“If I could put my advice in one [sentence],” said Senior Software Engineer Ann Kilzer, “it’s, ‘Don’t forget to take time to understand Japan.’”
Kilzer moved to Tokyo in 2018 and intends to stay in Japan for the long haul: “I think of myself as an immigrant,” she told me. As such, she’s devoted considerable time and thought to how international developers can establish themselves in Japan, both professionally and personally.
“ Build systems and tooling for long-term success,” she suggested. “Which means, learn the language. Learn how things work. . . . And it’s a hard language to learn,” she acknowledged. “It’s a different culture than many others. So it is worth putting that time in early.”
Get involved in the culture and with people, because your workplace may change, and your friends might change, but if you want to make it long term here, it’s not sustainable to expect your workplace or your spouse to take care of you. You have to gain independence.
In this article Kilzer goes into detail on:
- Why she chose Japan over working with “cowboy coders” in the US
- The many ways Japan has changed since then
- Her advice for other international developers
A mission of reinvention
“So I arrived in early 2018,” said Ann Kilzer, “on a 90-day Tourist Visa.”
I lived in a Dogenzaka sharehouse with 11 foreigners and a rat. I interviewed and networked every day, and also took Japanese lessons. Within six weeks I had five job offers.
Her actual job hunt may sound smooth, but Ann’s move to Japan was part of a long, extensive reevaluation of her career. Previously, she’d been the primary Release Manager for the search engine backend at a large company in Austin, Texas. “It felt important because it was the core product and needed to be done, but I was in a career rut.
“Doing a lot of manual tasks, cleaning up merge conflicts for cowboy coders (in the sense that this team of 40-plus men regularly wrote thousand-line PRs with no unit tests, but their hobbies were also shooting guns and hanging out at a colleague’s ranch), I was the one woman who would deal with this group and had been recognized as extremely reliable, but it was a ‘glue work’ position and I recognized I’d never get promoted. . . . So I asked to switch teams to try the new SRE role.
“And my skip-level manager, Jack, was this awesome leader who said ‘Hmm, we thought you liked working on the backend, but if you want to move, could you take it to Tokyo, possibly by next week?’”
Days later, she flew to Tokyo for a month-long product handoff. While the handoff itself was stressful, she discovered she quite enjoyed Japan. “I also noticed that Tokyo was cheaper and safer than San Francisco, a place I was considering returning to if Texas didn’t work out. There were English-speaking jobs here, and I also have a B.A. in Visual Art, so I imagined how much art and culture I could soak up!”
In 2017 Kilzer resigned from the company in Texas and took a sabbatical, during which she traveled, addressed her chronic pain, and started studying Japanese.
A funny thing happened when I made this my own mission of self-reinvention: a lot of people were inspired and helped me. People liked the idea of someone who’s not thriving in one environment undergoing this big transformation, and I don’t think I would have succeeded without all this community.
“People told me about Sakura House,” she explained, “and introduced me to people creating startups. People believed in me. Friends took care of my cat when I messed up the quarantine paperwork and had to redo the 210 day process.”
Ramona the cat is still with her and is now 18 years old. “I should do a senior photo for her, with her hugging a tree, and a soft focus, and a senior quote,” Kilzer joked.
By the time she actually arrived in Japan, “The market was pretty strong and I interviewed well. I turned down the high-paying fintech companies to be the first engineer at a new startup. Then I had to do a ‘visa run’ and bounce over to Thailand while the work visa went through.”
That startup was a great place to grow in Japan. I learned a ton because I had to do everything: backend, frontend, hiring, security, mentoring.
“It was quite a ride and I don’t necessarily recommend this as a reliable path to finding employment,” Kilzer hastened to add. “It worked for me, and I’d like to acknowledge that the job market is different now.”
Since that first job with a startup, she’s worked in Senior Software Engineering and Architect roles at three other companies in Japan.
How Japan has changed
Though she’s been in the country slightly less than a decade, Kilzer noted that Japan is changing fast—at least, in some ways.
The promise of remote work
“One big change,” Kilzer said, “is hybrid work styles since Covid. Fewer companies are doing full remote [work], but the ability to spend a couple days working from home and get the deep focus, plus avoiding the bodycrush of rush hour trains, is a real benefit.
“There are challenges and opportunities with remote work and ensuring people stay in sync. I worked at Mercari for two years when it was fully remote, and we leveraged Slack, team meetings, and confluence docs to keep our team in sync. My first team Web Platform was really wonderful in terms of collaboration, and we used tools like VS Code LiveShare to do ‘Mob Programming’ and teach one another skills. However, lengthy video calls also take a toll, and it’s common for organizers (even myself) to forget to include hourly breaks.”
‘Zoom fatigue’ is real, and without being in person, it’s harder to read emotions like disengagement from teammates. In a real office people stand up and take breaks, get a beverage, and socialize. Just because we’re sitting in front of a computer doesn’t mean that people can crank out eight plus hours of pure productivity.
Balancing the upsides and downsides of remote work may be one reason that companies are increasingly moving to hybrid work environments, as found in the 2025 TokyoDev survey.
Unfortunately, sudden shifts in policy can have a detrimental effect on employees. Kilzer told me she’s watched some companies in Japan promise remote work, and then suddenly renege with an abrupt return-to-office policy. “Which I think is disappointing and not really fair to employees, who may invest in a house or make big decisions.”
In addition, Kilzer personally believes that remote work could ease some of Tokyo’s overcrowding issues, and would like to see measures that were adopted during the pandemic taken further.
“Japan was also creating this infrastructure for people to do remote work on the trains, or in little places in the country that have remote work cafes. I think these are really wonderful things about Japan trying to balance the depopulation [of the countryside] with this new work style.”
Consequences of the weaker yen
“There’s a big rise in foreign tourism,” Kilzer said. Not that Kilzer has a problem with tourism in and of itself: “It’s great for people to come visit Japan. We were all tourists at one point, those of us here. [But] some of it is happening in an unsustainable way.”
One major factor in increased tourism is the relatively low value of the yen, which makes traveling in Japan comparatively cheap. As Kiilzer pointed out, this creates complications for Japanese residents. “The weakening of the yen is challenging, and particularly getting priced out of things that I used to do. Going skiing is now really hard to do unless you book it several months in advance.”
There’s this frustration of Japan being hard to enjoy. Things are just becoming inaccessible to people who live and work here, but they’re still accessible to wealthy foreign tourists.
“The weakening of the yen, and not keeping up with the world economy, and the job market kind of cooling, has been a challenge,” she concluded.
I followed up about the job market—has hiring slowed, in her opinion? “The job market is a lot harder,” Kilzer confirmed. Gone are the days when she landed in 2018 and had five job offers in six weeks.
I wouldn’t tell people to just roll up here . . . and hope for the best. Companies are a lot more cautious in hiring.
And yet, things stay the same
In some ways, Kilzer is more interested in what hasn’t changed. “There are so many papers and buzzwords about digital transformation,” she informed me. Referred to as DX in Japan, the idea of digital transformation has been widely embraced by both the tech industry and government—yet the actual results are often disappointing.
“Like when I went to the driver’s license school,” said Kilzer. “They gave me an NFC card, so they have all this technology that’s very cutting edge. And I tap the NFC card, and then it prints out a dot matrix sheet with my name on it and spits out a paper file that needs to be hanko-ed [stamped].”
A lot of the businesses here are kind of just going on these buzzwords and hype. ‘Okay, we did the digital transformation! But we didn’t really change the way we worked. We just put a computer between different parts of the process.’
“The transformational part was supposed to be so we could reduce bureaucracy, not just sell a machine to put in the middle of it. So my worry is that, as Japan tries to keep up with whatever the current trend is, they don’t really rethink the ‘why.’”
“And again, this is painting with broad strokes,” Kilzer added. “There are many things that Japan does well, from hardware to quality to social stability. I sense that some old workplace habits will be around for a while, and it’s why I choose to work at more international companies, because change here can be very slow.”
If you want to live here long term
“There are people who are just here for one to two years to get a new experience,” said Kilzer. “That’s fine and valid too. But if you want to make a life here, start planting those seeds early.”
These are the four “seeds” Kilzer particularly recommends.
Work on being bicultural
While Kilzer herself prefers to work at international companies now, “ I don’t want to say that people should avoid Japanese companies. You can learn a lot by doing it. I worked at Mercari for a couple years and learned valuable skills on collaboration and consensus-building. I recommend setting expectations accordingly, and to know yourself and what you’re signing up for.”
One thing in Japan is there are many imperfect companies and there are long hours, but there is this sense of lifetime employment and companies taking care of people, and there are proper labor laws here. Whereas when I worked in Texas, it was at-will employment.
One of the best benefits of working for a Japanese company is the chance to become more bicultural. To Kilzer, bicultural means not just speaking two languages, but understanding the different operating mindsets of Japanese and American companies. “Right now I’m at a company that is very global, and I’m appreciating that energy, and we have a very Japanese branch of the company. When I interact with them, I am really glad I know more about how that works because it makes me more effective.”
How did she gain some of that bicultural experience? “ My last job was cool—I got to be a software architect and do consulting work with Japanese companies.” One of those companies was Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and Kilzer assisted them in developing some railway technology. “One of the reasons they hired consultants was they wanted perspective on a more modern way of doing things, because they had been operating in a Waterfall process.
“That experience highlighted the difference between a traditional Japanese company versus Western companies, and we went on the modernization journey and coded together.”
With one client I asked, ‘Hey, we’re going to upgrade this version of TypeScript. How do you feel about it?’ And then the client was really nervous about making a small update. They were smart engineers with extensive experience, but my sense was that the incentive structure at a lot of Japanese companies doesn’t empower people to make their own decisions.
“The engineer might be afraid he is going to take the fall,” she added, “so he doesn’t want to do something that’s going to get him in trouble.”
It wasn’t just at that company either—Kilzer has seen similar hesitation from employees all over Japan, even outside the software industry. “I wish there was more ability in Japan for people to make independent decisions, but I think it’s a structural thing. If the employees get in trouble for little things or are expected to be perfect, then there’s no room for people to make their own decisions.”
I’d say the upside of that culture is that Japan is really good at quality and precision. But there is a rigidity in [the culture], and particularly in software, which is a field that allows prototyping and quick updates. We can have a little more flexibility and iterate.
By working closely with these companies, Kilzer found easier ways to negotiate for change. For example, in the dispute over the TypeScript update, “I framed it all as a trade-off in discussion. And I said, ‘Okay, we don’t want to do this small version upgrade, however one to two years down the road, we will need to do a version upgrade and it will be a bigger one. . . . We can skip this update, but if we do it now, the risks are listed here. If we wait two years, we might have to do 10 times as much work. So would you rather do a small, incremental piece of work every month, or would you rather have this big risk coming at you?’ Then they were able to make a clearer decision, and I also shared some examples of what I had seen other companies do.”
In general, Kilzer has learned to strike a balance between her own self-described “American-ness” and Japanese company culture. “In Texas I really had to be brash and loud to be heard in a group of those cowboy coders. That’s fine, it was its own context. I really love that I’ve learned new skills for hearing different voices and working cross-culturally.”
I like the consensus nature of Japan and think it’s a strength. I can have my own big ideas, though I try to share them later in a conversation and leave room for others to weigh in.
Being able to accommodate both cultures becomes particularly important as you climb the career ladder. “While you can probably get a good job as a software developer or senior engineer at many companies, if you want to go into leadership and be at a company here, it’s often helpful to be fluent in both languages.
“[Also] having that cultural knowledge . . . of how Western and Japanese employees may react to feedback, and how they may communicate, that is just going to make you more effective.”
Like Matt Gillingham, she’s a fan of the book The Culture Map. “It talks about working with Japanese as well as different global cultures.” This is especially important when working with international developer teams.
“The international offices usually have large blocks of Europeans, Americans, Indians, and people from Southeast Asia, Australia. . . . Books like this can really help with navigating these deeply multicultural spaces.”
Become an adult, again
Becoming more bicultural in the workplace is just the beginning of adapting to Japan. “One might start thinking about things like, ‘How does the pension work? How does home ownership work? How does healthcare work?’ Because it often works very differently than in our home countries, and one [needs to] understand that a lot of things in Japan are highly relationship-based.
“For healthcare, someone told me it’s a good idea to build a relationship with your local clinic, and most healthcare is handled by generalist doctors at small clinics, who are fine for small things, and maybe not the most up to date on the newer stuff—but you can’t get that referral to the bigger hospital unless you go through them. So it’s good to build that relationship . . . and that takes time to build and may require learning some specialized vocabulary.”
As we get older, we’re more likely to need healthcare, to need emergency savings. . . . And if you’re here a long time, you’re going to hit ups and downs in life. [You need to] be able to navigate those systems without being dependent.
This isn’t always easy. “ You have to relearn how to be an adult. It’s pretty wild,” laughed Kilzer. But in her opinion, it’s an important part of being an immigrant in a new country.
“ I put myself in the immigrant box because I feel like I am here for a long time, and I think it gives me humility and compassion towards other immigrants who might have less status or privilege. I recognize that I might have more in common with the konbini worker than the rich ambassador living in Roppongi. There’s something there about wanting to make Japan work as my new home, and this country being very welcoming in some ways and confusing in others.”
Learn the language
That confusion lessens if you can learn the language. Kilzer, who takes regular private lessons to improve her speaking and listening, has deliberately chosen what aspects of Japanese to prioritize. “I don’t know keigo [formal Japanese], and it’s not in my plans to learn it, as I believe strongly hierarchical workplaces don’t mix well with Agile Software Development.
“I can see that Japanese will become increasingly important when working with product stakeholders and coworkers, or if I pursue an Engineering Manager path. I love the Yasashii Nihongo [easy Japanese] focus that companies like Mercari advocate. In my recent job transition, I noticed interviewers and hiring managers respected me more for putting in the effort to learn Japanese.”
It’s definitely possible for foreign engineers to live here and not learn the language, but after a few years, what are you doing? If you want to build a life here, put in the effort. Every ward has volunteer classes. There’s so much opportunity to learn, and you’ll get more out of life if you can be part of the community.
Take care with your community
In general Kilzer loves the community focus of Japan. “ There’s more sense of a social fabric and third spaces. . . . Look at all the public infrastructure that we get and that we can use.
“I’m in a Japanese Awa Odori troupe called Edo Kabuki Ren (江戸歌舞伎連). It’s a 400-year-old dance style from Tokushima. And we use all these public centers to exercise. . . . It’s one of the ways I get more immersed in the community. No one there really speaks English, but you know, I show up a couple of times a month, and we practice, and they have the drummers and the musicians and [everyone] from small children to elderly people. It’s a really cool thing to be a part of.”
But Kilzer isn’t just referring to local Japanese organizations. International communities can have a direct impact not only on your personal life, but your career.
The Tokyo tech community, particularly the English-speaking community, is quite small despite the metropolis we live in. Maintain good relationships in the community as it will pay off long term.
“Rumors spread, so avoid over-sharing,” she advised. “That hurt me at one time, and I’m more careful with my professional reputation now.”
In particular, you should also be careful about job-hopping. “It’s worth considering that you develop a long-term reputation here and, while you can change jobs, you might not be able to do it as much as in the USA or Europe. There’s still a stigma around job hopping, and there’s a smaller candidate pool, and a lot of the hiring managers know each other.”
What’s most essential, though, is finding some kind of community. “ Tokyo is an effort, and there’s an isolation that I find a little bizarre, because there are clearly so many people around! But I get it, too. I mean, going through Shinjuku Station or Yokohama Station, you get tired and then you just want to go home and curl up. I just want to chill with my cat.
“But I am a regular at some restaurants and bars where I have someone to talk to, and the service is incredible. Those are support systems I’ve built.” Not that you always have to build your own support systems from scratch.
Join communities and give back. There are a lot of great meetups and events, and they don’t come for free. Someone had to build them and maintain them.
Not easy, but worthwhile
I asked Kilzer if she’d consider returning to the United States. She’d be hesitant, she told me. “My home country is not in a good place right now, between the authoritarian government, rising costs, and the massive tech layoffs. A lot of my former colleagues have been let go. Some landed in new positions quickly. Others are still in transition.”
Not that Japan is always easy by comparison. “The language is intense. I speak German and retain a B2 level despite a long break in my studies. Japanese is a totally different beast. Another hardship is being treated like a new person even after eight years of residence.
“Sometimes shopkeepers yell at me in broken English. ‘The restaurant is closed, please don’t touch that, etc.’ This is only a small percentage of Japanese people, but it’s not a great feeling to be treated like an outsider or talked to like a child.
“I remind myself of all the wonderful and welcoming Japanese people I know,” she concluded. “There’s not one experience here.”
In the USA, I was on a path of cynicism and bitterness. I believe that moving to Japan and restarting helped me reinvent myself and break that cycle. It wasn’t an easy transition, but I’m glad I did it.
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