Because I Hate Tokyo” – How I Started Working in Thailand

What brought you to Thailand?”

I am often asked why I came to Thailand, and sometimes I ask inadvertently. Some reasons may be rather naive, so you may hesitate to ask it.

And even if you don’t have anything to hide, you may not be able to communicate it well or remember it in the first place due to a variety of factors.

I have a clear reason, and then I talk about it and say, “What was I thinking at the time? What was I thinking at that moment? Often, the question becomes, “What was I thinking at that time?

I moved to Thailand in 2017 when I was 39 years old. Two and a half years have already passed, so as a reflection of myself, I would like to talk about my reasons for coming to Thailand.

Situation in Japan

In a word, the situation that led me to work in Thailand was because I got tired of Tokyo.

It is difficult to explain,the situation is not a pinpoint one, but one that is affected by multiple factors over time, but I think many people living in Tokyo, or in Japan for that matter, felt that the situation was getting worse.

The economic side, the work side, the frustration of people, the media, and so many other things just seem to go on and not rise under rules that no one wants.

My life situation

In such a situation in Japan, my life is also facing a major turning point.

This is largely one point each in terms of personal and professional life.

The first thing that greeted me was private boredom.

I was 34 years old when I felt bored in my private life.

Nothing specially problems in 20s. If I had digested what I had not experienced as a single person, it would have been over.

In my case, music was all I needed in my early twenties.My private life was filled with things that I wanted to do, most of all going to live shows, clubs, and festivals, and drinking with people who liked music.

In my late twenties, I was a bit more settled in my life, although I was still drawing on my previous lifestyle. I gradually broadened my scope of activities and at the same time increased my interests.

And I had decided to embark on a long journey by the time I was 30, I was able to enjoy it even more because I was in a state of unknowns and energy, once it was over.

I was on the road for 30~32 years, and it was a fulfilling time.

For a while after returning from the trip, I continued to play with people I met on the trip, as if enjoying an extension of the trip, and there was still a lot of stimulation. However, after a year, such life began to settle down, and there was a rush of marriages around me.

Where the private life has become a limbo, there is no longer a situation where people can be left alone to gather.

This was at age 34, the moment I felt I had done everything I had imagined in my late teens and early twenties.

The only way to avoid feeling bored from here on out is to do something that will grow on myself over time, such as climbing Mount Everest, for example, or becoming a professional at something as a hobby.

Or I have come to think that experiencing the unknown, such as married life and child rearing, is the original flow of life.

In the end, both sides do not get along and are stuck in private.

Work Stalemate

Having had a lax work history until the age of 32, I was fulfilled by my own growth and the company’s recognition regarding my work.

I rapidly moved up from a player to a leader and then to a manager, and I continued to have good times feeling the satisfaction of the work entrusted to me and feeling my own growth.

Up to manager, I had no problem as long as I got the job done, achieved decent results, and took the pressure off my shoulders. However, it is only when you move up from there that you begin to be subjected to internal politics, or rather, to the harmful effects of upper management’s self-preservation.

At that time, I was in charge of a client site as a seconded manager.

The company was growing at a good rate, so a step up post was created there, but I would not be able to go from the site where I was a manager to another department or site.

The company’s argument was that they could not remove me because of the client’s order and that there was no one to take my place, but as far as I could see, they could have removed me if they had planned ahead and had someone to take my place.

But removing me is of course risky and labor intensive. Human resources are taken to the company’s main project, and the people who are my supervisors do not take risks.

Of course, because of this situation, people in the same department were quitting in droves, leading to a further shortage of human resources. The vicious cycle continued, and when the situation became unmanageable, the company moved in, an example of a bad pattern, for which I was to blame.

I continued my job search from the point when the company stopped offering me a path to the next step, but the only good response I got was from a company that was down in terms of job description and income, and I continued working there for about a year while the situation was bad.

Reasons for choosing to work in Thailand

Leave Tokyo

My job search in Tokyo is not going well and I am feeling bored in my personal life. The situation in Tokyo is getting worse and he has no girlfriend to marry.

When I thought about this situation, I simply thought, “There is no need for me to stay in Tokyo. This is what made me decide to leave Tokyo in the first place.

In fact, my former company had several offshore offices in Southeast Asia, and I had hoped to be stationed there, but I didn’t know how many years it would be before that would happen. However, I was 39 years old at the time. I was worried about what would happen if, for example, I was hired locally and returned after a few years.

If I just stay in this bad situation, my life will end up with inertia. My fear of such a crisis was stronger, and I decided to choose the one that I could make the most of by trying.

I came to Bangkok for more than my parents’ home.

My first thought was to move within Japan. People cannot move to a place they do not know at all, in my case it would be Okayama, where I was born, or Fukuoka, where I spent six years from university. Or in the Kansai region, where I visit frequently and have many classmates.

Considering income and work, it seemed that no matter where I took it, it would be more negative than Tokyo, and in my image, there was no particular city that I would enjoy, so I lacked a deciding factor.

I went thinking about other cities I knew and liked: Bangkok, Berlin, Barcelona… and Bangkok was by far the one I had the most contact with. There were so many Japanese people there that there seemed to be work available, and I visited Bangkok at least once a year, so it was a place I visited more regularly than any other city in Japan, with the exception of Tokyo.

Thus began my job search to go Bangkok.

Job Search for Bangkok

First, I looked for information on overseas companies on the multiple job search sites I was using in Japan. I also looked at job sites in Thailand, but there were not many companies for my type of work, web production or IT.

“GREEN” had the most jobs available on the web, but even when looking at a wider range of job types, there were only three companies.

I was beginning to think about registering with another agency, but the company I had applied to through “GREEN” approached me for an interview, and I was interviewed and hired immediately.

I found a job so easily that I wondered what all the job-hunting in Japan had been about. I felt a connection with Thailand once again, and without hesitation, I moved to Bangkok in the shortest possible time.

Incidentally, most of the web and IT jobs in Southeast Asia were in Vietnam, where there was a rather wide range of companies with offshore production bases, local web production and marketing, and other positions.

Southeast Asia Recruitment Agencies

After I got the job, I realized that there were many recruitment agencies in Southeast Asia, including Thailand.

I had looked at a few agents, but there were no jobs that suited me and I had to go through them, but looking again, there are quite a few. I think there are some private jobs available, so I think there is no harm in registering anyway.

Adeco Japan
https://adeccojapanese.asia/

■RGF (Recruit Group)
https://www.rgf-hragent.asia/

■JAC Recruitment Thailand
https://www.jac-recruitment.co.th/ja

■ Reera coen
https://www.reeracoen.co.th/ja

■Kamome asia
https://kamome.asia/thailand/

Here is a brief history of why and how I started working in Bangkok.

So how is life in Bangkok? How is work in Thailand? I will continue to write about such things.