Hello,
I’m not sure if this is the right subreddit for this kind of question, I’m sorry if it’s the wrong place for this question.
I’ve been feeling stagnant during this past year. I have a Bachelor’s Degree related to Music, but where I’m living I haven’t been able to find a job since I finished the Degree, so I’m at a point where I’m considering to start studying a different field.
Since I’m also getting closer to the age limit of the Working Holiday visa (I’ll be 29 this year), I’ve been thinking about getting it this year, since I’ve never been to Japan before, and I would like to experience the country (at least once). I also think this period would give me enough time to decide what to study and prepare for entrance requirements. But I’m not sure if it’s a good idea.
One of my worries is about money and finding a job, I want to be self-sufficient during the year of the Working Holiday and not use savings, if I’m not wrong, this should be possible with a part-time job and living in a share house (in Tokyo, share houses I’ve seen tend so far to be on the 40,000-60,000円 range, minimum wage seems to be a little less than 1,100円/hour, so around 100,000円 per month which should be barely enough for share house + monthly expenses, is this right?) but I’m worried about being able to find a job due to my lack of job experience/qualifications or due to not having a more profitable degree.
Another thing I was thinking is if I end up really liking my stay in Japan, I might want to try to study there after the Working Holiday even if I had to use my savings for this.
I have a few doubts about this:
The first one is that I’ve read different comments saying both that it’s possible and easy to change the visa to student visa while being on the working holiday visa, and others saying it’s too hard to change it, so I would like to know if this idea is even possible.
If this is possible, is it even a good idea? Since I’ll be 32-34 once I finish, I feel that I’ll be too old and not won’t have enough experience, so finding a job where they’ll be willing to fill the work visa for me would be difficult, so I’ll have to come back to my country (Spain) and I’ve read some people saying that Japanese degrees are not worth doing if you’ll be living in other countries, so it might be better to study in Europe first and try to move on later once I have the proper experience.
About my Japanese level, I have an N1 certificate, but I’m not used to speaking Japanese at all, if I decide to get the visa, I’ll work on this the months previous to going to Japan.