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Young people from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are venturing here seeking careers and a different lifestyleWhile many young Singaporeans dream of living in literally cooler Asian cities such as Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei, Ms Elly Nakajima has made the reverse move to the tropics and could not be happier.self storageThe Tokyo native came to Singapore six years ago looking for a different life. Then, she was 34 and an editor and co-owner of a publishing company. Her professional life was sailing along."But I thought to myself, 'What more can I achieve from here, career-wise?' Apart from becoming the owner, everything else would be the same," she recalls. "I really wanted change in my life."She enrolled in a four-month English course in California in 2007, picking up the language from scratch. Upon graduation in 2008, she applied to and was quickly hired by a Japanese media company in Singapore. Despite her parents' disapproval ("They did not understand why I would want to lose my career in Japan."), she took the job.Her parents used to run their own food and beverage business. Her father died in 2012 at the age of 80, while her mother is 65 and retired.Two years later, she left to join Shunji Matsuo Hair Studio here and handled operations, public relations and marketing. Today, she is a senior office manager at the Miss Paris & Dandy House, a Japanese beauty spa chain that set up its first Singapore branch in Ngee Ann City in November last year.Now 40, Ms Nakajima became a Singapore permanent resident in April last year and is staying for the long term. She is single."I love how Singapore is a mix of different peoples and cultures. I want to be here," she says in fluent English. "I'm very happy with my life now. It is interesting and my work is challenging."Mention East Asian migrants and China- born new citizens come to mind. Yet, young Japanese, Taiwanese and South Koreans are making their presence felt in Singapore, too, in industries ranging from food and beverage to spa services to engineering.Push factors for these young arrivals include unemployment in their home countries, which range between 3 and 4 per cent, higher than Singapore's rate of 1.8 per cent.In 2012, according to the Japanese embassy in Singapore, there were 27,525 Japanese people living here - about a 6 per cent increase from 25,969 in 2007.More Japanese have also come to work in private companies, or as students, teachers and researchers. Others are self-employed.Similarly, the South Korean embassy estimates that there are about 25,000 South Koreans residing in Singapore now. A Straits Times report in 2012 had put that number at 20,000. About 80 per cent of these Singapore-based Koreans are aged below 45.Young professionals from South Korea mostly seek employment in oil and finance multinational companies in Singapore, says the South Korean embassy's press and culture division special assistant, Ms Valeria Park. A "sizeable number" of Koreans are also employed in the F&B industry, she adds.Last year, The Straits Times reported that revised hiring restrictions and quotas for workers of certain nationalities, such as Chinese, have led restaurants to hire more Taiwanese service staff.For the Taiwanese, there are push and pull factors leading them here.According to Taiwan's Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, the unemployment rate for the 20 to 24 age group stood at 12.74 per cent in May last year and the unemployment rate for the 25 to 29 age bracket was 6.95 per cent in the same period.For Keelung city native Jessica Lee, 24, it was the higher starting salary in Singapore for graduates that drew her to relocate here in September 2012.In Taiwan, the average starting pay for graduates is NT$22,000 (S$930). In Singapore, Ms Lee says she can earn around $1,300 a month. She now works as a waitress in Lee's Taiwanese, an eatery in Jem mall in Jurong."The money aside, I can get to learn English, which I cannot experience in Taiwan," says the nursing graduate from the Ching Kuo Institute of Management and Health.She has no regrets about not being a nurse, as she says she is "not interested" in the profession and enrolled for studies only because her parents recommended it.The youth unemployment figures for South Korea are grim too. In February last year, the unemployment rate for South Koreans aged 15 to 29 was 7.5 per cent, according to the Statistics Korea website.The Korea Labour Institute's Monthly Labour Review in May 2011 also reported that about 35 per cent of the country's college graduates found it difficult to secure a job upon graduation.Mr Terry Park, 44, chief executive of Korean barbecue restaurant chain Ju Shin Jung in Singapore, has about 30 young South Koreans working at his chain's three branches.He says some of his employees come here simply for exposure."They also want to learn English, and Singapore is nearer to Korea than Australia or the United States. It's also convenient for them to make a trip home, if necessary."At job interviews, he says, the young South Koreans usually tell him that they want to try working overseas and experience a mix of cultures in one country.South Korean civil engineer Jeon Choon Moon, 36, was posted to Singapore in 2009 and has enjoyed living here since.His company, South Korea-based Ssangyong Engineering & Construction, is constructing stations for the Downtown Line 2 project, which ends next year."The environment here is great. I love the food too - laksa, prawn noodles and fried rice are my favourites," says the soft-spoken man in English. He is married to a Korean housewife, 32, and has a three- year-old daughter.They live in a rented two-room HDB flat in Yishun and are expecting their second child next month. Mr Jeon recently became a member of the Institution of Engineers, Singapore to network with other engineers."If my company secures a new project here beyond 2015, I'll definitely stay on in Singapore with my family," he says."People seem relaxed and I am given time here to think about how to do things, one step at a time. In Korea, everything needs to be done as soon as possible."For every adventurous Japanese, South Korean or Taiwanese worker open to coming to Singapore, however, there are scores who prefer to remain in their own countries.Younger generations of Japanese people are not "hungry for such challenges", laments Ms Nakajima."They want to hold on to a safe, flat life in Japan, where everyone speaks the same language and shares the same culture. Many of them feel that they cannot survive here, simply because no one knows them. They feel unprotected and insecure," she adds.Her countryman Taka Harashima agrees with her assessment."I am a rarity," says the boyish-looking 25-year-old who moved to Singapore more than three years ago and works as a service manager at a Japanese barbecue restaurant in Robertson Quay, Yakiniku Yazawa."Most young Japanese people don't want to work overseas. They are not open- minded, they are scared to try new things," says the Tokyo native in fluent English."But I wanted to try new things. I want to learn to be independent."brynasim@sph.com.sgJapanese who ends her sentences with lahLast July, Ms Noriko Kudo's boyfriend proposed to her. Then, three months later, he saw her off on a flight from Japan to Singapore, having encouraged her to accept an overseas job stint of at least two years.Says Ms Kudo, 26, of her fiance, 30, who owns a beauty spa business: "He lived in New Zealand for four years, so he felt that I should go ahead and try living overseas, since I have this chance."The couple, who have been dating for seven years, now keep in touch via Skype and text-chat app Line. She hopes to go back to Japan to register her marriage to him later this year.Hailing from Yokohama city, she is now a beauty therapist and assistant manager with the Miss Paris & Dandy House spa in Ngee Ann City.At the spa's sole Singapore outlet, she helps to train new therapists and also does treatments for clients.A former client of Miss Paris, she weighed 70kg at age 20. She checked into a Miss Paris spa in Japan and managed to lose 20kg. Today, she weighs 53kg.Although she had been pursuing a teaching degree back then at Tamagawa University, she was impressed enough by her spa-going experience to want to be a professional beauty therapist. Upon graduating four years ago, she decided she would work at Miss Paris."Most of my classmates went into teaching, but I decided it was boring. I was not interested in a profession with such a hierarchical system," she says in Japanese, while her supervisor Elly Nakajima translates."If I became a teacher, I would spend my years slowly climbing the ranks and possibly getting trapped by the system."She adds that the spa does not promote its employees based on rank, but according to the number of customers and amount of product sales that the employee manages to secure.She joined the spa i迷利倉 2010 as a freshly minted therapist and was posted to Singapore last October. She says she applied for the Singapore posting as she was eager for a new challenge."I also wanted to learn how to speak English and live overseas," she says.In the past few months since she arrived, Ms Kudo, who is on an Employment Pass, says that her greatest challenge has been learning to communicate.At work, she tries to explain herself by gesticulating and by memorising the names of body parts in English."It is tough, but my colleagues have been very patient and helpful," she says.Grinning shyly, she says she has learnt one useful sentence from them, which she frequently repeats: "How do I say this?"That in itself is a huge achievement, given how she could not speak a word of the language when she arrived in Singapore."I also understand some Singlish now and find myself adding 'lah' to the end of my sentences," she says."Apparently, it doesn't mean anything, but I find it uniquely Singaporean."On weekends, she likes to go shopping in town, which is a stone's throw away from her home. She shares a three-room apartment with a colleague in the Orchard Road area and pays rent of about $800 a month.Life is good at the moment and Ms Kudo expects to be here for the next two years at least."My dream is to help Miss Paris set up more branches in Singapore," she says.Smiling, she adds wistfully: "I've been asking my fiance to consider coming here, so that we can be together."Korean in love with roti prataWhen Mr Chang Jae Min opens his mouth and begins gushing about local food in Singlish-laced English, it is easy to forget his nationality."Nasi lemak, bak chor mee (minced pork noodles), satay," reels off the 32-year-old native of South Korea. "It's all so good, lah."In fact, he eats "cai fan" (economical rice) for most of his meals - "out of 10 meals, only one or less than one meal involves me eating Korean food" - and dispenses eatery recommendations to his Singaporean friends.Born in Seoul to a plastic surgeon father and a housewife mother, Mr Chang has been living in Singapore since 2010. He was posted here for his job as a product marketeer for Samsung Electronics.He says he has always wanted to study and work overseas because the education system in South Korea is highly pressurising."Many of those born in the 1980s and 1990s want to get out of the system. It's horrible. If you think studying in Singapore is bad, studying in Korea is like, 'welcome to hell'," he says matter-of-factly.At the age of 15, his parents paid an agency, which helped him get a place in a high school in Chicago in the United States.After that, he read business and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed that degree at the University of British Columbia in Canada, in 2007.Post-graduation, he sought an internship with Samsung in Singapore. He started his three-month stint in September 2007.He explains: "I knew I wanted to work in an English-speaking Asean country, so Singapore was it. Furthermore, Samsung is a Korean brand and I'm proud of it. I felt it was a good company to start with."Before coming here, he confesses that his impression of Singapore was not a positive one. "I had heard it was a very restrictive place, where people get caned and cannot chew gum," he says.While he was prepared to give up his gum-chewing habit, which was part of his daily routine overseas, he did not expect to come to enjoy local food."There are so many things that are beyond what you are told and which cannot be experienced until you come here," he says.He was introduced to roti prata and immediately developed a taste for it."Every single day for the three months that I was here for my first stint, I ate roti prata with curry for dinner, in addition to my main meal," he says with a laugh.He gained 6kg as a result.After the internship, the then 24-year- old returned to Canada and studied for another degree, this time in accounting.Upon graduation in 2009, he ran a tuition business in Vancouver with a friend for two years before getting tired of it.He decided it was time to go back to working for someone, but working in his home country was not an option."The working culture in Korea is terrible. It's very stressful. Most people work at least 12 hours a day and there's no such thing as an MC - you have to use your annual leave for that," he says."In any case, you can expect to forfeit all your annual leave. It's seen as a bad thing in Korea to take leave."He adds thoughtfully: "There is more to Korea than all that K-pop stuff. That's not everything."As he thought through his options, his positive internship with Samsung in Singapore came to mind. "It was my first choice. I applied and was hired," he says.Since arriving in Singapore again in 2010, he says he has made many Singaporean friends and has explored many neighbourhoods."I would take the MRT, go to a location and walk around. I've gone for a house party in Sembawang, hung out with friends in Punggol, gone cycling in Pulau Ubin," he lists. "I feel very welcomed by Singaporeans."Mr Chang, who is on an Employment Pass, currently shares a four-room rental apartment in the Bugis area and laments like a typical Singaporean about the high housing costs and car prices here.He pays $2,000 a month for rent and takes the MRT to work. He changes three train lines daily to get to his office at Mapletree Business City, which is located along Pasir Panjang Road.The bachelor is keen to stay here for a few more years as he enjoys the working culture, the friendships and, most importantly, the food.Besides roti prata, he also has a weakness for bak kwa (barbecued pork slices), which he says he is trying to stay away from to keep himself in shape.He says enthusiastically: "I was introduced to bak kwa during Chinese New Year in 2011. It was incredible, I was like, 'What in the world is this delicious thing?' I've tried it with rice and even with McDonald's chilli sauce. It tastes good with anything."I don't know if I've fallen in love with Singapore, but I'm definitely in love with the food here."Taiwanese starts from scratch in new careerGiving up an established career in the media industry to work in a totally different sector in a different country takes courage. Just ask Ms Penny Tsai.The 37-year-old Taiwanese uprooted herself from her native Taipei four months ago, in September , and now works in Singapore as operations and business development manager for Lee's Taiwanese eatery.Before relocating here, she had been a supervisor at Taiwan's CTI cable TV channel, having spent 14 years in various positions in the media industry."I was worried about the move here, to be honest. I am in my 30s and I was giving up my position to start from ground zero, since I had never worked in the food and beverage scene before," she says in Mandarin.But her interest in the industry, and the chance to try something new, won her over."I decided that the experience was hard to come by. I was so used to journalism, it was something I could do. But this was a challenge," she says.She first crossed paths with her current boss, Ms Fiona Lee, who owns Lee's Taiwanese, in May last year, when she came to Singapore to do a special report on Taiwanese people working in Singapore.Ms Lee, 44, also from Taiwan, followed her husband to Singapore 22 years ago, when he was posted here to work as a manager in an engineering company.Ms Tsai and Ms Lee became fast friends. Before Ms Tsai went back to Taiwan, Ms Lee told her that she was opening the eatery's second outlet at Jem mall in Jurong and offered her a job as a manager. Ms Tsai said "yes"."I took a slight pay cut for this, but I'm very grateful to Fiona for giving me this chance. I see this as an opportunity to showcase the Taiwanese service spirit," she says.Another reason she agreed to relocate was that she felt her career had hit a plateau and she was craving new challenges in life.Through her current job, she says, she has been learning how to communicate with people of different nationalities."In the past, I was dealing with people of different personalities, but they were all from Taiwan."Difficult customers are another challenge, she says."In this line, the customer is always right. So even if they are rude or demanding, I have to handle them with a smile."Her daily routine sees her going to Lee's Taiwanese's Star Vista branch in Buona Vista at 10.30am to ensure that all is in order before opening time at 11.30am.During operating hours, Ms Tsai, who is on an Employment Pass, alternates between cashier duties and customer service."Since coming to Singapore, my English has improved a lot," she says, sounding pleased. "I can even speak sentences in English now, when I could manage only a few words here and there in the past."Some common phrases she has picked up include, "Hi, what would you like to eat?" and "Can I recommend our beef noodles to you?"迷你倉