Well, I have spent six month abroad in Japan and Taiwan and now I am going home. It is not that easy, no matter who you talk to or what you hear. You arent guaranteed a job though your chances of landing one are a bit greater if you are white. It seems that in Japan and in Taiwan they want the classically white, European look. Now before you say anything, I am not faulting them for that. They want to hire who they want to hire. Now for myself, I am half Taiwanese and the other half in mainly American Indian so you can see how hard it was for me to find a job.
I have several cases in point. The first point in the sheer number of applicants, especially in Japan. Now I mainly used a website called Gaijin Pot. Every week day I look and applied to the handful of jobs that I could do. I did this for twelve weeks, [does some math...] around 140 applications all told. Now when you apply to Gaijin Pot, they send you an email back, stating that they have got you application and sent it in. They also let you know how many other applicants that they got. I think the highest one I got was 372 other applicants. On average, the number of applicants was around 60 per job and that is all just the number when I applied. Out of the 140 or so applications I only had one interview. It was perfect, being near Shibuya. I dressed up and even wore a coat and tie to the interview. Now I looked around and saw that it was a conversation school and the other teacher they had... well they werent as nicely dressed as I. But all of them were white. I had the interview and the guy said he had a few other interviews to get through. Long story short I didnt get the job. Was I not "white" enough? I dont know. That is how tough it was in Japan.
In Taiwan it was just as bad. One instance I got a job because I took over for Laura. Now Laura is a sweet little thing from Poland. She got a tutoring job for these really smart, and I mean smart seven year old kids. But, her english wasnt as good as theirs. Heck, I was teaching her english by this time. She told the mother but the mother said, "oh, your english is just fine! You are great! I want to keep you." When I took over the class for her, I did a mighty fine job. I enjoyed working with the kids and they enjoyed me. But you know, I didnt get a word of praise from their mother. Laura, the perfect white, me, not so much...
I am not saying thtat I had a bad time of it. If all they wanted to do is treat me as a tourist, then so be it. I mean in Japan, I am sure I was not everyone else pick. My gods they had upwards to 300+ applicants for a single job. I still had fun though. I got to see much of Tokyo. I took the Shikansen to Shizuoka. I met many relatives in Koahsiung. I went to the Ghibli Museum, heck a lot of Ghibli exhibitions. I went to Sun Moon Lake, where my parents honeymooned. I went to Zuoying and marveled at how much things have changed in 25 years. I was at Shibuya Crossing (smaller than you think) on Halloween. And you know what? I want to go back there and do it all again.
