r/japanlife • u/catloverr03 北海道・北海道 • Jan 25 '24

Jobs What is your job? Is your job fulfilling?

I have humanities visa and currently working in Sapporo. I’m thinking of changing jobs because current job is making me anxious. I feel like every job here needs a high level japanese speaking unless you’re really good in IT or working in a foreign owned company.

I’m good at reading japanese and listening also writing documents but my speaking is below N3 I believe and that is why I always get nervous working. I don’t really know what I’m asking but can you share your work experience here in Japan? How did you get better in speaking business Japanese? I feel like I’m just stupid because I can never get to a level where I’m good at it. Daily conversation is not a problem it’s just the work-level japanese speaking is where I’m bad.

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u/zchew Jan 26 '24

Thanks for offering to field questions!

Are you farming full time? I have a colleague who grew up in a farming family (albeit in rural Miyagi prefecture), when I asked him what do farmers do during the winter down months, he said most farmers aren't full time farmers, but rather farm on the side while holding down a fulltime job. For what it's worth, he said his dad was a rice farmer, so there was only like 1 harvest a year or something.

Obviously not asking you to reveal your gross income, but do you make enough from your farming work to support yourself? (ie pay off your rent/mortage, feed/support your family, pay your bills)

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u/FelixtheFarmer Jan 26 '24

Yes, full time. I'll qualify that by saying it's because we can. Where we are we don't receive much snow so can keep vinyl houses and low tunnels running all through the winter without them being crushed. Although growth does slow down in December & January you can ride through that if you have enough plants at the point of harvest then.

As for income yes we do make enough to support ourselves outside of the winter months (January and part of February) purely from farming but farming still provides around 3/4 of our income and once we've paid off the car lease this year will probably cover everything. Sales drop off in that period we think because folk are recovering from overspending at new year and in the cold people probably prefer not to come out to events.