I was so close to my goal of becoming a hermit in the wilds of Japan with my Amazonian Real Doll, NOVA shattered my dreams. Back to square one.

Some people strap a rocket to their car and incidentally ram it into a wall. Some people decide to nail the dirtiest skankiest man-whore they can find and get a new evolved form of crabs that takes over your brain. Others might decide that living with a doll and freaking out everyone around you is a good idea. Another person might be born without an epidermis. In other words, sometimes shit happens. My shit is not at bad as these and it was only indirectly voluntary. No job.

What does one do when they don’t have a job? Look for a new one? Well I started doing that, but decided that I’d rather beat Final Fantasy XII and God of War 2 first. Afterwards I finished the process of looking for and applying to jobs. The system here is quite different from the Western system.

First, you have to get off your ass (because you’re never going to beat the King Behemoth) and go to the Foreigner Employment Center in your area. It’s important to go here because they can speak English (or German, if you’re in that kind of mood), but also because there’s a subset of jobs which are specifically looking for those with foreign backgrounds. You can’t find any of these jobs in a regular unemployment office, they call it Hello Work (ハローワーク), so you have to make sure that you go to this branch unless if your Japanese is 1級 (the highest level); seeing as how you were working at NOVA, this means you were either beyond retarded and yet were able to speak in Japanese or your Japanese is much lower than the highest level. Oh, and if you don’t live in a city, you’re pretty much on your own.

They’ve come for your sanity and your unemployment check

At Hello Work, you can search for a job by yourself or with a helper (if you’re not Japanese). You choose certain things (desired income, age, job category, job location) and then look through a bunch of scanned forms. When you find a job that seems to fit you, you just print it out and take the form with you. We’re not finished with Hello Work, but we have to leave for now.

I got someone to read this for me through a series a button presses

After this, you have to get your resume ready. However, in Japan there are two resumes, 履歴書 (rirekisho, basically all schooling and jobs that you have done) and 経歴書 (keirekisho, it’s what we are used to). The keirekisho is easy and can be printed, but the rirekisho MUST be handwritten. They feel that they can get a feel of the person’s personality through their handwriting. And the form has to be written in ink, one mistake and you just wasted the past half hour painstakingly writing your life history in tiny picture form for no good reason.

Who the hell is this? He’s gorgeous.

Japan loves you to have pictures of yourself with almost every document (Japanese test, drivers’ license, unemployment, employment, etc) that you have, so you have to paste a picture of yourself to your rirekisho as well. You take both documents and prepare them to be sent by mail, but you’re not done. We now have to go back to Hello Work to finish the process.

I like my sex like my handwriting, sloppy

You found a company that you would like to work at, but you have no idea if the company would like you or even if they are still hiring. When you decide which companies you would like to be employed at, you go to Hello Work and ask them to call these companies and ask if they are still hiring and would like a person with your experience. If the company says yes, the Hello Work employee will give you a card (kind of a reminder of the conversation) which you have to send with the resumes. Now you send the documents and hope for the best.

You might’ve noticed how the system was different from other countries. In America (and probably other places like it) they constantly drone on about “networking”. It’s not essential in Western countries, but it’s pretty damn important. You can get a job through networking in Japan, but it’s not needed. You don’t have to spend time talking with people and getting to know them not because you like them or think they’re interesting, but because they might be able to do something for you in the future.

No system is perfect and so neither is the Japanese system. There’s many problems with ageism (many age restrictions are just maximums) and there’s a little sexism. It seems to be more meritocratic than the hybrid system that some other countries appear to employ.