Advice on preparing for an internship in Japan

May 4, 2008 2:10 AM

How should a college freshman prepare for an internship to Japan in two years? What options are available?

My son is a current college freshman who started a self-study program in the Japanese language last summer. He is interested in studying abroad for a semester, perhaps during his junior year. However, his current school has no history of work-study/internships in Japan.

If anyone has experience in this area, can you give advice on what preparations he should be making now, and what future organizations he can approach to obtain his goal? (His major is in computer science, although he has an eclectic background and could land in a variety of fields.)

posted by F Mackenzie to education (13 comments total)

If his school has a career planning center, it would be a good resource to find companies with which the school has ties or to create inroads with more multinational companies that might have branches in Japan. I found our school's alumni network extremely helpful in the search for international internships. One of the contacts I established through this network was working in Japan and was extremely informative while navigating the jungle of possible opportunities and actually helped set up an interview that resulted in an offer.

I commend him on his initiative, and if his school offers Business Japanese or the like, I would highly recommend planning to take it the semester that he starts looking for internships. If the school is flexible in its coursework, there might even be internship credits offered as elective credit for his field. Oh, depending upon the field, he might find a prevalence of job opportunities outside of Tokyo - at least that's what I found with wet lab work.
posted by palionex at 3:22 AM on May 4

You & he should check out the Japanese government's Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) website, specifically the scholarships page. They run some pretty huge programs.
Keep in mind that most of the really good government scholarships go to students in the hard sciences, though.
posted by kickback at 6:11 AM on May 4

If he is willing to wait until after graduation, the JET programme may be a good option.
posted by idb at 6:31 AM on May 4

Seconding JET. My flatmate and a couple of my close friends did it for between one and two years, and all had an absolutely fantastic time.
posted by Magnakai at 8:15 AM on May 4

If he is willing to wait until after graduation, the JET programme may be a good option.

Definitely. I considered JET before deciding to immigrate to Canada instead. I know several folks that have done it and they all loved it.
posted by Nelsormensch at 8:55 AM on May 4

On the self-study route, I highly recommend these two grammar books (1, 2) for they essentially cover two years' worth of college-level Japanese grammar points in book (reference) form.

NetFlix is a great way to legitimately acquire Japanese anime. Anime doesn't cover technical japanese, but for that he should run web pages of interest through Pop Jisho and diligently study the vocabulary.
posted by tachikaze at 9:57 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

His school should have a study abroad office, which is where he should start. (They might not be able to help, but at least he should start there to figure out how to be sure he will get credit for the internship, what the school's requirements are for a program to count, etc.)

Maybe this is obvious but: most programs and internships will require some form of letter/s of reference. He should make a point of impressing (at least a few of !) his professors with his conscientiousness, responsibility, good attitude, etc. Be on time to class, don't skip appointments, answer emails in a professional way (no txt-msg speak), drop by their office hours when you have questions about the course, or to ask around about study in Japan, etc.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:13 AM on May 4

I was going to suggest AFS, but it looks like they only do this for high school students. You may want to contact them though to see if they can recommend an option for college students. Depending on your financial needs, and the cost of tuition at his school, you may want to just have him drop out of college for a term and take the money you'd otherwise spend on tuition, fees, room, board, etc, and put that to spending three months in Japan. Additionally, he could always transfer to a different school, one that has an overseas office.
posted by pwb503 at 2:03 PM on May 4

I am Japanese. I live in Japan. I work in the software/Internet industry. We take interns (just 2 per year, and only from a fixed set of Japanese universities.)

I will be frank with you- internships are rare in Japan at traditional Japanese companies. There's a few reasons for this but that's not essential here.

Certainly try many of the routes mentioned above, but imo, what your son needs is a personal introduction. That's key to something like an internship in Japan.

Perhaps your Rotary Club or Lions Club has some kind of connection with a similar club in Japan? Maybe your city has a sister city relationship with a city in Japan? Maybe a friend or a family member has some kind of connection to some business or executive in Japan? These are all routes you should be searching for.

If your son can read/write Japanese and can program, I'm sure there are places that would be interested in having him intern, but the challenge is finding the right place to inquire.

The other thing to consider is where your son's programming strengths are. If he's more of a lower-level C programmer, vs. more of a higher-level scripting-language programmer, that would also change where he might be looking for.

Please feel free to have your son MefiMail me if he has questions.
posted by gen at 4:16 PM on May 4

Thank you everyone for the great advice. I'm tempted to mark each response as the "best answer!"

I'll forward this thread to my son and let him ponder a bit. His name is Tom, in case he emails anyone with follow-up questions.

Again, many thanks!
posted by F Mackenzie at 10:05 PM on May 4

tachikaze: he got those books on his last birthday, and plans to study them all summer. He's about two years into anime-- it seems it's the only thing I see on his computer screen!
posted by F Mackenzie at 10:19 PM on May 4

Chiming in a bit late, but my college had a sister city-college relationship with a Japanese college that my Japanese teacher didn't even know about. I found out about it randomly and a couple months later was doing an intensive Japanese program in Japan with a subsidized apartment to boot.

I would recommend going a similar route and perhaps asking his school for company introductions, attending some oh-so-exciting networking events, or contacting multinational companies in Japan as others have suggested.
posted by ejoey at 2:13 AM on May 7

seconding what gen says about internships being rare at traditional Japanese companies. you know what though? i work here, and i'm not sure i'd want to work in one of those companies. i guess it would be an experience, or something, but i'm happy with my foreign-owned company.

where i was going with this though is that you might look into foreign internship programs offered by companies that are currently connected with the university, or specifically contacting alumni from your school that are in Japan now. For example Harvard has a lot of alumni at one of the big banks (Shinsei...? something like that) because the president is an alum.

Otherwise if he's really really set on Japan you might look at something like IAESTE, which is an international organization that helps set students up with international internships. There's some fees and such involved, and not all the jobs are career-openers, but I'll put it out there for you to look into anyway.
posted by whatzit at 3:40 PM on May 7