I plan on applying to a Japanese language school via GoGoNihon to study during 2025, but I can’t decide which location would be the best.
A huge part of me would love to go to Okinawa. I have personal reasons why I’d like to go there, but…
1. Is it practical in comparison to mainland Japan?
2. Which option would be cheaper for a long term study?
3. Would I be able to find part-time employment in Okinawa during the education period, and potentially full-time after finishing the language school?
My other options are either Tokyo, Osaka or Kyoto, but I keep wanting it to be Okinawa.
Has anyone gone to the language school in Okinawa or experienced it in any other way? What are your thoughts?
Also, I’m from Europe, so getting to Okinawa would be a tiny bit tricky, but not impossible. Tokyo is the easiest to get to of all my options, but I have a feeling it’s going to be expensive to live in.
6 comments
This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
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**Okinawa vs. mainland Japan (GoGoNihon! language schools)**
I plan on applying to a Japanese language school via GoGoNihon to study during 2025, but I can’t decide which location would be the best.
A huge part of me would love to go to Okinawa. I have personal reasons why I’d like to go there, but…
1. Is it practical in comparison to mainland Japan?
2. Which option would be cheaper for a long term study?
3. Would I be able to find part-time employment in Okinawa during the education period, and potentially full-time after finishing the language school?
My other options are either Tokyo, Osaka or Kyoto, but I keep wanting it to be Okinawa.
Has anyone gone to the language school in Okinawa or experienced it in any other way? What are your thoughts?
Also, I’m from Europe, so getting to Okinawa would be a tiny bit tricky, but not impossible. Tokyo is the easiest to get to of all my options, but I have a feeling it’s going to be expensive to live in.
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Numbers 2 and 3 are likely no problem, but have you ever lived on a small island? It can be quite difficult when you are so far from a lot of convenience. There’s a huge difference of life from Tokyo to Okinawa. And why Okinawa over some other smaller large city?
>Would I be able to find part-time employment in Okinawa during the education period
Probably. Okinawa does have the highest unemployment rate in all of Japan, but its still only something like 3.2% so there should be plenty of minimum wage jobs around. Keep in mind, Okinawa minimum wage is also the lowest in Japan (853yen in Okinawa vs 1072yen in Tokyo, the highest).
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> and potentially full-time after finishing the language school?
I suppose it depends on what sort of work you’d be looking to do. If you’re looking for an IT job you’d probably be hard pressed to find an opportunity. You’d need to do some sort of skilled work so that immigration allows you to remain in the country at all. So for Okinawa that would typically mean you’d need to be in a front-of-house role at a resort that caters to foreign tourists. Have you got any hospitality experience?
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>Is it practical in comparison to mainland Japan?
It’s no more or less practical than going anywhere else in Japan that you need to fly to get to.
>Which option would be cheaper for a long term study?
Cheaper is a bit relative. Yes it’s cheaper than Tokyo if you eat out all the time, but food, utilities and housing is not dramatically different if you rent, apart from core Tokyo/cities. (there are cheap places to rent and buy food most anywhere, if you hunt for it).
>Would I be able to find part-time employment in Okinawa during the education period, and potentially full-time after finishing the language school?
Yes.
You’d enjoy it more if you go to the place you like but make sure you like it really surely if it’s long term