Hi, I’ve been working as a junior software engineer for 2.5 years (with CS degree) and my Japanese is somewhere between N3 and N2 (studying for N2 when I have time). It’s been my life goal to live in Japan since I was 12 and I feel like once I’m finally there my life can truly “begin.” All my hobbies/interests revolve around Japan and I’m 100% sure I want to live there despite negatives so we can even skip the “are you sure?” part 😉 Recently I’ve decided I need to move within the next 2-3 years as an ultimatum for myself (before I’m 30…)
There is the tried-and-true teaching route but I don’t think I’m cut out for that (and I prefer WFH) and lots of people have told me it’s easy anyways to get hired as an engineer, even without N2. Last time I was in Japan I met a fellow software engineer who told me my Japanese was as good as the foreign people who work at her company and asked if I didn’t want to work at her company too. However when I peeked at the site the application was all in Japanese and full of business words I didn’t know even if I could identify like 70% of the kanji. Plus they use a programming language I’m not very experienced in.
I’m someone with pretty low self-confidence who gets anxious about things easily, and that includes not only Japanese ability but also my tech skills, eg I’ve thought I might be better off waiting till promotion to mid-level before I apply to Japanese companies, and there’s also the fact my job has me mostly using a pretty niche programming language so I need to brush up on stuff like web dev (actually doing that now for work anyways since we are exploring a web solution for a new product). To begin with, I’m not the stereotypical rockstar programmer, I have other hobbies and tech is just a job for me. Would love to work in games but a work-life balance is more important.
Then there’s also the anxiety of “what if I get hired by a black gaisha” which will overwork me. Someone from Japan actually joined my team at work recently and I am hearing her horror stories firsthand… applying to a non-Japanese company in Japan might be best.
But the biggest anxiety is if I can settle in well with the stuff like visas, housing search, filing out forms. health insurance, etc. I suppose lots of people have done this before and I also moved from the US to Germany for my current job so I’m not new to it (except I know more people in Germany and I didn’t need a visa as a dual citizen). But I get so anxious making phone calls in English and German so I get worried about how I’m gonna do it in Japan where my language skill is lower. I know people in the Tokyo area who could probably help me out with things but I still get nervous thinking about it all.
Work has been busy for me lately, as the team is being pushed to learn a lot in prep for the new project, and I’ve been thinking of combining my Japanese study with work learning by eg reading JS documentation in English first then in Japanese so I can learn tech terms.
Then today on YouTube I saw this video on my feed about Go Go Nihon and the students in the ad seemed so chill and happy and said the support they got making resumes etc for their job search was so helpful. I realized that this is another route to entering Japan I hadn’t considered; entering an intensive Japanese course designed to get me to pass N2 or N1 and get employed while also receiving support and feeling like I’m part of a community I can rely on so I don’t feel so alone.
Maybe it’s something I have to decide on my own but I’ve always had trouble making decisions for myself in life. My dad used to make them for me, for better or worse, but he’s gone now, and my mom is even more of an anxious mess than me.
If you read this far, thank you. I’m just looking for opinions. Is it a no-brainer to quit my job in maybe a year from now and sign up for one of those schools just to get my foot in the door and ease into living in Japan? I think some jobs in Japan want you to already be located there so that could help too… Or is it unnecessary to do the language school and better that I apply for jobs in Japan while keeping my current role, and move right away when I find something? Better yet I’d love if I could be scouted on a recruiting site over explicitly applying, that’s how I got this job and moved to Germany too…
What would you do? Thank you 🙂
by scarletbloom