Japan needs nurses, STAT

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Konichiwa, I think.

In any case, I don't think I could do so well in Japan. The language requirement will be hard to pass.

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Specializes in LTC.

I wish we had those uniforms to graduate in!!! Some of my classmates would have fit right in ;)

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Specializes in Psych.

Would love to visit Japan, but it is a very closed society and quite racist. Seems like they might benefit from working within their own country to draw more people into nursing.

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Specializes in ICU.
Konichiwa, I think.

In any case, I don't think I could do so well in Japan. The language requirement will be hard to pass.

Konnichiwa. Or こんにちは, if you prefer.

Japan is an interesting ancient country. I had the opportunity to live & work there for 4 months back in 1989. Yes, the Japanese as a people can be somewhat racist (especially towards Koreans). Not like us Amurkins here in the good ol' USA, nossirree Bob!:cool:

While I was there, the Japanese were definitely sexist. If you were met at the airport by a female employee of the company you were visiting, that was a definite insult. I'm not sure if this has changed over the past 20+ years, but hope so. Japanese tend to use "-chan" diminutive endings when referring to a female...or a child (like calling a woman named Keiko "Keiko-chan"). A male would be called by their name, plus "-kun", "-san", or "-sama", depending on what level of honorific/formality you need to use (such as Hironaga-san).

I think the main complicating factor in learning Japanese is Kanji (the Chinese/Japanese ideograms). There are thousands of them, along with the two simpler alphabets/phonograms (Hiragana & Katakana). I only picked up a few Kanji while I was there, but could read Hiragana & Katakana fairly well (now VERY rusty due to lack of use...my bad).

One good thing about the Japanese language, though, is that if you see a word written in Hiragana or Katakana, you KNOW how it is pronounced. Not at all like English, where letter combinations are pronounced in totally weird/different ways. Just look at how the letter pair "gh" is pronounced in the words cough, ghost, and though. With the simplified Japanese alphabets, you can see a character and KNOW how it's pronounced. English is a weird language. In Japanese, a given Kanji ideogram may be pronounced in different ways depending on the context. I guess in this way, Japanese is also a weird language.

The Japanese also seem to have a different view on openness with patients. If a physician knows that a patient has a terminal condition, they may very well not tell that to the patient, at the patient's family's request.

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Wouldn't it be more cost efficient to hire a couple of translators per hospital, and just let the nurses do their thing, with assistance when needed? Duh!

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first u have to know how to speak japanese.

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Specializes in Medical and general practice now LTC.
Wouldn't it be more cost efficient to hire a couple of translators per hospital, and just let the nurses do their thing, with assistance when needed? Duh!

Then how would you be able to communicate properly with the patient, family and other members of the multidisciplinary team?

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Specializes in Ante-Intra-Postpartum, Post Gyne.

Sorry. I would never want a nursing job that bad.

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Um my understanding is that Japan is very Americanized and most folks there know English, though it is rude to not know their language. Attitudes are changing towards women also with more of them in the workforce. They still have pervasive sexism though, it would be tough for us to adjust to. I think American women nurses are the strongest, bravest most liberated group of women in the country. We don't even realize it until we work in a different field. I can tell you working in a school with women teachers and secretaries that I would rather have a nurse on my team any day. These gals with their "Oh I broke a nail"! fashion-queen women are weak and dependent mentality make me want to scream.

I personally would love to go for a time, and even considered going there to teach English when I was in college, but life got in the way. My nephew just got back from Japan amd he is glad to be back in the states.

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Specializes in ICU.
Um my understanding is that Japan is very Americanized and most folks there know English, though it is rude to not know their language. Attitudes are changing towards women also with more of them in the workforce. They still have pervasive sexism though, it would be tough for us to adjust to.

Japan may be more Westernized than it was years & years ago, but I don't believe that most people know English. I think that most of the folks who do know English, know it from the written stuff they learned in school, not so much conversational. This may be different in large cities or areas with a large high school/university student population. When I was there back in 1989, only a small fraction of the people with whom I worked spoke English. When I was traveling out & about (small cities to larger cities), it was all in Japanese.

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Well I am sure that the smaller rural areas are not the same, but the kids do study English in school and lucky for us, English is the language of the internet, so eventually economic forces will push it to become the international language. There will be one eventually, and since English is leading the way it goes to follow that it will be the one. Of course that does not relieve us from the responsibility of trying to also learn another language, in fact it makes it that much more important.

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

I lived in Japan from 1979 to 1981 while I was stationed at Yokota AB in Tokyo. I lived "on the economy" meaning in a Japanese apartment and never had any problems. The Japanese were very curious about how my husband and I lived and that I was in the military. (Hubby was in the Air Force and I was in the Navy).

We enjoyed it. Many people, especially the younger generation do speak English. However, the elders (the ones the nurses are being hired to care for) did not.

I have lived in several non-English speaking countries for years at a time and when I had to seek healthcare it was always very very stressful not to have anyone I could communicate with.

So...I do think its necessary to have Japanese language competencies.

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