Good day everyone/Merry Christmas!
First time poster here and would love some advice.
I’m currently 26 Canadian and have wanted to pursue a career in Japan for quite some time now. Main downside is that I moved out on my own and went straight to working full time straight out of high school. This resulted in me carrying no debts which is a good thing I guess. I’ve managed to get a stable comfortable living salary position in management due to 10 years of working in sales and business mamagement industry. I’m in the in-between of deciding to pursue software development, mechanic work, or even Translation work, but would much rather be able to gain these certifications in a Japanese institution. For the past years, I have studied and taken enough Japanese classes to be able to complete N3(possibly N2 as well) level JLPT.
So far, based off research, I am considering to either take a route similar to gogonihon where I can do an exchange program then transition fully to a post secondary institution.
Or, I am also looking at doing a 1 year working holiday as I have 4 years left to apply and see where that takes me.
I would personally like to avoid the route of doing post-secondary education here locally and transferring that to Japan as that would set me back a bit and I would personally prefer to graduate through a Japanese school.
What would you experts suggest?
3 comments
You will need a bachelor’s degree if you want to stay here past any education that you would get here.
So basically, you’ll want to get a Bachelor’s degree regardless if you’re looking to stay after school.
I would personally recommend getting it back in Canada. The quality of education in Japan, especially for English courses is not very good and you would get a much better education in Canada.
If you still want to go the route of getting your bachelor’s degree in Japan, it is possible but you will want to have at least 1,500,000 yennies in the bank for every year that you are looking to stay here (3-4 years depending on your Degree I suppose).
Intra-Company transferee is probably possible, but you’d need to rqack up the experience at a company that would be willing and capable of transfering you first.
Getting a degree is probably the “easiest” way for a longer term visa.
If you have the time and don’t mind putting any possible degree getting on hold for a year, a WHV can let you know if you hate it in Japan or not before you commit fully
> I’m in the in-between of deciding to pursue software development, mechanic work, or even Translation work
The only viable option here is software; translation is hyper saturated and your Japanese is far from being competitive, and blue collar work is not really an option that will get you a sponsored visa.
To work in software with a sponsored visa in Japan, you’ll need a degree. I don’t know that there are many degree programmes in Japan for software/CS that won’t require very high Japanese ability (EDIT: Actually, it looks like there are a number of taught-in-English options out there), but either way it’d be much better to get that degree in Canada. You’ll likely have a better quality education – especially as it would be in your native language – and you’ll have better chances getting a good job to gain experience afterwards.
For a shorter term move to Japan, you can go and study at a language school or do a working holiday or whatever else, but there’s really no advantages to doing your degree in Japan other than being able to live in Japan while you’re studying. Spending 3 years on a Canadian bachelor’s degree, then two years getting professional experience, will set you up much better for a career in Japan than spending a year on a working holiday/language school (assuming you get your Japanese up to university level), then four years on a Japanese bachelor’s degree and applying for entry level new-graduate positions as a 31-year-old with no experience.
Unfortunately, the Japanese immigration system is really not geared towards career-changers.