It seems there is a total limit of 2 years of having a student visa through a language school?
My gf is still in my home country. a long time ago before we knew each other she already was in Japan on a language school student visa for 15 or 18 months (she doesn’t remember, it’s been over 10 years, and the documents about it are long gone)…
I have recently moved to Tokyo and I’m trying to get her here as well. We looked into getting her into a language school again. She doesn’t have a degree (but neither have I, and I got 3 years of humanities with 10 years of work experience… she doesn’t have that)
So apparently since she was here on that visa already over 10 years ago, she can now only take a course of either 6 or 9 months…
Is this real?! This is getting more and more difficult.
Does anybody know if there is a way to find out at immigration how long she was here back then? I suppose it gets tracked there?
5 comments
It’s real, since you’re expected to have learned the language in 2 years in an intensive course. You can get a student visa for a normal college/university/speciality school, but language school visas are purposely short.
(During COVID, they let people stay for 3 years, especially when it was hard for students to go back home, but that has gone away).
Source: I had the displeasure of working at a Japanese Language school for 2 years.
Yes it’s real.
Because language school is like the easiest way to get into Japan for most countries (just need money, nothing else) it’s also the easiest to exploit.
So even if it was 10 years ago she is still tied to her previous stay and they do ask about previous stays (non tourism) when you apply for your visa.
At this point you kind of need to start realistically deciding if you want to do LDR with an exit strategy to move back to your home country or go ahead and consider splitting. I personally wouldn’t advise to marry for a dependent visa but depending on how long you’ve been with this GF I guess it’s an option. But again that’s a major decision and usually marrying someone for the sole purpose of moving to a foreign country is never really a great idea. Even if she came for 6 or 9 months that’s really not a long time and she’d need to go back home afterwards and you’d still be in Japan. Without a degree or experience she’s SOL.
I wouldn’t prolong making a decision about the future of your relationship together at this point.
It’s real. You get 2 years of intensive language study, not an endless student visa to live in Japan indefinitely.
If she cannot qualify for a working visa on her own merit then your only option is to get married and have her be your dependent. She would be able to work up to 28 hours per week but if she makes “too much” money, they may not renew her dependent visa. How much is “too much”? No idea. Not sure there is a definitive rule.
Could she go for cultural activities ? Or try to go for normal studies ? Try targeting a sector able to provide her a job and visa once she graduate. She will still be able to work a few hour as long as she ask to.
But I agree with other poster. most likely dependant will be the best bet.
I mean let’s be real what’s the endgame here ? She can’t get a work visa so after 2 year what would you even do ?