Staring at job boards until my eyes blurred

Getting lost in the endless scrolling of job portals

I remember sitting in front of my monitor late last Tuesday, just clicking through tabs until I felt like I was losing my mind. There is something uniquely soul-crushing about refreshing job portals in Japan. Everyone keeps saying that if you have N2, you’re halfway there, but looking at the actual postings on sites like Rikunabi or Mynavi, it never feels like that. The language requirements aren’t even the point after a while; it’s more about navigating the specific tone of these companies. Some of them want someone who fits into a ‘team culture’ so perfectly that I start wondering if I’m applying for a job or auditioning for a cult. I spent about three hours just filtering through ‘foreign-friendly’ roles, but half of them ended up being essentially call center roles for tourist support, which isn’t exactly what I moved here for.

The weird gap between expectations and reality

It’s funny how people talk about K-MOVE or government-backed programs as if they are the golden ticket. I attended one of those seminars once, and it felt like they were selling a dream that didn’t quite line up with the market in Tokyo right now. Maybe it’s my fault for being picky, but the salary ranges—usually hovering around 250,000 to 300,000 yen a month for a junior position—feel slightly tight when you account for rent and the mandatory health insurance deductions. Then you look at companies that claim to be ‘global,’ but the internal communication is still entirely dependent on archaic paper-based approval flows. It makes you realize that the shiny ‘international career’ image is often just a layer of paint over a very traditional setup.

When Japanese grammar stops being the main problem

I’ve spent so much time worrying about my keigo that I forgot to actually think about whether I wanted the job in the first place. I had an interview last month at a mid-sized stationary distributor. It was supposed to be a standard screen, but the HR person kept picking apart my resume’s layout. I was so fixated on using the correct honorifics that I gave incredibly generic answers to their questions about my ‘vision.’ Looking back, I think they were just bored. The entire thing lasted about 40 minutes, and I left feeling like I’d just rehearsed a script rather than having a conversation. I didn’t get a follow-up, which is probably for the best, but the uncertainty of not knowing if it was my language skills or my personality that put them off is honestly more annoying than a flat-out rejection.

The cycle of refreshing and waiting

There’s a specific kind of frustration that comes with applying to these large tech-adjacent firms, like the ones doing recruitment for new projects similar to what I saw on the Nexon portal. They post these massive recruitment drives for AI-integrated roles or digital transformation tasks, but when you look at the requirements, they often ask for five years of experience plus native-level fluency. It makes me wonder who these jobs are actually for. I’ve started checking LinkedIn, even though it’s not the primary channel here, just because the UI doesn’t make me want to throw my laptop out the window. Sometimes I feel like I should just take a break from the sites entirely, but then a notification pops up, and I’m right back to hitting ‘refresh’ at 11 PM.

Searching for a role that actually exists

Maybe the issue is that I’m treating the search like a logical process where Input A equals Result B. That’s rarely how it goes. I keep thinking back to an acquaintance who found a role just by emailing a company directly, skipping the portals entirely. But that feels like such a gamble. For now, I’m stuck with the job boards. I have a saved list of about twelve companies that seem semi-decent, but whenever I try to write the cover letter for the next one, I just end up staring at the cursor. Is this even going to matter in a year? I’m not sure, and that uncertainty is just part of the background noise of living here now.