Jobs for Gaijin in Japan

There are certain jobs in Japan that are naturally better filled by foreigners, such as employees in certain ethnic restaurants, the cast members at Tokyo Disneyland, or a minister who performs Western-style wedding ceremonies. Teaching English as a Second Language is another job best done by a native speaker, and there are many expats working here as English conversation teachers or other types of language instructor. By its very nature, translation from one language to another goes more smoothly if the person doing the translating speaks the target language natively, which provides another career path for foreigners wanting to work in Japan. This rule isn’t strictly followed however, and there are some who work as proofreaders or “rewriters,” essentially cleaning up English translations made by non-native speakers. Before I started J-List I worked for my city as a “Facilitator of Internationalization,” essentially being a bridge between the foreign community and the city government, and I did a fair bit of this kind of clean-up work. Once I even proofread a translation done by an American who’d lived here since the 60s, so long in fact that his English needed to be checked for errors afterwards. I wonder if I’ll ever get like that? (We have some interesting guidebooks for living and working in Japan, by the way.)

It’s considered very “authentic” to have a wedding performed by a gaijin minister.