Im (28m) finishing up my second year at a community college in Philadelphia and i am deciding where to go to finish my bachelors. My girlfriend (25fm) is fluent in Japanese, we have both been there recently and we are going again for a month in December. Im starting to learn japanese because it seems i will be spending plenty of time in japan in the future.
She suggested i look into transferring to Temple University Japan to finish my degree (I’m going for computer science). Id love to live in Japan however the logistics of the situation seem to be quite difficult. We have two cats, wed have to absolutely get married if she planned on coming with me, if that even counts, and id plan on living there for two years which means id have to get rid of everything i own in the states basically. Money is a factor, we have it but not so much that we don’t have some limitations.
Has anyone here taken this route? Whats it like? Im also not looking forward to downsizing and would rather choose a university in japan that has more space to breathe than somewhere in tokyo. Overall im leaning more towards trying to live there when im not trying to finish a degree but if theres an opportunity i dont know about id love some insight.
2 comments
This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
—
**Im a Us citizen looking to finish my degree, is Japan an option?**
Im (28m) finishing up my second year at a community college in Philadelphia and i am deciding where to go to finish my bachelors. My girlfriend (25fm) is fluent in Japanese, we have both been there recently and we are going again for a month in December. Im starting to learn japanese because it seems i will be spending plenty of time in japan in the future.
She suggested i look into transferring to Temple University Japan to finish my degree (I’m going for computer science). Id love to live in Japan however the logistics of the situation seem to be quite difficult. We have two cats, wed have to absolutely get married if she planned on coming with me, if that even counts, and id plan on living there for two years which means id have to get rid of everything i own in the states basically. Money is a factor, we have it but not so much that we don’t have some limitations.
Has anyone here taken this route? Whats it like? Im also not looking forward to downsizing and would rather choose a university in japan that has more space to breathe than somewhere in tokyo. Overall im leaning more towards trying to live there when im not trying to finish a degree but if theres an opportunity i dont know about id love some insight.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/movingtojapan) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Absolutely finish your degree in the US and on top of that try to get some work experience before coming to Japan. That is Advice 101 for those without a degree/work experience around here. CS with a few years of exp could land you in a nice position. Spend a few years learning Japanese and you’ll have a better time.
As for Temple uni, it has a horrible reputation from what I’ve read around this sub (was looking into it myself).
If you go through with it, your options of University are very limited. You can only work part time, and even if you get married and your now wife GF can come as a dependent, she will also be limited to part time work. In Tokyo, it’ll stretch your savings and put you at a bit of a disadvantage unless you live rather frugally… and the cats, you’ll need an apartment that allows pets, that’s also not that easy to find as many landlords don’t like pets, and it will cost you a lot extra – iirc it was as high as 50-70K yen/$300-500 deposit per pet in some apartments I checked out but they were small ones, and it’s non-refundable in most cases. It equals 1-2 months of rent btw so if your rent is over 70K then it’ll be more expensive.
Unless you have the finances and the determination, which it doesn’t seem like you have, don’t do it.