Hey everyone!
I’m a software developer, more specifically (currently employed as) a front-end game developer, with 1 year of experience. I’m in my late 20s and have a 4 year bachelors degree in music, taught for a while, then self-taught myself coding and switched career. I use Javascript, and I’m in the UK if that’s relevant.
I’m dreaming of moving to Japan and have this rough timeline planned:
* December 2024, take N2 JLPT
* March 2025, acquire 2 years of developer experience
* Begin applying for dev jobs in Japan, however I’m not expecting success at this point so:
* Late 2025, maybe get working holiday visa, move to Japan and try and find a job there while working towards N1 JLPT
I have done quite a bit of reading on Reddit, TokyoDev etc, however some personalised advice would be hugely appreciated as I want to do everything I can to successfully achieve this within a good time frame. My concerns are:
1. Unrelated degree to my profession
2. Relatively small amount of experience (2 years by the time I’d start job hunting)
3. Technically a game developer though I have the skills for more general software dev, does this limit me?
Given this, I want to maximise my chances in other ways, hence hours a day studying Japanese as at least N2 JLPT should count for something. I have a portfolio site with some fairly basic stuff (full-stack social media site etc). Once I have N2 I can spend a bit of time updating the portfolio and learning new frameworks/languages that might be particularly in demand in Japan, would it help a lot to learn PHP for example?
Do any kind people have some advice for me? 🙂
There is a lot of uncertainty for me here so any sort of advice or personal experiences that could be shared would be super valuable, thank you so much for reading!
by Jerry_is_coming