Karen, as you know, has been working as program director and Waseda University visiting professor almost since we arrived. I, on the other hand, have not had a paying job since my last paycheck from Knox College on September 1st. I have therefore been working at my employment. The first problem has been that I am on a “dependent” visa that doesn’t officially allow me to work in Japan. All written policies say this, and all the information about this has stated that if I found a company that was willing to employ me, I could bring documents from the company to the immigration office and apply for a permit to work part-time. So I did put my resume out to some places that I thought I might want to work for. One was Temple University’s Tokyo campus. Of course by the time we arrived, they had their fall semester set. Nevertheless I was called about an introductory marketing course when the adjunct professor scheduled to teach the course backed out. I interviewed there and it seemed to go well, but they offered the course to someone else. Marketing is not a strong area of mine, but they mentioned the fact that my being on a “dependent” visa was a problem. I also suspect that my ponytail didn’t help. However, the interviewer mentioned that there had been a change in what was necessary to obtain permission to work on a “dependent” visa. Basically, I only needed to apply for the work permit at the immigration office. This I did, and apparently I will soon get permission to work. Last week I began email discussions culminating in an interview on Friday with a human resources consulting firm– Phoenix Associates. www.phoenixassoc.com/html/index_e.html The interview went well and I have been offered a position there. The job entails working with multinational and non-multinational firms in Tokyo in training and development. About 10% of the work is English teaching. Most of the rest of the work is either specific skill set training depending what is needed or working with executives to keep their English language skills up. There is also miscellaneous other work that is somewhat hard to classify. The job pays well and the amount of work is flexible. Also, if it is a good match and if I desire it, Phoenix Associates can easily do the paperwork to get my visa changed from a “dependent” to a full-working visa. The only concern the interviewer had was my ponytail. He personally didn’t have a problem but thought some of the clients might. I should start next week sometime, although I still need to go through an orientation and do some paperwork.
Cool! Congratulations, Dad! Too bad about the conservative folks and the ponytail, but hey, maybe that says something about the work environment!
That is good news! But what are you going to do about the ponytail?
I guess it depends on what is more important–to work or to have the ponytail. Which do you think is more important?
Congratulations, Dad! Maybe if you dress very professionally (suit and tie), the clients won’t mind the ponytail…