Nathan Scales '98, a computer science major, says that he first became interested in Japan when he went to the country as an exchange student in the summer of 1994. Since then, he has studied up to the fourth-year level of Japanese at Harvard and become engaged to a Japanese woman.

"I'll be working as a computer programmer in Japan next year," Scales says.

Scales says that he didn't have much difficulty finding the job.

"It seems that there are a lot of companies looking for programmers--or students with other technical backgrounds--who can speak both English and Japanese," Scales says.

Scales says that he is now thinking of accepting an offer from a Japanese company that is marketing a software package for doing automated production scheduling.

Luke Moland '97-'98, an EAS and economics concentrator currently seeking a job in strategy consulting, expresses a more measured but still optimistic view.

"You can't go into EAS for purely economic reasons, there's bound to be disappointment, because taking an Asian language is not like night courses in accounting," Moland says. "You have to be serious."

Moland began taking Japanese as a high school student in Seattle at the height of the Japanese bubble economy.

"I started taking Japanese because it was different from anything else I'd known. At worst, I thought I'd fulfill my language requirement for high school, at best, I might be filthy rich," he says, half-jokingly.

Nowadays, however, to get a consulting job in Japan, advance planning is necessary, Moland says.

"The ideal is to work two years in a domestic office, doing international cases...then, with cultural knowledge and language abilities, you become very marketable."

Moland summed up the situation for non-Japanese aspiring to work in business in Japan.

"There's still a lot of opportunity," Moland says. "But now you need to know the language, the business and people. You can't just be smart."

Toughening Requirements

The greater barriers to finding work in Japan have been reflected in the employment patterns of Harvard graduates seeking jobs.