Brian Caster is a practicing attorney in Japan working in compliance. He’s also one of the most voracious readers I’ve ever met (90+ English books so far in 2019 and counting!). He took some time to tell me about how he learned Japanese, job hunting, and how he brought the goodest dog from Chicago to Tokyo.
- What are you reading right now?
- How did you get to fluency with Japanese?
- Looking back, what study approaches would have been helpful? And is there anything you did that was particularly successful?
- How did you find your Japanese tutor?
- What other authors are you reading?
- Which news apps are you using?
- Did you know you wanted to apply to law school when you went on JET?
- At what point did you know you wanted to go back and work in Japan and how did that inform your application process and the choices you made during law school?
- Did you spend any summers in Japan during law school or take any classes about Japanese law?
- Other than the two years experience, is there anything else you need to be a practicing attorney in Japan?
- How was the job hunting process within Japan? How did it differ from job hunting while living in the U.S.?
- How does work as an in-house attorney differ from outside counsel work?
- How is Honeypie?! What is it like having a dog in Japan?
- What was the process of bringing a dog over to Japan?
At the top I made some translation recommendations, including 夜のくもざる (Yoru no kumozaru, The Spider Monkey Comes at Night) by Haruki Murakami. If you’re looking for public domain material you can publish online, here’s a list of some 随筆 (zuihitsu, miscellanea/essays) that look promising:
Title: 表現論随筆
Author: 豊島与志雄
Title: 押入れ随筆
Author: 吉川英治
Title: 物売りの声
Author: 寺田寅彦
Title: 備忘録
Author: 寺田寅彦
Title: 寺田先生と銀座
Author: 中谷宇吉郎
Title: 京都の朝市
Author: 柳宗悦
Title: 新茶
Author: 岡本かの子
Title: 小学生のとき与へられた教訓
Author: 岡本かの子
Also, I was in the Japan Times a couple weeks back with a look at the podcast and what I learned after talking with everyone: “A podcast that talks to bilingual people about studying Japanese and working in Japan.”