A reader who is a foreign mom married to a Japanese national posed an interesting question to me recently. She has an 18-year old who is finishing off high school and she wonders whether to send her daughter to a university in the US, or let her stay here in Japan. Her daughter is bilingual and until now has been going to a Japanese high school.

This week we wrap up the Japanese-learning experiment by our US entrepreneur recently arrived in Japan, TP. Clearly his is not the only program that works in learning the language, but for those of us who are naturally language challenged and who didn't do a year of high-school here as a teenager, it's a course that can work. TP wraps up by making some observations about what it really takes to get the job done, and about mistakes made and lessons learned.

We continue on with TP's experiment in learning Japanese with the specific target of being functional in the language to the point where he can work in Japanese and do business with Japanese-only colleagues. TP is a consultant and entrepreneur and is obviously used to breaking life problems down into logical steps, which I find quite fascinating, and appealing.

Being able to speak Japanese opens so many more opportunities for the foreign worker in Japan, that whenever I get an email asking about jobs here, I invariably advise the person that if they can afford it, they should take an intensive Japanese course first.

Not so long ago I had an interview with a talented candidate having both bilingual and technical skills. At around 40 years old, he is becoming borderline in terms of hire-ability by age-sensitive Japanese firms, and as a result he has been on the job market for the last 3 months.

By my estimate, considering the number of members of chambers of commerce and the Tokyo American Club, there are probably around 12,000 – 15,000 expatriate employees of Multinational Foreign Corporations (MNFCs) in Japan – most of whom are based in Tokyo. This week we finish up with some of the additional benefits that only expats can enjoy and the rest of us can look on in wonder.

By far the most entertaining side of negotiating benefits is for foreign hires coming in as expatriate managers (“expats”). These people are generally already well advanced in their careers and typically occupy CEO and director positions. They are dispatched by head office to fill an oversight and parent company representation role, and by virtue of the high profile of these people, status and comfort figure high in the remuneration package, as does tax work-arounds.

Now let’s look at the types of “benefits” that you would want to negotiate as a senior manager, say director level, CxO, or President and above. You are likely to want benefits that go well outside the usual employee’s experience, based usually on the fact that you also have significantly more responsibilities and in some cases, as the company’s official face, you have to project an image for the company.

Just as with money, recruiters can go in and negotiate other terms on the same unemotional basis as well. Figure out what matters to you and ask for them. You’re probably only going to get one chance make these requests, and like any “sale” the timing of those requests is important. Right off the bat, I think money needs to be...

The biggest question most candidates have about a new job, after finding out what they’ll actually be doing, is what their salary and the associated terms and conditions will be. This is nothing we don’t already know, but what most people do have trouble with is how to...