Just like the title suggests, I’m just curious if there are any non-native English speakers, who moved to Japan rather recently without working in IT.
Since those 2 seem to be the most common routes people use to move to Japan (teaching English and IT), I’m a bit puzzled about how other people, with a different profile/background managed to move to Japan, specially these days as the job market seems to be quite competitive.
I’ve been testing the waters and contacted a few companies and recruiters (bachelors degree in biochemistry, MSc and PhD in biotech from a top 5 UK university, 5+ years of experience, JLPT N2 and decent conversational skills in Japanese), but so far they all say it’s very difficult to sponsor someone from abroad, unless native-very fluent in Japanese and/or have a big reason to stay in Japan (being married to a Japanese citizen, having family there, etc.) Since there’s no job hunting visa in Japan, and without being able to land a job from abroad, it seems the only viable option would be to enroll in a language school with a student visa and bet on landing a job while still being there, which sounds risky and a bit damaging to someone’s career.
If someone recently managed to move to Japan following a different path, I’d love to read it! May not be exactly what I end up doing, but successful stories can at least encourage me to keep pushing forward.
Thanks!