You want a creative, UX, product, or marketing role in Japan, and you're not sure how to position yourself to get there.
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You've been told your Japanese level is the barrier, N2, N1, maybe someday, and you're starting to believe it even though something feels off about that.
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You're an international student or early-career professional navigating Japan's job market and the standard advice doesn't apply to your situation.
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Shūkatsu was built for domestic students with a clear script to follow. If you're international, you're running a different race on the same track and being told to run faster when the real issue is you need a different route.
The students I coach don't just get jobs. They learn how to position themselves so the right companies come to them, and how to walk into any room in Japan and be taken seriously. That's not confidence coaching. That's strategy.
Japan's hiring system is good at filtering.
Not so good at seeing you
Let me tell you what recruiters and university career centers won't
The guide covers how Japan's creative hiring actually works, what bilingual and foreign-friendly companies are actually looking for, and how to build a story that makes your background an asset, not an explanation.
Hi i'm Annie and
I've been exactly where you are.
I moved to Japan 8 years ago with limited Japanese and no design degree. Yet I built my career here in UX, employer branding, and learning design by understanding one thing the system doesn't teach: your story is your strategy.
I became the first UX/UI new grad hire at my company a role that didn't exist until I convinced them to create it. That experience is the foundation of everything I now coach.
Since then I've coached 600+ clients from 17 countries, spoken at TEDx become a serial founder, and kept coaching because the problem is still real and the advice out there is still mostly wrong.
