Hello! I’ll be moving to Japan next year to work with Interac. I just had a few questions:
1. I’m a US citizen and I know that Interac helps you find a Leo place apartment but am I allowed to find my own? I’m planning on using services like gaijinpot, etc. once I get my exact placement because I want to bring my cats.
2. How does getting a dependent visa work? My husband wants to come with me, would Interac be okay with that? I’d actually go to Japan first and my husband would come after with our cats if we found a pet friendly apartment.
Thank you for your help!!
Edit: My husband has several interviews to work remotely for Japanese companies as a software engineer, so our move will most likely be long term, which is why I’m bringing my cats. I thought it would be easier for him to interview in person if those don’t work out, that’s why I’m asking about the dependent visa. Also as computer science majors, I’m only planning to teach for a year to experience what it’s like and will be moving on to a tech company once I’m done (fingers crossed!)
11 comments
1. Talk to Interac. It can depend on the position whether or not they’ll let you get your own apartment, and, of course, how much they need you quickly. It cannot hurt you to ask.
2. Interac would have nothing to do with you getting the visa, but they might have an issue with him coming depending on where you live. If you’re in their apartment, they may not want more than one person living there. Again, speak with Interac about that. It shouldn’t be an issue, but Interac has many different divisions.
This sounds like a bad idea on multiple levels…
US is not a rabies free country so bring a pet means long quarantine time in addition to a long flight, will your pet be able to survive that?
You’re a foreigner. It’s going to be hard to find an apartment let alone a pet friendly one by yourself.
Interac wage is low and pets are expensive. Are you going to be able to support your husband and a pet?
If all you want to do is experience living in Japan you should just come over by yourself for a year.
Your cats would most likely have to quarantine in an uncomfortable environment for two months after taking the most traumatic flight imaginable in the luggage compartment while being abused by airport staff.
Your husband would probably be alright, but I’d skip out on taking the cats.
Edit: The quarantine period may not be two months. From what I read, it’s actually six months unless they meet some strict requirements before they come. It still sounds like a bad idea.
Regarding #1, I have a friend whose Japanese was good enough for him to apartment hunt on his own. I don’t know if this is every branch, but the next step is that even if you find your own apartment, our branch wanted him to check that the apartment could transition to company housing. I still don’t understand that reasoning, but that becomes an extra step you’d have to do from outside the country.
Also, there’s no guarantee you’ll know your placement before you even arrive in Japan. I didn’t find out until the day my training ended, and I knew people who had to stay an extra week at the hotel because Interac hadn’t placed them anywhere when training was over.
#2, can’t really answer but you really wouldn’t be making a lot of money to support yourself AND him AND your cats, and as others have mentioned, apartments can be really strict about the number of people living there.
1. You can find a place on their own but they won’t help you.
2. Interac has no say in it *if* you can find an apartment that allows two people to live there. However, bringing your cats is a bad idea: They have to go through a 6 month quarantine. Alone. Without you. Think of how scary that would be, how torturous. I’m not sure if the cats would have to do another 6 months when you bring them back to America, but if they do then that’s an entire year in a cage. You should just leave them with someone you trust in America.
Ignoring the spouse visa for now:
– pets from foreign countries need to quarantine (cost are all incurred by you)
– if you don’t speak Japanese very well……you’re going to have a hard time finding a place on your own (especially one that rents to people with pets).
– most places won’t rent to you until you have all your paper work established in Japan already. Kind of a chicken and egg situation here.
– if you do manage to find a place rent will be 2-3x what your neighbors pay due to the pet fees and tax. There is also a pet deposit. **AND** most places have a hard 1 pet limit. There are also other stipulations like max size and weight.
– another hurdle is you’ll need a guarantor to get an apartment as someone with zero credit history and as a foreigner. Most companies will refuse to be your guarantor when you have a pet and don’t speak Japanese. It’s not a racist thing, they just don’t want to ruin their relationship with the property management companies if things go south. You damaging the property reflects poorly on them for backing you.
**alright** now for the dependent visa
– dependent visas are too difficult to get, but you still have the issue of income. Even if you have substantial savings back home; in Japan they expect you to get x-amount of salary per month (regardless of your back account balance) if you want to rent a certain size place.
– also will you be able to sustain a two person and pet life style off of interact salary? maybe, but you’ll have to be fairly frugal.
Not to discourage you. But there are a few big hurdles for you to handle first. Good luck.
1. Legally you are allowed to find your own housing. Problem is, these companies don’t care too much about the laws and will do everything they can to dance around them. Make no mistake, they want you in company housing so they can charge you extra and basically reduce your salary by 50%. If you refuse they will just hire the next person in line. If you move out mid contract, they will not offer you any more contracts. Sometimes people in very remote areas get around this but in the city, it is the norm.
2. Interac needs to sign a paper saying they will take care of all debts and legal issues your dependent has while in Japan. The government also wants you to make enough money to fully support your spouse. ALTs make about $15,000 a year before deductions. Can two of you live on that and still pay rent?
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Cats require about 8 months of work before you are allowed to put them on a plane. It’s possible but not easy.
I’m not sure why everyone is saying your cats need to quarantine, unless the rules have changed since I brought my cats 3-4 years ago. It is a LOT of work, and it’s pretty expensive for the vet visits, vaccines, paperwork, air travel, etc, but that’s all on the US side. The process takes many months, so prepare accordingly. Once we got to Japan, the customs people noticed an error on one of the forms and my cats had to stay in the quarantine area until a new copy was fed-exed from the vet via my parents. Less than a week. It was not fun though. If the paperwork was fine I could’ve taken them straight home.
That being said, if you’re only staying in Japan for a year or two, I highly recommend you don’t bring them. It’s just not worth the stress (on you and the cats), money, and time. Also the trouble with finding housing with your pets like everyone else is saying.
Brutal honesty? Reading this, I think you’re all over the place.
You want your husband to come as a dependent, which means you need money to support you both. If he is making his own money? Guess what, he is not a dependent. He would in fact be **in**dependent. If he is looking for remote jobs, they will not offer work contracts that enable a move to Japan, as those are **remote** jobs. The immigration office will naturally question why he has to be here and will not offer him a visa for a remote job. That means that if you want him here as a dependent, you will have to persuade immigration that you can provide for your husband on the mediocre salary.
You have cats. Renting with pets is tough for a Japanese person. You think that you can navigate the intricacies alone? Interac will not help. They want you to be in their subletted Leopalace. That’s to say nothing of the extortionate cost of animal transit and making sure you ticked the boxes.
You only want to teach for a year. That is totally reasonable, but then you want to move on to a tech company. That means moving again (Interac isn’t going to offer you a job in Shinjuku), changing your visa status, going through the rigmarole of finding another pet-friendly apartment.
Reading this, the only reasonable ideas that come to mind are coming alone for one year (actually less than one year, considering how school years work) and then moving on with your husband coming later or scrapping the whole idea and working out a package where the two of you get jobs in the tech sector.
I am also with Interac, moving next year, and hoping to bring my cat! So I’ve done some research into the pet-bringing thing, though only research and I’m not an expert here.
* You can avoid the 180 day quarantine in Japan if paperwork, tests, etc are in order. This means proper timing of rabies vaccines, a blood titre test, and some paperwork from the vet (plus I think some official forms?) for everything. If everything checks out, *hypothetically* you could bring your cat home pretty much same day. (12-hour waiting period I think?)
* Keep in mind the stress that an international move would have on your cat. I love my cat like a child and I’m also wrestling with the “should I or shouldn’t I” question right now. But if your husband is coming along and you want to start a life in Japan as a family, then I say do the work to make it happen.
* Supposedly there are pet-friendly Leopalace places, but from everything I’ve seen, it’s pretty much a “do it on your own” type deal. Interac doesn’t want to deal with pets or any extra complications. That said, it wouldn’t hurt to ask them for any details they could give. (I haven’t done this yet, but I plan to. It doesn’t hurt to ask!)
* If you want to connect as a fellow Interac ALT to be +cat, let me know! I’d love to get to know others in the same boat coming over next year.
/u/bberrywrites It’s nice to see an answer on here that doesn’t completely shut the person down for just asking simple questions about moving to a place they haven’t lived in before! On behalf of everyone who is just looking for a little info, thank you!
* I’m in a similar situation. I did a ton of research to see if it would be possible to bring my person and my cats with me. The short answer: it’s absolutely possible. You just need to plan a lot in advance and having a good chunk of money saved up helps. My partner is pursuing different goals at this time, so it made more sense for him to stay behind and take care of the cats. Also covid made things weird for the past few years that I’ve been planning the move, so this is where we ended up for now.
* Assuming you check with Interac and they advise against a spouse visa, your husband could go to Japan on a student visa to a language school (because if you do end up staying long-term, knowing the language is really going to help). He can then go to interviews while living here, and possibly get help with job placement from the language school program (depending which one he goes with). There are also some programs that help with student housing, but I think these are mostly located in bigger cities.
* If you did this, you would probably not be able to live in the same place together at first if you’re teaching in the countryside/away from a city. But it’s possible for things to work out – you don’t have to listen to all the negativity in the Japan subreddits. If you want good advice for moving to Japan starting out as an English teacher, people are just going to be rude on reddit. This is just one possibility for how things could eventually work out for you. Best of luck figuring it out on your journey! I hope your experience is a positive one. There will definitely be challenges, but if it’s worth it to you, you can find ways around them. Housing might be difficult at first, but people who work as devs make big money. With money, comes possibilities.
BONUS helpful video
* Eat Your Kimchi did a thorough overview of the pet moving process, which could be beneficial for you two once you do get settled in Japan together. (CW – they’re divorced now, if you haven’t gone down that rabbit hole, but their videos are still so helpful!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1YzblMs4x4&t=13s