tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455782214242472677.post4625336471095838880..comments2024-03-14T20:55:21.709+09:00Comments on Janne In Osaka: Learn Japanese, get a VisaJan Morenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06834641501438709866noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455782214242472677.post-87065729725065600412008-02-06T01:54:00.000+09:002008-02-06T01:54:00.000+09:00I passed Level 2 within half a year of coming to J...I passed Level 2 within half a year of coming to Japan. I failed Level 1 about half a dozen times. Got close once, and then went downhill after that. Then I gave up. You've got to study for it -- it's not something that you can just pass with Japanese learned in everyday life, and there are enough trick questions to make it hard. When I almost passed it, it was only because I aced the aural comprehension and did O.K. on the reading, because the grammar/writing part was just too tricky.<BR/><BR/>I also passed the JETRO test Level 2 easily, but failed Level 1 a couple of times. But it seemed like a much more reasonable test. There's even a special Level 1 that involves actual conversation.<BR/><BR/>I don't want to open a can of worms here, but there is quite a lot of cheating in the JLPT. I never knew anyone in my test rooms, and they are assigned randomly, but somehow there would be groups of Chinese in the same room who would know each other and help each other out. The proctors are meek college students doing it as a part-time job, and they don't want to make a scene.These are the types of things you notice when you take the test as many times as I have! :-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455782214242472677.post-39878183468217077832008-01-31T19:02:00.000+09:002008-01-31T19:02:00.000+09:00Mtc,I don't know if "liberality" is on the governm...Mtc,<BR/><BR/>I don't know if "liberality" is on the government's list of considerations.<BR/><BR/>Janne,<BR/><BR/>This topic is, as you say, a long one. I've always felt that the Japanese government has done a miserable job of promoting Japanese language studies. As far as immigration goes, I would argue that the quality of life in the US has gone down dramatically in some ways in the last three decades. To some extent, this has been driven by immigration. For one thing, it is now hard for a family to survive without having the wife work.<BR/><BR/>This isn't meant as an attack on immigration, but it certainly seems to have been used by the elite in their war on the lower 90%, at least in the US. It seems that no matter what job I have, that industry "needs" more workers to drive down wages, but the CEOs keep seeing their salaries skyrocket, even when they do a lousy job.<BR/><BR/>When you say "the economy as a whole is growing as well", I think you may be accepting the use of GDP as a measure of how a society is doing. I would say it would be better to look at living standard or development indices for a more balanced view. <BR/><BR/>Apologies, as maybe I just have too jaded a perspective as an American having watched the US come to the decline and fall stage of its empire.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455782214242472677.post-7979791099296328972008-01-31T11:57:00.000+09:002008-01-31T11:57:00.000+09:00I'm not even sure we do disagree, actually; I have...I'm not even sure we do disagree, actually; I haven't been able to make up my mind on a lot of these issues yet. <BR/><BR/>Oh, and we're not married yet :)Jan Morenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06834641501438709866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455782214242472677.post-62004833888961538812008-01-31T11:24:00.000+09:002008-01-31T11:24:00.000+09:00Janne -Thanks for the long and deeply thought-out ...Janne -<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the long and deeply thought-out response.<BR/><BR/>We shall agree to disagree-and dinner is on me when you and you wife come up to Tokyo.<BR/><BR/>MTCMTChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04626942240117432624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455782214242472677.post-73364552910675645342008-01-30T09:46:00.000+09:002008-01-30T09:46:00.000+09:00This is a big can of worms (and that's why I spent...This is a big can of worms (and that's why I spent half the evening yesterday thinking about your comment). The whole issue of open economies, movement of labour, money and goods, trade policy and so on is way bigger than I am prepared to even try tackle. This again feels like it should be a whole series of posts, not a comment, so just a few points, with little in the way of conclusions, in no particular order:<BR/><BR/>* The push for greater immigration comes from the impending lack of workers in proportion to non-working people (retirees). And much of the direct economic benefit of immigration comes in the form of a larger workforce. More people working means a larger economy.<BR/><BR/>* The problem Japan is facing is the _proportion_ of working to non-working people, not absolute numbers. As I've written before, Sweden does splendidly with a working population one thirteenth of Japans (in a larger country); there's economies doing just finw with even higher density of people than Japan. <BR/><BR/>The number of jobs is never fixed; to a large degree work expands (or contract) to use the available resources. The idea that there is a fixed number of jobs that are to be portioned out is a fallacy (one that more than a few European countries have got in trouble over). What can (and does) happen in individual professions is that they may become too many or too few compared to all other resources for a given type of job.<BR/><BR/>* With working people becoming scarce, their salaries tend to shoot up. If you solve the scarcity, salaries will tend to drop. But salaries don't help solve the discrepancies, it only puts pressure to do something about it. Sure, raise salaries enough and you'll get more people entering the profession. But then, that just makes a shortage worse in some other field. To resolve the shortage you need people. One way is to export the work, not just the results of the work. This becomes extra attractive for export-facing firms and economies, where movign the production closer to their customers may be beneficial overall. The other option is to move people to the work rather than the other way around.<BR/><BR/>To some degree, the "raise salaries" versus "accept immigration" is a mirage; the actual choice may be "accept immigration" or "move those jobs overseas" - "move work and people doing the work to the same place" in short.<BR/><BR/>* The big economic news the past ten years really isn't the emergence of China, India and so on. The big news is that a very large amount of people in the developing world is finally starting to catch up with us. But since everything is relative in economics (literally relative, in terms of value and pricing power) another way of seeing that is inevitably that we're slowing down to catch up with them. Now, the economy as a whole is growing as well, so it's not that we are actually giving up previous advances; instead the effect is that today a lot of the world economy growth is going to the developing world, not to us. Which overall is a very good thing.<BR/><BR/>It also means they - like your Chinese engineer - are starting to compete with us more directly. Again, a good thing for them and for the world. It is inevitable; a country pulling itself out of poverty and into the industrialized world must mean a country able to compete well with other industrialized nations as a necessary consequence. But it _also_ means that the competitive advantage those societies have had in much lower costs (for salaries, land and so on) is also evaporating. <BR/><BR/>Your Chinese engineer is still wanted by the Keidanren members because he's pretty inexpensive. But he's a lot less inexpensive now than just a few years ago, and in another ten or twenty years he won't be affordable anymore; he'll get a better deal at home (especially counting the pain and disrutption of moving abroad) than Japanese companies will be able to offer here. <BR/><BR/>We mostly never got a flood of cheap educated labour into west Europe when the eastern economies became members; they've mostly stayed at home watching their salaries and standard of living approaching western levels instead, with much less disruption to life. The exception has been to work where there's been a real shortage in the western countries, and there's been a good deal of young just-out-of-school people going abroad to work for a while as part of gaining experience.<BR/><BR/><BR/>---<BR/><BR/>Language and residency: I see this slightly differently than you, I think. I don't expect "fast-track" residency for proficient applicants. I fully expect Japanese proficiency to become a requirement for residency, and I'm actually a little bewildered as to why that hasn't been a condition from the very beginning. It should be. <BR/><BR/>If such a language rule would also lead to clearer, more formalized rules for residency overall then that would be a worthwhile benefit in itself. Right now the rules are very vague and a lot of decision power is left at the whim of the individual case handlers, resulting in some very arbitrary decisions and a complete lack of consistency (and it probably part reason why the application process is so very, very slow).Jan Morenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06834641501438709866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455782214242472677.post-78042896124909385762008-01-29T11:26:00.000+09:002008-01-29T11:26:00.000+09:00Janne - You are being too kind to the ministries--...Janne - <BR/><BR/>You are being too kind to the ministries--the special visa status for engineers described in <I>The Japan Times</I> article is clearly in direct response to a request from the Keidanren. Under the proposal described, Japanese corporations would be able to hire more young foreign (Chinese) engineers and keep them on the payroll--just when young Japanese engineers were finally able to get some pricing power in terms of their starting salaries.<BR/><BR/>The real test of the liberality of the proposed immigration changes remains whether or not a high-scoring foreign worker will be put on a fast track to permanent residency--the real prize in this game. If not, the changes are at best a ruse. The government will be telling foreign workers, "If you adopt a more Japanese way of life then you will be closer freely choosing where you can live and work"--while holding those foreign workers in quarantine outside the gates.MTChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04626942240117432624noreply@blogger.com