[a_bonobo]

>I have heard of cases where students join a company and end up working on projects not remotely related to their research interests.

This is normal worldwide - they hire you for your problem-solving skills, not for your tiny research niche

[aerioux]

I would have to disagree with "normal"-- many phd students at top (CS) univs in Europe and US can get hired for research-relevant work - e.g. off the top of my head Goog Research, MSR, FAIR, Uber, Snapchat, AirBnB hire a non-trivial # of Phd researchers for relevant fields -- that said some fields are better fits, e.g. a typical exmaple being stochastic modeling tends to align well /w finance.

[xiaoma]

Then apply to those companies. If they're willing to apply for visas for Indian and Chinese grads, there's no reason they'd have a problem doing the same for Japanese grads.