Living in Japan

natedogg789435

natedogg789435

Active member
is it 100% unrealistic for me to say that i am going to live in Japan in a few years and support myself by fishing for super high quality tuna? Then ski bum it during the winters.
 
how are you with a spear-gun? bluefin tuna are fucking massive

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that just makes them easier to hit.

but i'm sure there's more than one person who had the same dreams as you OP, maybe they even accomplished them. it doesn't sound impossible to me. but Japan is not exactly a cheap place to live or anything, so you may want to check into the kind of bank you'd be making for fishing.
 
In Japan they are required to take 3 years of English in most high schools. Many people in Japan have at least a working knowledge of English so learning Japanese isn't really ALL that needed. Plus, their ski areas are big tourist points so they have English signs everywhere.

If you want some info, shoot me a PM, I have family from Japan and have been there three times to visit them.
 
haha yea, i happened to read this article in the Ny times and basically it told me that if you have patience and harmony with nature you can haul in a big tuna that can bring 100's of thousands of dollars. granted you're not going to catch one everyday. as for japanese, the language, the way to fix that if use hand signals.
 
haha thanks, i would straight take you up on that. but this ambition needs to be suppressed for at least another year or two.
 
you gotta be grateful for the people out there willing to pay that kind of money for a fish.
 
yeah, sashimi grade tuna brings in a great deal of money, but from what I've heard you usually have a team of guys hauling it in.

Also isn't it mostly fished in the mediterranean?

a working knowledge of japanese would be good, this only takes a year or two depending on your studiousness and you will blow japanese people's minds. seriously, they will be amazed and more willing to help you out.

Also when navigating the shops/streets/train systems it helps to be able to read the whole sign and not rely on the english translation

and hey, it's just cool to be able to read something totally different from english and you can show off on facebook
 
i'm living in austria for a year right now, im from ohio and ive only been here 2 months, before i came here i spoke no german, but now i speak a ton, just from living here, you pick the language up quickly, just because you have to

oh and its snowing out my window right now =]
 
im pretty sure that most high quality tuna like that is fished in Canadian waters, and they in turn sell it to the japanese for insane prices

 
You would have to get a job on an existing boat, you cant just commercially fish because you feel like it, these things are regulated according to international agreements.

That article also said the tuna catch is plummeting, which means that there are FEWER fisherman, not more. (and the ones left are not about to hire an inexperienced American when there are plenty of experienced Japanese).

Japan is very expensive, and their economy has been stagnant for decades(read: no jobs for unskilled Americans).

Getting a working visa would likely be impossible without a specialized college degree.

No offense, but its just not a very good idea.
 
I'm no tuna fishing expert, but i doubt it'd be very easy to get into as an American. However, it is pretty easy to teach English in Japan and then ski on the weekends/holidays. Alternatively, you could ski instruct there, as there are tons of english speaking tourists wanting to learn. I'm about to go back to Niseko for my second season there and it's awesome.
 
i just got back from fishing albacore tuna (sharp frozen at sea therefore sashimi grade) 120 kms off the beach of oregon and washington for 4 months.

you have to wait till late in the year for the tuna to come in canadian waters and by then its in october and its too late.

canadians have to buy a license for the the privledge to fish in american waters which costed my captain 15,000 dollars this year.

fisherman get only 1.25 per pound on average while the fish markets which process our fish get 12.99 a pound for the tuna loins, so fisherman get ripped off considering how dangerous the job is. i have to worry about falling overboard while the boat is running at night into 15 degree waters as i'm taking a piss and if i fall overboard all i can do is watch the boat run away while the captain is sleeping. thats why they find a lot of deckhands drowned with their flys open. then there is the fucking oil tankers that i have to think about killing me in my sleep in the middle of the night.

but for a student its kind of worth the risk, as a deckhand i made 3700 for one trip, but the tuna fishing got progressively worse as the year went on and the season was supposed to last till the end of october but all the big tuna players are back in port now. i think i made 6 or 7 thousand over the summer. and i ate a lot of sashimi. probably if i paid for all the tuna i ate it would come to around 500 dollars in a restaurant. its funny because i won't even order albacore anymore at tuna restraunts because it'll never be as fresh as eating it the day after you caught it. (you have to freeze the tuna first to kill the parasites then thaw it out)

and blue fin is coralled in seine nets then speared which is not sustainable fishing.

we trolled our tuna and never caught anything that we weren't supposed to.

the biggest tuna that i caught this year was 36 pounds and if you can't handle blood don't tuna fish. they bleed like a fucking lamb.

i've also been to japan for a little while, and its a nice place. although the older people are racists as fuck. the young kids are cool though.

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yo there are tons of physical jobs that actually bring in good money, like longshoreman.

and ya, tuna's going to be extinct in three years if we continue to consume it like we do now, so probably not a good long term career choice.
 
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