Hi everyone, I have been studying the Japanese language for close to a year now. I’m currently a full time working adult living in Singapore (32 M) and taking lessons twice a week. I passed my JLPT N5 in December 2022.
I want to experience life in Japan, working there and breaking away from this small island that I have been living in for my entire life.
Should I continue to study here in Singapore and reach N1 level? From there I could find a job which allows me to relocate there (might take me 2-3 years) or take on the JET program and hope that I will be able to find a different job in Japan one day. I’m getting close to 450,000円 per month now and the thought of getting a drop in salary as a JET doesn’t sound ideal.
Another concern I have is that it’s difficult for me to reach native fluency in a non-Japanese speaking environment. I do have Japanese friends here locally to practice Japanese with from time to time. Any advice is appreciated.
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**Continue studying or join JET program**
Hi everyone, I have been studying Japanese for close to a year now. I’m currently a full time working adult living in Singapore (32 M) and having 2 lessons a week. Recently I pass my JLPT N5 in December 2022.
I want to experience life in Japan, working there and break away from this small island that I have been living in for my entire life.
Should I continue to study here in Singapore and reach N1 level, from there I could find a job that allow me to relocate there (might take me 2-3 years) or take on the JET program and hope that I will be able to settle there in Japan one day. I’m getting close to 450,000円 per month now and the thought of getting lesser as a JET doesn’t sound ideal.
Another concern I have is that it’s hard for me to reach native fluency in a non-Japanese speaking environment. I do have Japanese friends here locally to practice Japanese with from time to time. Any advice is appreciated.
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I personally wouldn’t take time off my career at 32 unless I really need a break for a year.
What do you need native fluency for? Is it relevant to your job?
Rather consider this: If you do JET you will earn much less and cripple your future earnings scale. So from a career/money perspective it’s not that wise from your position.
Since Singapore is so close, why not save up money, quit your job, and chill in Japan for half a year as a tourist? There really is not much to experience here in terms of work culture.
I wouldn’t fix your career goals too much to JLPT levels N1 is nice but at mid 30, other skills are more relevant to get hired from abroad. N2 will probably also do. If your current career has relevant skills, rather try to leverage them to get to Japan.
For a company, you would not qualify as a new hire – which is probably for the best – but makes salary predictions pretty difficult.
However, since you are still young and (hopefully) have no family responsibilities, might as well go for it now. If that is what you want and need. The longer you wait the deeper you will be entrenched in your current life. The younger you are the easier “career mistakes” can be fixed. Might as well do JET.
If you don’t mind going to a language school I’d recommend doing so. You’ll be in a class together with young high school graduates (probably from China) trying to enter uni in Japan yes, but in one or two years you’ll get N2 *plus* stellar speaking skills. You can definitely find a job during your language study here for your major- marketing and sales- as there is a lot of Japanese companies these days trying to expand their market to Southeast Asia.
That way, you don’t have to do the JET program which is according to what I’ve heard, bad.
Do not do JET to learn Japanese. It’s total gamble where you end up. In my case, everyone wanted to speak English with me (students, teacher colleagues, random people in restaurants). I did the intermediate then “high” level JET Japanese correspondence study and it did not do much, I tell you that. Before JET I’d had about 2 years of formal study between college classes and an extension course at a local university.
Other JETs rolled in with N2 and N1 level Japanese and they were able to continue their studies more effectively.
you should get an online Japanese teacher. That way you can improve your Japanese conversational/business speaking skills.
You will be constantly improving your Japanese, while still getting paid a nice salary.
Once you pass the N1 and have super Japanese skills, then take your savings and move to Japan. I think this would be the best plan for you.
Sounds like mid life crisis to me. Japan won’t solve your problems, trust me
Don’t bank your entire future on a program that you may not even get accepted to.
Honestly you made quite a few grammatical mistakes in your post so I would consider programming or something else.