I’m on a 3 year engineer/sp in humanities/intl services visa that expires in 2026, but I’m thinking of quitting my job in 2024 and moving to Tokyo. I understand I can stay in Japan as long as I’m job hunting which I plan to do, but while job hunting can I attend the short term course (10 weeks) at a Japanese language school to improve my Japanese before starting a new job?
3 comments
There are a few things you need to be aware of:
1. You have the most common general work visa class, but it does not mean you can do any sort of work in that class. Your visa will have been granted for a specific type of work (eikaiwa, or engineering, or hotel work, etc). You can request permission from immigration to do a different type of work, and you will often get it, but it’s not 100% guaranteed. You can’t just hop from being a hotel front desk worker to being a software engineer without getting that permission.
2. As long as you are either working or looking for work, you have permission to stay in Japan until your visa expires.
3. You shouldn’t have issues with the short term language course while also job hunting, but you might want to check with immigration. Be clear that you will continue job hunting and that the course is specifically to improve your Japanese to increase your chances of finding a job.
Aside, 高知県 is stunning, enjoy your time there as much as you can before heading into the concrete jungle of Tokyo.
[deleted]
/u/kansaikinki
>I have never heard of immigration revoking someone’s work visa. That’s not to say it has never happened, but if it does, it’s exceedingly rare.
I mean TBF people do get their work visas revoked regularly for:
>(vi) Not performing the activities designated for the status, for three months or longer (six months or longer in case of Highly Skilled Professional)
>
>(v) Not performing the activities designated for the status, or performing activities designated for other statuses, or staying in Japan to perform activities designated for other statues.
It’s just you likely won’t hear about it because they aren’t usually the group of people you’d find on reddit, much less one that’s willing to talk about it. It was around 900 or so a year that get revoked for whatever reason. Probably higher now. I wouldn’t classify that as ‘rare’.
Honestly if OP quits their job and wants to engage in a different activity (being a student) truthfully they should get an appropriate visa that allows for that activity honestly and continue to job hunt on the student visa. The school may even want OP to be on one if they find out that that OP’s main use of time isn’t engaging in their activity/job hunting but rather engaging in being a student. Language schools are more heavily scrutinized when it comes to immigration affairs.
Sure nothing *could* happen if they actually and seriously job hunt during that time – but the best case option would just be to switch just to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
edit: outdated sauce: https://en.an-japan.com/2019/09/02/revocation/