Category: Business / Translation

One of the most surprising things foreign travelers rave about has to be the Japanese bento, or boxed lunch. Whether sold at a train station, supermarket, or convenience store, the Japanese bento delivers a delicious meal at a reasonable price for people on the go. On a sunny day, I’ll buy one from a department store and eat it outside at a nearby park on my lunch break.

But just how Japanese are Japanese bentos these days?

The rice and vegetables may have been planted and harvested on Japanese farms by workers from Myanmar, meat and fish processed at Japanese food manufacturing plants by workers from Thailand and the Philippines, meals cooked and assembled at distribution centers by workers from Vietnam, and finished bentos sold in convenience stores by workers from Nepal. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when Japanese residents were asked to voluntarily remain at home and refrain from travel and social activities, these workers played a vital role in keeping essential services running.

With the graying of its population, Japan has confronted workforce needs through its highly structured Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) system. While not without shortcomings, this system provides a legal framework for employing foreign workers across 16 sectors fundamental to nearly every aspect of daily life in Japan, including food service, food manufacturing, nursing care, construction, agriculture, and manufacturing.

The system consists of two categories: Specified Skilled Worker No. 1 (SSW1), for workers with the practical skills and Japanese language ability required to work in a designated sector, and Specified Skilled Worker No. 2 (SSW2), for those who have further developed their professional skills, experience, and workplace responsibilities.

Beginning in April 2027, Japan will replace the Technical Intern Training Program with the new Employment for Skill Development Program. This new program is designed to develop workers, provide a clearer career pathway, strengthen language and skills development, and allow greater freedom to change employers within the same industry under certain conditions.

Overseas Recruitment and Worker Debt 

For typical Japanese employers, screening prospective workers overseas and processing the documentation required to obtain a visa often exceeds their capacity. This is why much of the recruitment process is outsourced to Japanese placement agencies, which conduct the initial interviews locally and oversee pre-departure Japanese language training. It is at this stage that one of the most significant shortcomings of the system emerges.

Although Japanese employers typically pay placement agencies substantial fees of US$8,000 or more for each successful candidate, many prospective workers are also charged nearly the same amount in placement fees, often exceeding the average annual income in their home countries by two to four times. The Philippines is a notable exception, as recruitment fees charged to overseas workers are strictly regulated and, in many cases, prohibited.

For workers in other labor-sending countries such as Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam, these fees frequently must be financed through burdensome loans, leaving much of their disposable income during their first several years in Japan devoted to debt repayment rather than a down payment on their future.

Under Japanese law, recruitment and placement fees are the responsibility of the employer, not the foreign worker. Yet workers recruited through overseas networks can still be required to pay substantial upfront fees in their home countries, creating a discrepancy between Japanese law and what workers may actually have to pay before coming to Japan.

Nuk’s Story

Consider the case of Nuk (a pseudonym), a 44-year-old single mother from a rural town outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Raised in poverty by her father and grandfather, she began helping to support her family while still in elementary school, selling fruits and vegetables at local markets. Her family home had no electricity, so she had to study by candlelight. At the age of 15, she entered the workforce while attending night school to complete her secondary education.

After working in the general affairs department of a Japanese company in Chiang Mai, Nuk decided to seek employment in Japan in the hope of saving enough money to buy a home for her retirement, a dream shared by many. To secure a position under the Technical Intern Training Program, she was required to pay the equivalent of US$8,000 in placement fees. She then spent three months in Bangkok receiving Japanese language training and orientation while residing in a dormitory operated by the placement agency, paying for her own meals and living expenses.

During her initial interview with representatives of the Japanese employer, communication was conducted through an interpreter. Upon successfully completing the program, she was placed at a food distribution center in western Japan.

There she worked six days a week, often 10- to 12-hour days, and was glad to receive overtime work since it enabled her to pay off her loan and support her son. At the same time, the company president valued workers like Nuk and treated them as equals to his Japanese employees, while understanding the difficulties of living far from home, adapting to a different culture, and communicating in a foreign language. 

During her first five years in Japan, Nuk steadily improved her Japanese language ability and professional skills. Having previously attempted the nursing examination in Thailand without success, she instead built a career in food distribution and eventually passed the examinations required to qualify for SSW1 status. After returning to Chiang Mai when her visa expired, she supported herself and her son through work in local factories while studying how to prepare Thai course dinners, maintaining her Japanese language skills, and applying for positions that would allow her to return to Japan as an SSW1 worker and continue progressing toward SSW2.

Act Two in Japan

Unlike her first interview years earlier, which had required an interpreter, she was able to conduct her second-round interview entirely in Japanese, demonstrating the language proficiency she had acquired through years of living and working in Japan. Despite already possessing the necessary qualifications, work experience, and language ability, she and the other applicants in her group were informed that they would be required to pay another US$8,000 in placement fees and repeat language training and orientation in Bangkok.

Unwilling to do so, Nuk continued her job search and eventually received an offer from a food manufacturing company in Hokkaido. Even then, she was still required to pay over US$5,000 in placement fees before returning to Japan. Although the work differs from her previous position and the winters are far harsher than those in Thailand, Nuk has come to appreciate the sense of community among both Japanese and foreign workers at the plant in Hokkaido.

When asked by a customer visiting the factory what she disliked about the company, she smiled and replied, “Not enough overtime.”

On-Site Realities

Although public discussion of foreign labor in Japan often focuses on abuses, the reality in many large manufacturing and food-processing companies is more nuanced. The work can be demanding, involving long hours, overtime, and night shifts, but many workers value the opportunity to earn higher wages than would be available in their home countries and actively seek overtime work. Similarly, many employers provide low-cost housing, informal mentoring, and day-to-day support, and often develop strong relationships with their foreign employees. The relationship is often characterized by mutual appreciation and dependence.

One aspect of this dynamic that is often overlooked is its paternal nature. This becomes most apparent when a worker faces a personal crisis, such as a serious illness or a family emergency back home. In such situations, employers frequently step in to help navigate language barriers, administrative procedures, travel arrangements, and even unexpected financial burdens that would otherwise be difficult for the worker to manage alone.

Nuk first experienced that protectiveness when she was unable to return from a trip to Kyoto because a typhoon had stopped the trains. Expecting to be scolded when she called the company, she instead heard the calm voice of the company president, who asked if she was safe and reassured her that someone would cover her shift.

That is a side of Japanese corporate culture that is often overlooked in media coverage. If there is a weak point in the system, it lies in the recruitment process. Recruitment fees can saddle workers with debts amounting to several times their annual income, reducing the financial benefits of working abroad before they ever arrive in Japan.

Nuk’s experience highlights one of the challenges that Japan’s upcoming Employment for Skill Development Program seeks to address. The new framework places greater emphasis on oversight of recruiters and sending organizations and aims to reduce excessive recruitment costs that burden workers before they arrive in Japan. Yet many of the labor-sending countries involved already maintain laws intended to prevent such practices. Whether the reforms produce meaningful change will depend not only on the rules themselves, but also on the degree to which they can be enforced across complex recruitment networks spanning multiple countries.

Possibility for a Bright Future

If the reforms succeed in reducing recruitment fees and streamlining the hiring process, they will represent a significant improvement to Japan’s foreign labor system. At the same time, the new framework has raised concerns among both workers and employers. Few would dispute the need for stronger Japanese language skills, particularly in workplaces where safety and communication are critical. Yet foreign workers must often acquire those skills while working long hours, rotating shifts, and demanding jobs. Language training will therefore need to become part of the workplace itself rather than an expectation placed solely on workers outside of working hours.

Meanwhile, employers worry less about worker mobility than about maintaining stability. Foreign workers are protected by the same labor laws as Japanese employees, and many companies are willing to accommodate transfers when opportunities arise elsewhere. More often, the challenge is one of timing and continuity.

According to industry estimates, a Japanese employer may invest approximately US$7,000 to US$10,000 per worker during the first year of recruiting, relocating, and supporting a Specified Skilled Worker. These figures exclude wages, overtime, social insurance, pension contributions, and other statutory employment costs.

For a company hiring just ten workers, recruitment and onboarding expenses alone could exceed US$80,000.

No matter how far robotics and artificial intelligence advance, Japan’s need for skilled foreign workers is unlikely to disappear. The challenge for policymakers is not simply how to regulate that workforce, but how to create a system that allows workers and employers to build productive, long-term relationships based on mutual trust and benefit. The more successful Japan is in aligning the needs of employers with the aspirations of foreign workers, the greater the contribution those workers can make to the workplace, their local communities, and Japanese society as a whole.

And if Japan can succeed in fostering these relationships between companies and foreign workers, then the bentos sold at train stations, supermarkets, and convenience stores will truly be Japanese bentos.

Of all the careers I ever imagined pursuing when I was young, translation never made the list. Nor did I ever consider studying a foreign language, much less Japanese, after ninth-grade French made me realize that I would never be ordering food in a French restaurant like James Bond. It would always be much more like Maxwell Smart.

And yet here I am now, an ordinary American living in Japan with nearly 30 years’ experience as a translator.

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The plan upon leaving Honolulu and my first job after university had been remarkably simple: go to Japan, learn Japanese, return to America, and work for a Japanese company as a Japanese-speaking American liaison.

The only major problem to overcome was the fact that I spoke virtually no Japanese aside from the one phrase “Yubin kyoku ga doko ni arimasu ka” or “Where is the post office?” Unless I had a letter to mail, opportunities to use it were extremely rare, and people today would just show me the Google Maps app instead.

Nevertheless, I arrived at Osaka’s Itami Airport in the evening from Honolulu, with An Introduction to Modern Japanese, a one-year open-return ticket, a large mountain backpack, and $300 in my pocket. I had no hotel reservation, no job, and no particular reason to believe that a plan rooted in such extreme optimism would end in anything other than utter catastrophic failure — a testament to my happy-go-lucky, nantoka naru approach: somehow, everything will work out.

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And yet, with a helping hand here, a lucky break there, and lots of instant ramen noodles in between, the plan did work out, sort of — except that decades later, rather than working as the American liaison for some important Japanese executive in the United States, I’m still in Japan, unheralded and underappreciated, diligently slaving away at translating the documents for some other American liaison to hand to that Japanese executive.

So, how did I wind up becoming a translator in Japan? Good question. Certainly not how you may think.

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In retrospect, my training, if you could call it that, probably began years earlier with a second-hand car purchased at a police auction for $200.

That automobile was a blue 1970 Opel GT, a two-door sports coupe styled like a baby Corvette. German-engineered with the temperament of an Italian car, the car muffler would, without warning, disengage from the rest of the car. Just as unpredictable was a fickle battery that capriciously shunned its responsibility to start the engine, leading to an embarrassing situation in which a petite traveling companion would have to supply the needed forward inertia while I popped the clutch for a push start.

As any Opel GT owner will tell you, if cars could suffer from bipolar disorder, this car would have all the symptoms.

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This is why I spent many days during high school lying on my back looking up underneath the car, with a wrench in one hand and a car repair manual spread open to the latest problem. More paramedic than mechanic, when an emergency arose and I was stumped, I would consult Sandy, who worked the counter at my nearby NAPA Genuine Parts store. A redheaded automotive guru and single mother in her late thirties, Sandy was uncanny in her ability to instantly visualize the problem, disappear into the back, return with the replacement part within seconds, and explain exactly how to install it.

“But my world of thermodynamics and wiring diagrams would soon become short-circuited.”

Which was good for me because my blue baby had a voracious appetite for oil and replacement parts. To feed that appetite, I worked various part-time jobs in construction after school and in the summer, where I learned the basics of carpentry, electrical wiring, HVAC, and plumbing. Combined with above-average scores in mathematics and science on my college entrance tests, these practical skills led me to believe that I was destined to be an engineer.

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But my world of thermodynamics and wiring diagrams would soon become short-circuited.

After declaring a major in engineering, I spent my first year in university in the School of Engineering attending core classes. Then came my sophomore year, when I took a required World Literature course at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays (for God knows why).

That’s when a literature professor changed my life by changing how I read books. He taught the class that the words and images a writer chooses are not simply ornamental. They reveal the writer’s individual perception of life, much as the colors, subjects, and composition chosen by a painter reveal the way the painter sees the world. Why does a writer choose one word rather than another? Why does one image remain in the mind while another disappears? How can a small change in language alter the feeling of an entire passage?

Until then, reading had largely been about acquiring knowledge and information. Now I became interested in how a writer created the world I was reading. Writing, I began to understand, is often a search for that one word or phrase that most eloquently captures the image and sentiment an author wishes to convey.

That concept has stayed with me.

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From that literature class, my interests began to stray from engineering. I studied drawing and music history and became involved in drama — even landing a part in a university play. I took part in small creative-writing workshops taught by established contemporary authors, including James Leo Herlihy and Ken Kesey. Suddenly, engineering no longer seemed my destined path and I changed majors to English literature.

None of this was part of what I initially conceived: I was simply following what interested me. Looking back, however, I can see that my interests were teaching me different ways of seeing and communicating. Drawing taught me to look. Music taught me to listen. Drama taught me to understand words not only as text, but as something spoken by another person with an intention, a character, and an emotion aligned with a theme. Creative writing taught me to search for my own words. Literature taught me to pay attention to someone else’s.

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Years later, when I began translating Japanese into English, I found myself trying to do something analogous to what my literature professor had taught us to recognize, and it made me realize that a translator is not simply looking for the English equivalent of a Japanese word. The real challenge was to find the corresponding word or phrase that creates the same image, conveys the same intention, and leaves the reader with the same essential impression as the original Japanese.

Whether it came from books or practical experience, I never clearly knew the path I was following, but I let my curiosity guide me, and I trusted my instincts to tell me when it was time to deviate from the path I was currently following.

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After university, I took an entry-level position at an S&L in Honolulu. Life in the land of paradise has its own rewards, but rarely were they monetary. My salary was just high enough to eke out a living, but the high cost of living on Oahu prevented any possibility of saving money, and the uncertainty of promotion combined with the looming S&L crisis eliminated any chance for advancement in the near future.

It was at that time that I started hearing the siren song of Japan: “Come make money teaching English and see Asia. You can learn Japanese from your students.”

This was the era of Japan as Number One. Japanese companies and products appeared unstoppable, and Japanese billionaires and mega-corporations were aggressively acquiring hotels, private golf courses, commercial properties, and luxury residential homes. Meanwhile, Japanese tourists outspent tourists from the mainland nearly 2 to 1. As the U.S. slid toward a recession, Japan seemed to represent the future.

So I went to Osaka.

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As fate would have it, I quickly got a job teaching English, and after saving tuition money I began studying in a Japanese intensive course for six months at a Japanese school in Kyoto. From there, I worked even harder to study the language in earnest.

I read a Japanese newspaper article every day, looking up unfamiliar kanji in a dictionary by counting the number of strokes. With a nagging brother telling me I had to learn Excel for my future, I built a barebones computer and installed DOS/V so that I could write Japanese. My desire to create multimedia content — and install audio and video boards — often displeased the Windows 3.1 deities of IRQ lines and DMA channels. When something went wrong, I read technical manuals and called tech support in Tokyo.

Years later, I would realize that those technical manuals had been teaching me another language: the language of technology.

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Then Japan’s bubble economy collapsed, and I found myself in an entirely different role. I became a labor representative at the English conversation school where I worked. Suddenly, I was reading Japanese labor law, leading labor demonstrations, appearing on television, and negotiating with my school’s management.

Newspapers, computer manuals, labor law: none of these looked like translation experience at the time. But they were. Each one was teaching me how to take unfamiliar information, understand its meaning and context, and accurately communicate its nuances.

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Eventually, I saw an advertisement in The Japan Times for freelance technical translators at a Kyoto translation company. I had never worked professionally as a translator. Still, my résumé contained journalism experience and work proofreading medical papers for physicians at Osaka City University Hospital and Kyoto University Hospital. That was apparently enough to get my foot in the door for an interview.

The translation test was an astoundingly low-tech affair but typical of that time. I was taken into a room alone and handed a Japanese manuscript, a Japanese-English dictionary, two sharpened pencils, and an eraser. Thirty minutes. That was it. For someone accustomed to today’s translation technology, it sounds almost prehistoric.

The company specialized in technical translations for manufacturers throughout Kansai. Much of the work involved semiconductors, but the company also handled consumer electronics, industrial machinery, and operation manuals. I had no idea what would appear on the test, but I knew that I had to prepare in some way. I chose the “Getting Started” section of a software manual in my bookcase and translated it. When I saw the translation passage at the interview, I discovered the passage to be extremely similar to the one I had practiced.

I received a high score and soon began my first professional translation assignments.

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But getting translation work and becoming a good translator are two different things. My Japanese was still developing. Because I had never formally studied Japanese at a university, I spent many late nights identifying unfamiliar kanji characters by counting strokes and searching dictionaries. It was a slow, painstaking process, and it was necessary.

But Japanese ability alone wasn’t what ultimately gave me an advantage. My real advantage came from everything I had done before becoming a translator. I understood technical material because I had spent years repairing cars and studying engineering. I understood manuals because I had read them to build computers. And I understood language because I had spent years thinking about why writers choose the words they do.

Many translators had stronger Japanese skills than I did, but I could often determine what a document was actually trying to communicate and then search for the right English word or phrase that would communicate it naturally to engineers, technicians, and ordinary users.

That became my competitive advantage.

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Freelancing taught me another lesson. A freelance translator who relies on only one client eventually becomes a freelance translator without work, so I joined several agencies and translated everything from semiconductor documentation to company brochures. Each field had its own terminology, rules, and audience.

Then the semiconductor industry began moving offshore, and the translation work in Kyoto gradually dried up.

Once again, I needed a plan.

I began looking for an in-house translation position. Just as I was preparing to return to a steady diet of instant ramen noodles, I saw an advertisement for an in-house translator at a midsized company in Kyoto.

I applied, completed the interview, took the translation test, and later I was hired. Lady Luck had smiled upon me again.

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Several months later, I asked my department manager why he had selected me.

“You live closer to the company,” he said. “I figured it would be easier for you to get to work on time.”

That answer serves as the perfect counterargument to people who meticulously plan out their lives. Sometimes you just have to have courage and take a leap of faith, knowing that somehow things will work out. Nantoka naru. A phrase I never knew until I came to Japan, but one that expresses a philosophy I’ve been living all my life.