Topic: adviceS
Q: What is the best way to come to Japan?
A; Joining a foreign software company and being sent to Japan on "The Package" for expats is the best. Why live in Japan as an "in-country hire" low-life like me when you can live the fatcat expat life?
Ahhh, the old pig-in-the-poke problem: No Japanese company wants to hire you sight unseen...but it's a pain in the ass to come to Japan without work (and often a visa).
"Ideally" if you want to come to Japan, you try to hire on at a non-Japanese company with a large Japanese division and then get transferred here to live as royalty. The greater the Japanese presence the non-Japanese company has, the more chances you have to transfer here on the all-important Package. Occasionally a smaller company like RAMRON (Colo. Springs) with have a gaijin director position available but you would have to have inside connections to know that and generally the smaller the company the higher the level of Japanese is required.
The reason I am saying non-Japanese companies is that Japanese companies don't like to transfer folks from the Real World to Japan except for specific projects of less than 6 months. The game industry has the greatest amount of cross-border transfers most other industries use in-country hiring of very F'ed gaijin and "astronauts" who commute to Japan for a couple weeks or months at a time.
You might find a master's degree somewhat a hinderance in the Japanese corporate world since you will outrank most everyone. I have for sure. The pay diifference for a masters is only 12-20,000yen/month at Fujitsu for example. It's experience and SKILLZ that count
However, bigger companies, in particular DoCoMo and Hitachi value Phds and advanced degrees. If and only if you remind me by PM, I just learned of one contract programming company that offers 1-year job contracts* in NTT Data, Renesas, et al which would be a great foot-in-the-door.
*(in-country hire, no visa provided)