KUALA LUMPUR - On a humid morning in Bekasi, Alsatoher stands in front of a whiteboard, teaching students the language of a country he once struggled to belong in.
It has been six months since he began teaching at a Japanese language school that prepares young Indonesians for the realities of working abroad. Before that, Japan had been his home for nearly six years.
He first arrived as a Technical Intern Trainee (TIT), later returning under the Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) scheme. His journey had been shaped by patience, endurance, and years of quiet resilience. Now back in Indonesia, he is preparing others for the path he once took himself.
For tens of thousands of Indonesian workers, Japan represents both opportunity and aspiration. The country needs workers, and workers need jobs. Japan offers income, stability, and exposure to a global economy.
Yet for many, the promise of skills transfer does not fully materialise, leaving returning workers with experience that is difficult to translate into sustainable careers at home.
“I want to build my own Japanese language school for youth in Indonesia in the future,” Alsatoher said. “Next step for me is supporting the youth generation to go to Japan.”
Now, Alsatoher hopes that those who return home will come back with more than he did — and that those who stay will be better equipped to sustain themselves.
Leaving Fast, Learning Slowly
When a job offer opened up in the metal painting industry in Nagano, Alsatoher didn’t hesitate to take it, for it was one that could get him to Japan the fastest.
Like many Indonesian trainees, his decision was shaped by economic urgency rather than professional alignment. “Japan is a very popular country in Indonesia. Some Japanese companies are well known. It helped me to think about working in Japan,” he said.
After two years of language preparation in Indonesia, he arrived in a rural part of Nagano, surrounded by the greens of the mountains, but the greys of factories. His work was industrial painting, repetitive, physically demanding, and conducted almost entirely in Japanese.
But the prospect of salary was what had kept Alsatoher going. “Our salary was around 150,000 yen (a month) at that time. I always sent 50,000 to 60,000 yen of my salary to my family,” he recalled.
For many migrant workers abroad, remittances have been an essential part of sustaining the lives of their families back home. According to Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), technical interns send home an average of 1,063,000 yen annually.
Unexpectedly for Alsatoher, what proved hardest was not the labour, but communication. “There were moments when my boss scolded me for things that made no sense. I was not able to say back to him because of my Japanese. I felt frustrated,” he said.
When things at work go wrong, he explained, it has always been because of the language barrier. “There were nine more colleagues from Indonesia, but we were blamed because sometimes we couldn’t understand what they ordered, and we couldn’t do it properly.”
Manufacturing has long been one of Nagano’s core industries, with more than 6,000 workplaces forming the backbone of the prefecture’s economy. But long hours, low wages, and the industry’s entrenched “3K” kitanai, kitsui, kiken (dirty, demeaning, dangerous) make factory work a tough sell for young Japanese, especially in rural areas facing depopulation.
According to the Nagano Labour Bureau, over 1000 factories in Nagano employ a combined total of 12,352 foreign workers as of October 2024.
Despite being framed as vocational training, the Technical Intern Training Programme (TITP) has functioned as a way to fill labor shortages and sustain key economic sectors. The differing values and economic conditions between countries have, in a sense, worked together—creating a match between the demand for low-cost labor in Japan and the aspirations of workers seeking better opportunities.
Between Training and Permanence
On paper, the TITP is a pathway for the youth to transfer skills, technologies, and knowledge, accumulated in Japan, into their home countries.
And while this is the case, labour shortages in Japan have transformed TITP into something further – a placeholder for those youths to get accustomed to the country, working permanently once their SSW visa is issued.
After four years of working in Nagano, Alsatoher returned to his home country in Indonesia. But within six months, he realised that he had grown accustomed to Japan’s work environment, daily life and culture.
He took yet another leap of faith and moved to Kyoto, where he entered the caregiving sector under the SSW scheme.
The shift required passing language and skills examinations, including the Japanese Language Proficiency Test N4. The transition also came with better pay, at 210,000 yen monthly, and stronger legal protection.
“The job led me to have many opportunities to communicate with people. I enjoyed talking with elderly people,” he shared.
He mentions the working hours, the stress and loneliness, but ultimately it had been the cleaning part that had made him decide to return to Indonesia. “Some parts of the work, like disposing of fecal matter, did not match with me. It was tough work.”
Japan’s SSW system shows higher retention rates, suggesting greater stability. From 2019 to 2022, the SSW turnover rate was recorded at 16%. By contrast, TITP in nature restricts job mobility, and worker exits are often recorded as absconding rather than turnover.
There were an estimated 9,000 absconding cases under TITP in the period of 2022 to 2023, declining to 6,000 in 2024.
While SSW shows longer periods of employment, it does not necessarily indicate better outcomes. For Alsatoher and thousands of others, workers remain in roles that are not well aligned with their abilities or long term aspirations.
Living Without Belonging
Outside of work, integration proved difficult, making a contribution to Alsatoher’s eventual return to his home country. Although colleagues treated him kindly, his social circle rarely extended beyond the workplace and fellow Indonesians.
“I had to take action to get into a community outside of the workplace.” Alsatoher says. “If I went out, I could feel that I didn’t belong.”
Determined to change that, he began attending a Japanese language school for residents who had come from abroad. The classroom was far from his home, and he often cycled there. In winter, the journey became harder, the cold wind sharpening the loneliness he already carried.
His experiences reflect a structural tension in Japan’s approach to foreign labor. In 2024, then-Prime Minister Fumio Kishida described an immigration policy as the indefinite acceptance of a certain number of foreigners and their families to sustain the nation, and reaffirmed that Japan does not pursue such a policy.
In practice, however, Japan relies on foreign workers through labor schemes that deliberately avoid framing them as long-term migrants.
This contradiction — economic reliance without social inclusion — shapes daily life for many trainees and workers, limiting their ability to envision a future beyond their contracts.
Starting Over in Indonesia
Alsatoher had spent another two years in Kyoto before finally relocating back home to Indonesia, this time, for good.
Under the TITP and the SSW scheme, he was expected to return with skills and experience that could be applied back home. Instead, he found that the knowledge he had gained did not easily translate into local opportunities. What he could not build for himself, he decided to build for others.
“The job opportunities are still developing in here. Job options are limited, ” he said.
His experience is far from unique. A follow-up survey by Japan’s labour ministry in 2022 found that only 32.8% of returning Indonesian trainees were employed, had secured work, or had started a business after returning. Fewer than half (42.7%) were working in the same or a similar field as their training in Japan.
Rather than returning to factory or caregiving work, Alsatoher chose a different path. He became a Japanese language teacher using what Japan had given him – the language, the experience and an understanding of life abroad – to guide the next generation.
“There’s a lot young people can learn from Japan,” he said. “But they need to be prepared for reality.”
Teaching Japanese became his way of supporting the next generation and filling the gaps he once faced: language, expectations and understanding of life abroad. One day, he hopes to build his own school that prepares students not just to pass exams but to endure, adapt and decide for themselves whether the journey is worth it.
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