One of the unique rituals of working for a Japanese company, especially a smaller founder/owner company, is that of the company trip. Often when a company has been doing well, and if the owner is in good spirits, he/she will spring for a trip for a division or the whole firm to go to an onsen (hot spring), or sometimes further afield (Hawaii and Hong Kong are also popular foreign destinations). Typically the company will pay all travel, accommodation, meals, drink, and scheduled entertainment – including any rounds of golf or visits to local attractions.

I had an interesting question from a reader worried about whether she would be too old to start applying for jobs after spending many years acquiring three languages and an advanced professional qualification. While it is true that companies in Japan prefer younger employees if they are going to take on someone with limited work experience, the attraction of fluent, multiple regional language skills is so great at present (remembering that unemployment is still very low) that employers will make concessions when they see someone who has really tried to improve themselves.

It's been said that one of the major reasons Japanese couples don't have more children is because of the costs involved in raising children. With the average employee's monthly income in July last year being around JPY386,000, there isn't a lot of discretionary spending going on after the costs of rent, food, and travel are counted. In particular, there isn't really enough to warrant the cost of JPY23.7m, or a bit over JPY1m per year, that it costs for each extra child present in the family.

I don't review many books because to be honest I don't have a lot of free hours in the day. But when I heard that a new handbook intended to help foreigners learn and understand the regulations of life in Japan, and how to plan ahead for unexpected situations, I jumped at the chance to get a preview copy. The Japanese don't make it that hard for foreigners to come and work in Japan, but once you get here, you soon find that no one really seems to know what the actual rules are - whether for visas, finding and keeping a job, taxes, getting married, retirement allowances, etc. Visiting the many Internet information boards can yield some information, but it is often out of date or wrong due to the writer's lack of legal knowledge.

In the last of our profiles of people who have become successful in Japan without speaking fluent Japanese, we cover entrepreneurs. Now I realize that I've skipped R&D professionals, English professors, golf course designers, sports coaches, priests, and no doubt a slew of other professions. However, I hope that by picking up on multinational executives, Geeks, and now entrepreneurs, that I have been able to establish a pattern for creating a successful career despite some obvious handicaps - a pattern that not only works in Japan but also in other countries as well.

Our next composite sketch for a foreigner who has made it in Japan is that of a technology guru. This is the most accessible career path for someone moving to Japan and not having significant Japanese-language skills. The reason such people can find success here is simple: Japan has a shortage of IT and scientific specialists in all kinds of areas, ranging from finance to semiconductor research. According to the report published by Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare this month, there were 3.31 job openings versus engineers applying to fill them as of, January 2008.

Probably the most attractive and yet most challenging job an executive can have is to be recruited to fix a mid- to large-size company with problems. If that company is in Japan, then you know that the local management may have already gone to great lengths to fix things and still have not been able to turn the ship around. The only thing for such deep-seated problems is shock therapy, in the form of a gaijin shacho!

I mentioned earlier in this series that I would be creating composite sketches of the background of people who've made it here without having the advantage of strong Japanese ability. "Composite" means that I've drawn from the backgrounds of a number of acquaintances with similar experiences, as related to me, but with the objective of allowing them to stay anonymous.

Perhaps because Japan has found it difficult to accept and support the presence of foreign businesspeople, it has largely ignored them and left them to their own devices. Back in the 1980's this meant that there were very few independently run foreign firms here, and anyone wanting to set up a business pretty much had to do it though a Japanese partner.

I've been getting lots of email recently from people asking me if as a non-Japanese speaker they can get work in Japan. Given that the Japanese government is considering making Japanese language ability a prerequisite for granting and/or renewing long-term visas and work visas, perhaps this type of question will disappear of its own accord. However, in the meantime, while I always advise people to learn Japanese before working, if they can, it is true that there are a good number of people already here who have built perfectly good careers without having a strong handle on the language.