I want to live in Japan when I’m older and I’m half Japanese so I have a Japanese passport/ citizenship. My Japanese is not high enough to take classes in Japanese so i was thinking of doing a degree for computer science taught in English, however I don’t know if I can apply as I was told I can’t apply for a VISA. I feel like it would be easier for me to transition from a Japanese uni into a Japanese job, however I don’t know how hard it would be to find a job based in Japan straight out of a University in the UK.
any advise is appreciated
4 comments
If you have Japanese citizenship, you don’t need a visa to study/live/work there. Why would you – visas are for foreign nationals who do not have Japanese citizenship.
I’ll leave it to the other Redditors to explain why Japanese university courses, especially those taught in English, do not come highly recommended (there are plenty of posts on this subreddit – you could just do a quick search if you’re in a hurry). You’ll also need to be smart about your choice of citizenship at 20 (again, lots of posts about this already in this subreddit).
So, you’ll either want to improve your Japanese language proficiency first or attend university in the UK and then relocate to Japan. Given your Japanese citizenship, you won’t need a visa to work in Japan, but it might be preferable to get a few years of work experience under your belt in the UK first. That’s going to be industry-specific, so I defer to the experts.
A better pathway – graduate from UK university with CompSci degree, work for 3-5 years in UK while continuing to improve your Japanese, then come to Japan on expat assignment or in mid-level role.
You have both Japanese and British citizenship?
If so, you don’t need a visa for either of those countries. Citizens cannot, and do not require a visa to live, study, and work in their own country.
I’m currently doing job hunting in Japan but fully remotely from China. I totally suggest you do the degree in England. Almost all the job hunting here after coronavirus becomes remote so you can definitely do it from England. I even plan to go for an exchange program in European countries recently. Although the time difference may have an impact. In that case, you may consider to go for an exchange program when the job hunting starts.
The biggest problem is, you will need higher professional skills to compete with locals because your language skill is inferior to locals. If you get the same level of education in Japan as locals, it will be hard to find jobs. The job hunting starts almost 2 years before graduation, which is too early to acquire near native level Japanese and N1 is far from enough. I’m currently experiencing the pain every day.