# Got job offer in Japan, Please help to compare salary



## premnath

Dear Friends,

I have recently got an offer for job in Osaka.The company has offered a salary *200,000 JPY / Month*, from which 48,000 JPY Housing rent will be deducted. Everything such as transportation, insurance, tax, utitility bills have to be paid by me.

I have no idea how much is other expences. I can only figure out that the salary converts into 2130 USD. But whether it is good offer, I don't know. 

*I would appreciate if anyone suggest me his/her openion regarding this. Also what is average salary for a mechanical engineer with 5 year of experience there in Japan?
*
Also please let me know average cost of following things ( Approximate cost on Monthly basis)-
1. Food - 1 person
2. average phone charge (excluding ISD call)
3. Internet access charge
4. Average transportation charge (If I stay 15 KM away from office)

Please reply soon as I need this information for a critical decision.

Thanks 

premnath


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## Joppa

That is pretty low pay. Even English teachers employed by one of the bigger language schools like NOVA get paid around 250 to 280,000 yen a month. You have to live pretty frugally, no luxuries like running a car and only modest amount of entertainment or travels. Most Japanese employers refund your commuting cost, within reason. I think you are taken for a ride, frankly.


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## sww

Hello,

I cannot believe what they would be offering you as a mechanical engineer. That is super low. I worked in Japan back in the 90's, actually for 6 years as a teacher and teacher trainer. I started out making 250,000 yen and when I left I was making 420,000. Now, this latter salary was actually very high...but I had a high position in the company. You should not consider a job for anything under 350,000 yen, considering that the starting wage for an English teacher is 250,000yen. Also, you will want to see Japan, eat out, drink, etc. you will not be able to do much on a low salary of 200,000. Good luck and peace to you. 



premnath said:


> Dear Friends,
> 
> I have recently got an offer for job in Osaka.The company has offered a salary *200,000 JPY / Month*, from which 48,000 JPY Housing rent will be deducted. Everything such as transportation, insurance, tax, utitility bills have to be paid by me.
> 
> I have no idea how much is other expences. I can only figure out that the salary converts into 2130 USD. But whether it is good offer, I don't know.
> 
> *I would appreciate if anyone suggest me his/her openion regarding this. Also what is average salary for a mechanical engineer with 5 year of experience there in Japan?
> *
> Also please let me know average cost of following things ( Approximate cost on Monthly basis)-
> 1. Food - 1 person
> 2. average phone charge (excluding ISD call)
> 3. Internet access charge
> 4. Average transportation charge (If I stay 15 KM away from office)
> 
> Please reply soon as I need this information for a critical decision.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> premnath


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## april

That is a very low salary. The starting salary for an English teacher fresh out of university is 240,000 yen a month....and the company also paid for transportation on top of that. 

Do not accept the job. Your start-up salary should be at least double that.


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## pasturesnew

april said:


> That is a very low salary. The starting salary for an English teacher fresh out of university is 240,000 yen a month....and the company also paid for transportation on top of that.
> 
> Do not accept the job. Your start-up salary should be at least double that.


Its called exploitation - happens everywhere and will sadly continue so...Tokyo is full of highly educated Indian staff on sub 300k a month, as is London, Europe etc etc... 
To put it into perspective I am a European non degree holder who has secured 1million a month in the last week for a permanent assignment in Tokyo.


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## larabell

It's surprisingly easy to get real answers to questions like this on the Internet. I googled "salaries in Japan" and at least the first two results were lists of average salaries in Japan for various occupations. The second link was the most interesting because it not only listed "Mechanical Engineer" on a bar graph but also the bar labelled "Mechanical Engineer" was the shortest one of all (the chart listed mostly high-tech jobs... I imagine that's because they assume if you've managed to find their web page, you're probably in some kind of technical field ).

If you click on the link for Mechanical Engineer, the low end of the salary range is listed as just over 2.2 million yen per year. That works out to something like 180K yen per month. So if the OP is young, fresh out of school, and/or an unknown quantity to his employer, he might not be able to get a job at twice what he's being offered. (The high end of the range is just under 6 million yen per year so there's significant upside potential).

On the other hand, the first googled link lists the average salary for "Engineer" as 335K yen per month. That's average, not starting, so it includes folks with more experience as well as fresh grads. At 200K yen per month, you're down in the range of store clerks and taxi drivers. But low-ball starting salaries are not unusual in Japan since most employers figure they won't be able to get any real work out of you for at least the first year or two (yes... I've been told that the large corporations like NEC and such really expect their fresh grad hires to take a couple years just to "learn the corporate culture" -- which basically means to act as seat warmers).

I agree that 200K yen per month is low. But so is 48K yen per month for housing so it sounds like they're planning to at least partially subsidize your rent (my guess, from what you've said, is that they would pay your housing cost and take 48K yen per month from your salary as "equivalent rent" (my first assignment in Japan had that kind of clause). So while you'd have to live fairly frugally, you could still survive. And you'd be in Japan which means you could shop around for a better position more easily than you could from where you're at.

To directly answer some of your questions, Internet access should cost around 5K yen per month (more for fiber, less for ADSL). Once you have that, your average phone call should be about 1 yen per minute (because you'd use the Internet to make all your non-local calls, of course). Transportation is harder to guess because it also depends what lines you take, whether you need to cross train companies along the way, and whether there's a bus involved. But you can figure 500-800 yen will get you pretty much anywhere inside Tokyo. If the company is providing housing, you're not likely to be 15 Km away, anyway. Food is even harder to figure since it depends on whether you can stand your own cooking every day. If you were really careful, cooking for yourself and eating only noodles if you happen to eat out, you could get by on maybe 50~80K yen per month.

Hopefully that helps. Again, I agree that the salary is definitely low-end. And it sucks making less as an Engineer than you would as an English teacher. But it doesn't look to be completely out-of-range, especially if you have no experience. I guess it comes down to how badly you want to live in Japan and whether you think you can get a better offer elsewhere. And you might want to verify my assumption about the housing, since that's going to make a huge difference in what you have left over at the end of the month.


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## pasturesnew

larabell said:


> It's surprisingly easy to get real answers to questions like this on the Internet. I googled "salaries in Japan" and at least the first two results were lists of average salaries in Japan for various occupations. The second link was the most interesting because it not only listed "Mechanical Engineer" on a bar graph but also the bar labelled "Mechanical Engineer" was the shortest one of all (the chart listed mostly high-tech jobs... I imagine that's because they assume if you've managed to find their web page, you're probably in some kind of technical field ).
> 
> If you click on the link for Mechanical Engineer, the low end of the salary range is listed as just over 2.2 million yen per year. That works out to something like 180K yen per month. So if the OP is young, fresh out of school, and/or an unknown quantity to his employer, he might not be able to get a job at twice what he's being offered. (The high end of the range is just under 6 million yen per year so there's significant upside potential).
> 
> On the other hand, the first googled link lists the average salary for "Engineer" as 335K yen per month. That's average, not starting, so it includes folks with more experience as well as fresh grads. At 200K yen per month, you're down in the range of store clerks and taxi drivers. But low-ball starting salaries are not unusual in Japan since most employers figure they won't be able to get any real work out of you for at least the first year or two (yes... I've been told that the large corporations like NEC and such really expect their fresh grad hires to take a couple years just to "learn the corporate culture" -- which basically means to act as seat warmers).
> 
> I agree that 200K yen per month is low. But so is 48K yen per month for housing so it sounds like they're planning to at least partially subsidize your rent (my guess, from what you've said, is that they would pay your housing cost and take 48K yen per month from your salary as "equivalent rent" (my first assignment in Japan had that kind of clause). So while you'd have to live fairly frugally, you could still survive. And you'd be in Japan which means you could shop around for a better position more easily than you could from where you're at.
> 
> To directly answer some of your questions, Internet access should cost around 5K yen per month (more for fiber, less for ADSL). Once you have that, your average phone call should be about 1 yen per minute (because you'd use the Internet to make all your non-local calls, of course). Transportation is harder to guess because it also depends what lines you take, whether you need to cross train companies along the way, and whether there's a bus involved. But you can figure 500-800 yen will get you pretty much anywhere inside Tokyo. If the company is providing housing, you're not likely to be 15 Km away, anyway. Food is even harder to figure since it depends on whether you can stand your own cooking every day. If you were really careful, cooking for yourself and eating only noodles if you happen to eat out, you could get by on maybe 50~80K yen per month.
> 
> Hopefully that helps. Again, I agree that the salary is definitely low-end. And it sucks making less as an Engineer than you would as an English teacher. But it doesn't look to be completely out-of-range, especially if you have no experience. I guess it comes down to how badly you want to live in Japan and whether you think you can get a better offer elsewhere. And you might want to verify my assumption about the housing, since that's going to make a huge difference in what you have left over at the end of the month.


Salary surveys & expectations go out the window where Indian Vendors in Tokyo are involved, Id hazard a guess that the OP is with HCL or TCS or a significant other Indian Vendor, most Banks use these parties as their "outsource solution", I know I had to move stuff over to India myself... Hard truth is it all comes down to margins and said Vendors knowing they will be able to persuade staff to spend time in another Country. 
However all is not lost, a good number of Vendor Staff do see the light of day and after a period move on themselves to take up assignments away from the very Vendors who brought them in & on more realistic salaries.....


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