I’m applying to a language school for a one year academic stay beginning April 2025, with eventual aim to attend university in Japan. I’ve already obtained N2 cert and am attending language school in order to…
* A) trial run actually living/studying in Japan, make friends and connections etc.
* B) continue building up my Japanese skills
* C) study language specific to the relevant domains of my university coursework
* D) entrance exam study, maybe attend a äºˆå‚™æ ¡ if deemed necessary
* E) find out if I hate living there so much that I want to leave (to be realistic)
**Relevant history (feel free to skip reading this):**
I’m from the US. After high school I attended university for one year but my performance was pretty mediocre (hovered around 2.0 GPA). I don’t think I was ready for university at the time and had no study discipline whatsoever, and had my eyes set on work instead. After one year of college I immediately secured an internship in another state and pretty much continued my career trajectory from there onwards.
I’m now 25 and help run a modestly successful independent game studio (legally speaking both me and my business partner are self-employed, for reasons), responsible for creative direction, art, etc. I’ve built up a large enough savings net over the years to comfortably pursue living and studying in Japan for quite some time. I’m okay with stopping this work for the near foreseeable future.
I’m mainly seeking personal growth from living and studying abroad in a foreign culture. University is the path I chose to live in Japan, I don’t care much about salary / viability of degree. Portfolio comes first in my industry anyway. I plan on studying art at Musabi or any other private art university I can get into, assuming I’m accepted. If not, I’ll just return home and try to be satisfied with the year spent. Or I’ll stay and try again the next year, who knows.
I’m applying through Go! Go! Nihon.
**My questions:**
* 1) Will immigration view my one year of university attendance with mediocre performance in a bad light? Am I screwed? Should I have ganbaru’d harder?
* 2) I’m self-employed without a registered business. In 2022 I took enough contract work to live while continuing development on a game, but not more than annual income requirement of approx. $15,000. But in 2023 I made well over that, as well as in 2021. If I average all the years up, I’m comfortably over the requirement. So I just give them copies of my tax returns for all years and pray for the best? Does anyone have experience with this? (This question is in regards to the “2 year full-time employment” requirement GGN specifies)
* 3) Should I just ditch Go! Go! Nihon and contact the school directly? I already have some idea of what immigration is looking for already via their portal. I’m not very impressed with their support, and I guess I just get weird vibes from them. I only went with them because of their experience with immigration services and language school admissions, as well as just convenience and time savings. Plus I read you can save some money by going through the school’s services instead. I’ve already paid the application fee to the school through Go Go Nihon’s portal.
I asked Go Go Nihon about #2 and got a pretty surface level answer. If anyone can chime in on these questions, any of them at all, I’d appreciate the help. General advice is welcome as well – personally I don’t think my head is super in the clouds but feel free to try pulling me down.
**EDIT:** Bonus question: how is the overall language school experience at my level? If it’s not helpful can I just read Japanese novels / nonfiction during class? I plan on attending YDC if that’s any help.
by Clear-Initiative-125