finance jobs in japan

[Gorotsuki]

i am going for a degree in accounting and i was wondering if there are jobs in that field or if it is field where foreigners are hired without great japanese ability. also how is finance looking overall

[MMM]

Originally Posted by Gorotsuki

i am going for a degree in accounting and i was wondering if there are jobs in that field or if it is field where foreigners are hired without great japanese ability. also how is finance looking overall

Programming, yes. Accounting, not so much. How useful are you going to be if you cannot speak Japanese?

[komitsuki]

Originally Posted by Gorotsuki

i am going for a degree in accounting and i was wondering if there are jobs in that field or if it is field where foreigners are hired without great japanese ability. also how is finance looking overall

How I see it, you'll have better chance of getting hired in China (Hong Kong or Shanghai) than in Japan.

[Gorotsuki]

i hope in four years my japanese would be on par . i can hold conversations usually but i need to learn more. by the time i graduate i should have better japanese and i also plan on doing an exchange.

i dont want to go to china by the way. not to live anyway.

if i kne japanese well would i be likely to get a job or is that one of those professions that foreigners are not needed as much?

[MMM]

Originally Posted by Gorotsuki

i hope in four years my japanese would be on par . i can hold conversations usually but i need to learn more. by the time i graduate i should have better japanese and i also plan on doing an exchange.

i dont want to go to china by the way. not to live anyway.

if i kne japanese well would i be likely to get a job or is that one of those professions that foreigners are not needed as much?

99% of foreigners working "permanently" in Japan are teachers. The majority of the remaining foreigners either work for foreign companies with offices in Japan or are in IT.

Four years of college Japanese will not be enough to be fluent as an accountant in an office. An exchange will help, but I have never heard of an accountant in an office in japan unless it was a foreign company.

[spicytuna]

I know several people with limited Japanese who are working in the financial field in Japan. However, they all had their MBA's and over 10 years of work experience before finding their job overseas.

[Mortry]

I don't mean to sound prejudiced, but I would have never thought that Japan needed people in IT...

[komitsuki]

Originally Posted by Gorotsuki

i dont want to go to china by the way. not to live anyway.

But your plan says "this is a terribly weak requirement to get a finance-related career in Japan".

Anyway, always have a Plan B to Z. The real world is not full of flowers and unicorns.

[Sangetsu]

There are quite a few foreigners working at the various foreign banks located in Tokyo, but most of them work in rather senior positions, and have business degrees. You would need an MBA on top of your accounting degree to qualify for such a position. And, at the moment, many banks in Japan are still cutting positions. My GF works for one of the larger investment banks in Tokyo, and they are waiting until at least the second half of 2010 before they resume any recruiting.

[sarasi]

I know a lot of foreigners with little to no Japanese and no MBA who work in finance in Tokyo- all at large foreign financial houses like Ernst and Young, Barclays etc. Most of them work as analysts and fund managers.

If you have the experience and are already in Japan (i.e. working as a teacher, even if it's just for a short time), it's possible you will get a job, but remember the financial crisis and the collapse of Lehman brothers etc last year? That put a lot of foreign finance people out of work, and the economy has not really recovered a lot since then. Japanese skills are becoming more important as jobs get more competitive. Being hired from overseas is unlikely, unless you are very special for some reason.

As for the person who wondered whether there are IT jobs for foreigners in Japan- there are loads. The Tokyo offices of companies like HP, Cisco, Axa, Microsoft and many more have English as their working language and hire plenty of non-Japanese- recently a lot of people from India have found jobs here. As with finance though, there are not nearly as many jobs as there were two years ago, and the market doesn't look like it will pick up any time soon.