For Pals living in Japan, what's life there like these days? I've lived there before as an exchange student and once on a spouse visa. After my recent trip to Tokyo it made me consider living there again. However, I'm 40 now and the last time I lived there I couldn't find a permanent job, but that was during the 2008 recession and I also had less professional experience back then, so maybe it would be a little different this time.
There is a huge labor shortage, if you are Japanese you can find a job in a day no problem. Businesses are absolutely desperate for workers.
For foreigners, it is also easy to find a job if you can get your visa situation sorted. This heavily depends on what country you are a citizen of but assuming you’re America, having a college degree is basically mandatory to get that work visa if you aren’t a student visa. Easiest way is the classic English teacher route, almost any idiot with a worthless degree can get this job but it sucks, employers are very controlling, and it’s a dead end job. If you have a degree and a skill/experience in IT, programming, corporate sales, finance, marketing you will find a decent job easily especially if you have a bit of Japanese language ability. Even if you just have some random degree, some Japanese language ability plus professional experience in a dead end office job you should be able to find something better than English teaching
I like living here, but I’m a Japanese citizen and speak the language fluently. I think most foreigners can live here pretty easily, but I don’t really recommend it long term because IMO it’s impossible to really “get” Japanese people and culture unless you are raised Japanese and hav been speaking the language since childhood. Even foreigners with extremely good Japanese I’ve met never truly fit in, it just isn’t possible. You’ll always be an alien in an foreign land.