From James Fallows' appearance on Booknotes in May 1989, discussing his book, More Like Us: Making America Great Again:

"If there's someone [in the audience] who is ... an unmarried person or a childless couple especially in your 20's or 30's that has some freedom, go to Japan because you can get a job in a short time teaching English. And while you are making money teaching English you can learn Japanese. And then when you've done that there are a million things you can do there. And you will have a sense of knowing what the future is like because America will be dealing with Japan. So go."

The Nikkei 225 peaked at 38,957 in December 1989, so I think he left almost exactly at the top. I was in college studying Chinese in 1989, having wisely? anticipated that Japan was peaking, and Japanese wasn't the language a young man should be studying then.

Fallows lived in China for some of the years that we were there (2005-2015) and I remember enjoying a talk he gave at the Bookworm. Thoughtful guy, hyper-articulate, we're lucky that he has been interested in Asia and writing about it for the last thirty years.