Japanese sushi chefs in high demand overseas, where earnings can triple

TOKYO — High demand for sushi chefs abroad means they may be able to make as much as three times more money overseas than they could earn if they worked at a sushi restaurant in Tokyo’s posh Ginza district, a look into the profession has revealed.

Sushi chef Hitoshi Oyamada, 40, moved to Singapore in 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic after being told by an acquaintance that business there was “sparkling.” Oyamada, who was on leave from work due to health issues, needed money to pay child support for his two children living with his ex-wife after their divorce several years earlier.

In Singapore, he started working at a restaurant with just a counter with about a dozen seats. Converted to yen, the average spending per customer was between 50,000 and 60,000 yen (approx. $350 to $420), and his annual take-home pay shot up more than threefold to some 15 million yen ($104,000). His monthly wage at a restaurant in Ginza, where he used to work until his relocation, was 400,000 yen ($2,800), and his annual take-home pay was less than 4.8 million yen ($33,000).

Higher income unavailable in Japan

This wasn’t his first time working abroad. After graduating from a culinary school, Oyamada worked at a sushi restaurant in a Tokyo hotel for about 6 1/2 years from 2004. There were many chefs around with experience working overseas, and a number of customers were also foreigners visiting Japan. Amid such a working environment, he received an offer to work outside Japan. “I felt nothing but fear,” he recalls, but he moved to Singapore in 2011.

After arriving in Singapore, it turned out that the place he was going to work at was an izakaya pub, not a sushi restaurant. Several months later, the Japanese manager of the pub vanished with outstanding debts. Oyamada’s monthly wage was somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 yen at the exchange rate at the time. After deducting rent, he was left with just around 350,000 yen. He wasn’t in financial distress, but he returned to Japan after a year, thinking, “This is not what I wish to do. I will ruin myself if I keep going like this.”

He subsequently found himself going back and forth between Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Along the way he acquired negotiation skills, which are essential when working abroad, and managed to win his current pay.

In Singapore, a bowl of ramen costs 2,500 to 3,000 yen (about $17 to $21), and there are other items that would be considered high by Japanese standards. Yet Oyamada finds himself being able to afford to live at a level that was unattainable in Japan. “I’d return to Japan if I could get paid the same as here, but so far there’s been nothing like this at all,” he said.

Strong demand for Japanese sushi chefs

“Sushi chefs are in great demand,” says Hideaki Kikuchi, 54, principal of the Tokyo-based Japan Sushi Leading Academy, which offers training programs and job support for sushi chefs. According to Kikuchi, sushi is especially popular amid the Japanese food craze overseas, and “there is a great need from people wanting to eat sushi made by Japanese chefs.”

According to Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare statistics, the annual salary of Japanese cuisine cooks including sushi chefs averages 3.58 million yen (about $25,000). Still, Kikuchi points out, “There is a lot of headhunting (of sushi chefs) going on in Japan. The more popular the restaurants are, the more intense their headhunting battles become.” Some sushi chefs are even offered a monthly wage topping several million yen, he says.

In Japan, becoming a sushi chef is said to require a long training period. According to one saying, “It takes three years to master how to cook rice properly and another eight years to perfect the sushi making.” This is why restaurants are keen to headhunt experienced sushi chefs and pay them high salaries, rather than training them at their own cost. The epitome of this is sushi chefs being recruited to work at restaurants overseas.

Other chefs encountered by the Mainichi Shimbun who headed overseas to work include Seijun Okano, 39, and Akifumi Hara, 32, who moved to the United States and France, respectively.

No wage growth in Japan

Wages in Japan have remained stagnant for many years. A comparison of average wages in various countries from the perspective of “purchasing power,” excluding the effects of inflation, using data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that since 2000, wages in the U.S. and Australia have grown 1.2 to 1.3 times and in South Korea they have risen 1.5 times, while in Japan they have remained the same.

Due to the weak yen, the pay gap can become even greater depending on whether people work in Japan or abroad. These circumstances are prompting many sushi chefs to try to seize a chance overseas, whatever risks there may be.

(Japanese original by Tsuyoshi Goto, Business News Department)