Finding myself participating in a wedding was the last thing I thought would happen when I went to Japan for the first time more than ten years ago.  Not in my wildest imagination did I think that I would one day be doubly involved, not only as a groom but also as the celebrant.  And this was to be just a small taste of the experiences that would present themselves when I went to live in Japan.  There are many things we all think about doing in life, but somehow end up postponing and procrastinating. Better late than never, though, as they say, and at the ripe old age of thirty, I had just come back from having had a great time as a camp counselor in New York City, when, deciding I could do with some more overseas travel, I saw an ad for an agency looking for English teachers to work in Japan.  As a trained high-school teacher, it seemed obvious that my career in Japan would begin by teaching, though it would turn out that my qualifications were hardly a necessity.  So off I went, armed with little more than the most rudimentary Japanese phrases memorized on the flight over, to begin employment with one of the large English conversation schools, Nova.  My branch was situated in Yokohama, part of the vast conurbation known collectively as Tokyo, and located over two levels inside a small office building teetering over the bustling Nishiguchi district near the station.    At the beginning, work at the English school seemed idyllic, with comfortable offices, pleasant students, what seemed like a moderate schedule of work and an exotic world awaiting exploration outside.  Compared to my visions of struggling through excruciating lessons filled with uncomprehending middle-aged Japanese men, it was a surprise to find that the language level of most of my charges, representing a broad spread of age and gender, was easily sufficient to have a reasonable conversation, a fortuitous legacy of the Japanese education system.  While the students usually had some command of English grammar, however, what they usually lacked upon recommencing their English studies was the ability to speak English, and that was the key to the conversation schools’ success.  Most of what the students needed to do was to simply practice speaking.  It didn’t take long to realize, though, that English conversation schools were not a long-term prospect for most people who came to Japan, and certainly not for professional teachers.  With only three days of training to prepare otherwise unqualified personnel, it was clear that the company had worked out a McDonald’s-like system to turn warm bodies into instant teachers of English as a foreign language.  Perhaps it was made easier by the primary need to simply keep the conversation moving. At any rate, with an endless demand to fill thousands of positions, companies like the one I worked for probably also have little choice.  Depressingly, often the quality of the recruits and their many antics made it seem as if Japan had become the world’s dumping ground for people who could not otherwise find a job in their home countries.  Sometimes it appeared as if all you needed was a perceivable pulse rate, and of course to possess that most important quality of being a native speaker of English.  After almost three years it was well and truly time to move on to something else, and for me that turned out to be work as a Business-English instructor, working for a firm in Tokyo that dispatched instructors to teach at company premises across the city.

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The pre-requisite of ‘business experience’ was rarely put to the test - except for my first course of lessons where I had to teach about business presentations, despite never having even seen one being conducted.   For the most part all you needed to know about business was provided by general knowledge, commonsense and the business-themed textbooks that were provided. 

However, as often happens in Japan, the next opportunity came up quite unexpectedly.  One of my co-workers at the business-English dispatch company suggested work as a Christian wedding celebrant.  In Japan, couples have two basic choices of weddings: the traditional Shinto ceremony that is conducted in a shrine, and the more glamorous western-style ‘chapel wedding’ that occurs in a room made to look like a chapel, inside a hotel or restaurant. Since the chapel weddings are an imported novelty, Japanese common sense dictates that the preferred type of celebrant must also be of foreign appearance, and by this they clearly have Caucasians in mind.

Apart from attending a friend’s wedding, and my own marriage a few months previously, I hadn’t had much to do with weddings, but the subsequent birth of my son, combined with the my (reduced) probationary salary teaching business English, meant that I found myself needing to find some quick cash to pay for family living.  I had actually attended an interview for this kind of job some time before, but with a firm that, as well as charging hundreds of dollars for ‘training’, seemed big on the fire-and-brimstone type of Christian evangelism.  I decided to give it a miss.

This time it all seemed a bit more promising, and I found that, like most other jobs I had secured in Japan, it was pretty easy to get.  There was no test or evidence needed of being a church-goer, nor even of being a Christian.  I just had to vaguely intimate my Christian faith and that was it, I was in.  Not bad for someone who had not attended church regularly since pre-pubescence…

Training, or the lack of it, in the wedding business, was another aspect in common with other employment opportunities I had encountered in Japan.  The provision of a script, written partly in Japanese, and practice reading this was as much preparation as occurred when I got a call from the chief pastor at the wedding company one Friday night.  A celebrant who had been scheduled to conduct two weddings the next day had absconded and they needed someone urgently.  I was to be given the ‘chance’ to ‘debut’ in this scoundrel’s stead.

The next day saw me heading off to a newly developed part of Tokyo, Odaiba, an island built on landfill, supporting factories, offices, hotels, apartments and a multitude of fashionable shopping malls that are so popular amongst Japanese at the weekends.  It was inside one of these edifices consecrated to the god of consumer commerce that my first two weddings were to be celebrated. 

Up a couple of escalators, I found the wedding venue, from the outside looking mostly like another of the neighboring restaurants on the same level, except that a heavy double door just inside the foyer revealed an appropriately decked-out wedding chapel, overlooking Odaiba’s spectacular ‘Rainbow Bridge’. 

Even though I had arrived one hour prior to the ceremony, there wasn’t much time to waste, and I was quickly directed into a changing area that doubled as a storage and staff room behind the kitchen, to change into an ill-fitting robe that had been hastily provided for my use.  With my script carefully tucked inside a newly purchased bible, I was set to go.

Before I had had nearly enough of a chance to ask the number of questions I wanted to (despite my obvious uncertainties I don’t think anyone knew it was my first time), the couple and their families were ushered into the chapel and it was almost show time.  Following a brief rehearsal (not even wedding couples receive sufficient training in Japan), the guests filed in and I well and truly knew there was no place to flee. 

Thankfully, despite my nervousness, I managed to pull it off, as I did another wedding later on that day, and thousands more over the next five or six years.  For much of the time at the beginning I was sure I would be discovered as being not only a fake pastor but as a fake Christian as well. I need not have worried, of course, since, as with the contrived décor of the chapels, the only thing that matters in Japan is the requisite look. Slow, deliberate gestures and a benevolent, slightly world-weary, priestly demeanor are what they want and if you’re tall, blond and blue-eyed, that’s a real bonus.  The superficiality doesn’t seem to bother anyone, however, least of all the couples getting married, since almost none of them are Christian.  Indeed, the complete lack of any Christian context in Japanese society means that people wouldn’t know a genuine priest or even a Christian if they fell over one.  The tiny minority of real Christian couples in Japan get married at their own (real) churches.

Of course, unless one was some kind of missionary, and there actually are some of these in Japan, the main reason for being a fake minister is the money, up to about $US120 for a wedding that lasts about twenty five minutes.  At my busiest, I was doing up to 11 weddings a day, at the weekends and public holidays.  The economy, prices and wage rates may well have declined since the heady days of the bubble economy, but Japanese people are still in the process of realizing that many services provided by unqualified foreigners are not worth the money that has traditionally been paid. 

Money is certainly not the only motivation for working in Japan.  Indeed, as well as the financial rewards, the wedding job offered quite a substantial sense of novelty for most of the time I did it.  Being constantly addressed by the honorific ‘sensei’ (reserved for teachers, priests and other high-status functionaries) was in itself something that would always cause me to have a private chuckle. 

Writing articles for local magazines was another area of employment I found in Japan, and something I definitely started for the experience of it, since at first the money was almost non-existent.  Best of all, early on I was somehow organized into the role of motoring journalist, yet another position for which no qualifications were needed, beyond an interest in cars.  This, and having been an avid reader of car magazines as a teenager was sufficient qualification, in my case. 

After a while of writing about general motoring-related topics, I realized that any ‘motoring writer’ must also be able to get test-drive vehicles and write articles about them.  This turned out to be the case, in fact, and before long, and much to my amazement, I saw myself driving out of the Tokyo headquarters of BMW Japan with a brand new luxury convertible, waved off by one of their friendly representatives.  Like the wedding at the shopping center chapel, this was another first of many that would come my way over ensuing years. 

That first week-long test drive found me devote a whole day to ‘testing’ the Beemer on an extremely scenic and winding route down the coast.  As my life in Japan got more hectic, subsequent test drives would last only a few hours, more often than not squeezed in between in-company English lessons.  Only the most exotic Ferraris and Porsches would be savored for any longer.  One time, I was able to combine each type of job I had in Japan within a single day, with a late-morning wedding, an afternoon test drive, and an evening Business-English class. 

The writing was another area where one thing fortuitously led to another.  Starting off by writing filler articles for a low-budget classified advertising magazine, the last three years of my life in Japan saw me writing a regular page in Japan Air Lines’ monthly in-flight magazine, a substantially better-paid gig.  The smaller pool of foreign writers based in Japan meant that the satisfaction of being published was easier to achieve, and the quite good money (towards the end) ended up being a nice bonus. 

Exotic jobs notwithstanding, though, teaching remains in itself an interesting and often well-paid way to make a living in Japan, even if nothing else emerges.  The variety of teaching work I did extended to high schools, a hairdressing college and an alternative high school, often during the same week, since such jobs tended to be part-time.  What was required was the kind of versatility necessary to jump from six classes of fifty five students at the hairdressing college to teaching a senior executive in his private office later on in the day. 

Some time after starting the business English teaching I enrolled in and eventually completed a Master of Education in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).  This helped me to get a job in a university, the most sought-after of English-teaching jobs, with five months paid holidays provided every year.  English teachers who become established in this way of life are consequently highly reluctant to return to their home countries… 

What all of these jobs have in common is that they provide experiences that would be impossible to secure were one merely traveling through as a tourist.  The opportunity to do these things, while making very good money, is surely one that should not be missed. 
 

Those interested in finding our more about working in Japan should have a look at Glenn’s website: www.teachenglishintokyo.com

A No-Nonsense Expats Guide to Asian Sales and Marketing - I have spent more than 25 years in China trade and Asian sales and marketing generally, and am based in Kuala Lumpur where I have been for 7 years now. I've set up a number of American and European companies out here, and have had great success at doing it, so I know that what I have to say will be of interest to anyone who has an interest in entering the Asian market. I focus on the day-to-day aspects of running a foreign office from a Stateside or European location, how to handle business meetings, establish distribution channels, deal with "entertainment" and the inescapable phenomenon of the bribe. This report is a compliation of 20 years of first hand experience. If you want to enter a market where hard work is well rewarded, I can assure you that there isn't a more lucrative market in the world. Parts of the Asian market are now some of the fastest growing in the world. This report  provides exactly what it will take you to get into the Asian Market and start making money.  If there are questions, please note that I've also included my email address in the report, and am I happy to answer questions.