Why would the long training period kill you? They pay your entire salary (no training pay) since day one and although it is indeed long....., you do get a lot of time off so it is not really that bad...., at least for me that came from timing out just about every year before coming here..., the time away from the flight deck was welcomed...., my family came and spent several months with me in a furnished apartment in a nice area of Tokio and I had plenty of time off for sightseeing...., it wasn't bad at all.

Well..., JAL and the rumors of a new "gaijin" contract....!

I've been hearing the same thing for a while now, I had a couple of cold ones with two of their pilots in HKG a few months back and they are very short on crews..., many A/C's on order lots of retirements and having the same trouble recruiting locals as ANA is having...., they see no other way around it but to look for pilots on the expat market.

Companies like Peach.., Jetstar Japan, Spring Airlines, Vanilla Air are having a very difficult time hiring as well