I have an Instructor visa (ALT job) and ultimately want to work at hotels, so afaik I need to switch to a Humanities visa. However I’m seeing some conflicting information online. I majored in Japanese Language and have no work experience other than teaching. I want to change jobs ASAP.
1. It looks like both eikaiwa and hotels (if it’s a Front Desk job) might be a Humanities visa. Should I go straight for a hotel job, or instead go for an eikaiwa job to get the Humanities visa then switch to a hotel job after I already have the visa?
2. I’m taking the BJT (ビジネス日本語試験) ASAP. However there’s also the various 特定技能測定試験 which help you get visas, of which I can take the 宿泊業技能試験 in January. I’m taking the JLPT N1 in July. Have any of you taken one of the 特定技能測定試験 or even the 宿泊業技能試験? How was the job and visa process afterwards?
3. I’m finding that no hotel I contact is expecting a foreigner to apply and they have literally no clue about the visa process, and often the interviewer wants to hire me after the standard 2 interviews but the final decision from upper management is a “no” because they don’t want to sponsor a visa. Anything I can do to either help convince them or help weed out the companies that will string me along?
About the above point, as an eikaiwa is more likely to give me a visa, would doing two part time jobs (one eikaiwa, one hotel) and doing the so-called self-sponsor method of getting a Humanities visa work? Then I could switch to a full time hotel job later.
2 comments
I don’t know about visa, but perhaps look into something like Hotel Gracery (budget) – I’ve seen a couple of non-Japanese working there, so perhaps they have experience of visa sponsorship. The other place you will certainly find at least western staff would be the other end – places like Grand Hyatt – as an established international chain, surely they’d have experience of visa sponsorship too.
I took the test but had problems finding hotels in the Tokyo area that were registered to hire people under that program, so I had to leave Japan when my WHV was up. I still get emails about マッチング会s though where the hotels come to recruit 特定技能 fireigners and when I took a look at the list the other day there were suddenly a BUNCH of new hotels that had registered! So not much advice (if you speak japanese the test is easy af) just came to say it’s looking good for you! Good luck