Pros
1. Good location for the Asia Pacific office based in Singapore. Its right smack in the middle of Bugis. 2. Plenty of bonding events to know new friends & colleagues from other departments 3. Reasonable bonus, with 13th month AWS (Annual wage supplement) even in bad times or economic downturn 4. If you don't expect much out of your career, and just want an average job to pay the bills, this could very well be the place for you. This, of course, is provided that you can stand the typical idiosyncrasies of working in a Japanese trading company.
Cons
Perhaps its best to say that I am unlucky to have the top management of my department "overhauled". In automotive speak, overhauling means extending the life of an engine, enabling it to perform better over the long run. In my department's case, its an overhaul gone horribly wrong, and a classic case of the rot starting from the top. A returning VP from overseas started a toxic culture by replacing able middle management personnel to those in his good books. A complete lack of understanding in their assigned business areas and bad people management skills characterize this group of "hand-picked" middle management personnel. Its a sad state of how genuine talents are being forced to look elsewhere for better opportunities, or those who still remain are already on the look out, all due to the mismanagement and bias of 1 man. When you have a department which lost more than 10% of its total department staff strength in a single calendar year (16 out of 50+ total headcount), you know for sure that there is obviously something very wrong with the management. I can't say the same for other departments in this Singapore HQ, but if you join this department I used to be in, you're in for a surprise, despite what they will tell you during interviews.