computer science graduate student studying numerical analysis (things like physics simulations, but there are many other applications) in the US. What opportunities are there for working in Japan with this kind of background? I have looked around, but have not found many numerical analysis jobs. Is there any research at Japanese universities in this area? What are the chances of landing a computer science research (and/or teaching) job at a Japanese university?

Thanks.

There are likely to be a few positions in industry available, but probably not so many teaching jobs. An interesting irony in Japan is that most companies avoid hiring people with higher level degrees as they seem to think that such people will not fit in very well. You are much more likely to find a job with a bachelors degree than you are if you have a masters, strange as it may sound.

Personally, you would be better off finding such work in America. Not only is it easier to find such jobs there, but American companies prefer people with advanced degrees and will pay them much more than their equivalents in Japan.

Thank you. That is very interesting. Certainly in America we would not hire a PhD to perform simple programming tasks. But some jobs for which individuals with only bachelors degrees are not qualified and cannot perform well. So there is definitely a sort of partition. And although these higher-level jobs are likely fewer, there are also fewer candidates because fewer people are wiling to work towards the degree.

So this kind of system is not present in Japan? I have heard that there is a lot of on-the-job training in Japan, so I suppose it is possible that the required skills may be gained at work rather than in school.

I think that too, that the required skills are gained through training and not in school, but it's also that working in japan isn't something you can compare to working in the US or Europe, people in japan work much more hours a day and they use less of their holidays, they have 16days a year but only use about 8 cause they don't want to be ranked worse then coliques (is that spelled right? xD) but that's only what I heared in german TV.