Be aware of the fiscal year in Japan
This spring has totally different picture of the society from usual year due to Coronavirus. Hopefully we would like to see usual scenery next spring.
For many Japanese companies, administrative offices, schools, the new fiscal year starts on 1 of April and ends on 31 of March of the following year. This system dates back to the year 1886, when it was decided by the Finance Ministry, that one fiscal year would be from 1 of April to 31 of March of the next year. As the result, many companies followed this custom.
Later Japanese school system followed suit with the new school year beginning on 1 of April and ending the next year on 31 of March. New graduates almost uniformly are officially hired from the beginning of new fiscal year on 1 of April.
(I will write about Japanese job hunting system later in this blog)
Also it’s job rotation season. Japanese major companies often have job rotation for training their staff by experiencing many departments and roles every few years. Your contact persons in travel agencies have possibility to sudden change their roles or departments they work for.
So half end of March and the beginning of April are very hectic season for Japanese companies. Accounting department need to close the book until 31 of March so they have a lot of questions to other departments, the persons involved in job rotation sometimes need to move other places in very short time like 2 weeks to prepare and whole company is busy to accept new graduates, educate them. So generally half end of March and the beginning of April are not recommended to organize sales functions, even sales calls.
But if you are a normal tourist, it’s beautiful cherry blossom season all over Japan,
certainly it’s one of the best seasons to travel to Japan. Welcome !