How can I acquire an INTERNSHIP in JAPAN???

Question

Hi Friends,

I would love to go to Japan for a short period of time for an internship or some work experience. Does anybody have any good advice on how to go about proceeding with it???

For instance does anyone have any good websites or the names of recruitment consultancies that employ for overseas positions???

Answer 1

Forget it. Japan is notoriously averse to foreign labor. The only foreigners who can get a work permit in Japan are high-level managers, professionals, athletes, coaches and entertainers. Bob Sapp and Dalip Singh have wrestled in Japan for years, Japanese TV and movie industries have a small but steady demand for non-Japanese actors (I actually met a man who spent 20 years in Japan playing American gangsters in movies and TV shows).

In addition, Japanese managers typically value loyalty and dislike short-term thinking, so the idea of internship does not sit well with them.

You might be able to open a few otherwise locked and bolted doors if you graduated from a top-notch Japanese university (which implies speaking and writing a nearly-flawless Japanese), but again, you'd have to be able to commit at least a few years to any employment opportunity that might arise.

Your best bet is to look for internship with a Japan-based office of a non-Japanese company or non-profit, preferably with home office located in your home country...