Paid incentives to live in Japan? Rural

4 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Paid incentives to live in Japan? Rural**

   I’m a plant science student in more of an agricultural focus and I’m always getting news articles of rural parts of countries giving paid incentives to move there. I heard about the Mishima island incentive and I would absolutely love to do research or work in the ag business there, but I can’t find any information about it or similar programs. Is there even a want/need for foreign agricultural science?

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2. I believe you are referring to the incentives to move from tokyo to the countryside with like a $2500 subsidy per kid, is that what you’re referring to?

3. >but I can’t find any information about it or similar programs.

   You likely can’t find a lot of information because it’s intuited for Japanese people and only published in Japanese. There programs often have quite stringent rules like living long term in the area, working in the area, building a family in the area, etc.. How’s your Japanese? N1?

   You would also need a visa to live in Japan, how are you getting that? You’re not getting one to be a farmer.

   Basically you and everyone else should write off the “Living in rural Japan” thing as a way to get to Japan. The barriers and issues are too much for foreigners to overcome.

4. Usually those incentive programs require that you commit to living in the place for a long time (like 10 or 20 years), which means unless you’re a citizen or permanent resident you’re automatically excluded (since you can’t guarantee that you’re able to stay that long). They won’t (can’t) provide any sort of visa sponsorship.
   Often they’ll also require that you get a local job, but the sorts of work available in those locations is not capable of sponsoring a visa.

   >Is there even a want/need for foreign agricultural science?

   A friend of mine was doing post-grad research work after he earned his PhD here in Japan. The pay was abysmal and his manager on more than one occasion told him to his face that the manager was forced to hire my friend but he would have much preferred to hire a Japanese person.

   But there is a pretty large agricultural research community here, so there is work available if you can find it. You’ll need to be looking for it in Japanese though.