Aug 06 2007
Day 29
Coming up on a month, huh?
This week is going to be a short but busy one. I’m going out of town on Thursday with my ladyfriend to spend an extended weekend in Nikko, so I’m trying to get everything I want done this week done before I leave.
Monday - Today I went back to investment company number two for the second set of interviews. It turns out that two departments both have openings and are interested in interviewing me. I had an interview with the ¡ÈOutsourcing¡É department, which on a whole I’m not quite sure what they do, but apparently they have a junior position open. My job would be the jack-of-all-trades kind of thing, doing various assignments within the department so I can figure out how an investment company actually operates. The upside for me is that work in the outsourcing department is predominantly conducted in Japanese. The downside? Well, other than being an office gopher… The other department, Human Resources, was too busy today and bailed out on me. I’m meeting with them tomorrow.
Tuesday - I was supposed to meet with a recruiting company (not to work for the company but to see if they could place me somewhere) but because of investment company number two’s HR (stupid HR) moving the interview to Tuesday, I had to cancel with the recruiting company and am now going to head back to Roppongi in the afternoon. Not a big loss, though. The recruiting company was just following up with me after I had given them my info back at that career fair. They’re primarily a tech-based recruiting agency, so I don’t think they could have done much for me anyways.
Wednesday - In the morning I’m meeting with a Japanese headhunter that got another foreigner friend of mine a job at a big firm here. Even though my friend claims he’s entirely lost at his new job, he still recommends the guy. Any help I can get, you know? In the afternoon I’m meeting up with a representative of an organization that I do some volunteer translation work for. I haven’t really been ¡Èhired¡É on yet (not really hired since I don’t get paid) but they want to meet with me to see in what capacity I could help them.
Wednesday night I’m going to be moving to another friend’s place. This is another thing to remember for those readers that are thinking about doing the same thing I’m doing. Make sure you have lots of friends in Japan that are willing for you to crash at their place. I definitely would not have been able to do this job hunting without the hospitality of a few spectacular people.
More updates to come as the week progresses.
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Seconded - even hostel payments don’t seem like much until you’ve been here a few weeks, a month, two months… you must have had a comfortable nest egg to be searching for a while.
I worked at the exchange student center during my last year at university and I made friends with a lot of the Japanese students. One, I saved up all the money from that job to use this summer, and two, those friends are now letting me crash at their places. Hotels, even hostels, are not the way to go in my opinion. If you are going to do a real job search, then there is also the possiblity of it taking all three monthes of the tourist visa, if you are like me.