A little over a decade ago at the age of 20 I flew to Tokyo to attend TUJ (yes, I’m now aware of its reputation). I lived and studied there a little over two years and loved it, but unforeseen circumstances pulled me back to the US, which screwed up a lot of things and prevented me from returning. My school loans began to come due and I ended up stuck in the US.
Fast forward to today. Loans are paid off and I’m pretty well established mid-30s guy with an SE career of almost 10 years. I recently managed to reduce housing expenses to a very small portion of my salary, which makes moving to Japan suddenly feel within reach again. The biggest problem, as far as I can tell, is my lack of a degree.
I almost qualify for the 10 years of experience that can theoretically be subbed in for a bachelor’s for visa purposes, but proving that 10 years would be difficult if not impossible due to multiple companies on my resume having gone belly-up. So practically speaking, I need a degree.
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My goal is to gain the ability to stay long term in Japan reasonably quickly and cheaply. I’ve visited Japan several times since I was forced to drop out and it never lost its shine, and in fact it becomes more appealing over time. Life there “clicks” for me in a way it hasn’t anywhere else and so if I can, I want to try to settle down there (preferably sooner than later… I feel age creeping up on me).
So here’s my current thoughts on making that happen.
Finishing the degree in Japan makes sense to me for a couple reasons:
– It gives me another two years of life there to make absolutely sure that long-term residency in Japan is something I really want.
– It offers an immersion environment for language learning that’s unparalleled, which will be important if I’m to live there long term.
– TUJ is easy since I have prior history with them (just need to re-enroll) and it’s *cheap*. Way cheaper than any of the options accessible where I live in the US, especially taking the current USD → JPY exchange rate into account (which can be locked in with a multi-currency account).
As noted before I’m now aware of TUJ’s reputation (I wasn’t back then), but as far as I can tell I should be able to get hired locally on experience/resume alone — the degree is only needed to satisfy visa requirements (please correct me if I’m wrong). Also because it’s so cheap, I’ll be able to afford to pay for it out of pocket and *not have to take out loans*, which is huge for me.
Following this, even with pessimistic figures for both save and spend, it looks like by the semester of Spring 2025 I can have expenses for two years of tuition and living expenses saved up in addition to the considerable emergency cushion that’s already in the bank. If my current US employer allows me to continue to work for them part-time during school, I can begin in Fall 2024 instead and come out the other end with more money than I started with. If a variable changes to make things look shaky, pushing plans out one more semester to allow more savings to accumulate fixes it all.
During this period of saving expenses up, I’ll also be studying Japanese, polishing off the rust that’s accumulated and making it reasonably usable again.
The most troublesome thing might actually be getting my cat ready for the trip. I was not expecting that to be as much as an ordeal as it appears to be, lol.
As graduation approaches, I can then re-evaluate the situation and decide if I want to stay. If yes, get hired by a local company, transfer from a student visa to a work visa, and work there long enough to be eligible for permanent residency (which I might be able to expedite with the highly skilled point system). If not, pull the eject lever and return to my old full-time job in the States.
This seems like a reasonable enough course of action to me, am I crazy? Apologies if it ran on too long or if I’m missing something obvious. I’ve been mulling this over and patching together research for a while now and really just needed a sanity check that I can’t get from friends or colleagues. Thanks.
3 comments
This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
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**Finishing university as a segue into long-term residence as an established adult**
A little over a decade ago at the age of 20 I flew to Tokyo to attend TUJ (yes, I’m now aware of its reputation). I lived and studied there a little over two years and loved it, but unforeseen circumstances pulled me back to the US, which screwed up a lot of things and prevented me from returning. My school loans began to come due and I ended up stuck in the US.
Fast forward to today. Loans are paid off and I’m pretty well established mid-30s guy with an SE career of almost 10 years. I recently managed to reduce housing expenses to a very small portion of my salary, which makes moving to Japan suddenly feel within reach again. The biggest problem, as far as I can tell, is my lack of a degree.
I almost qualify for the 10 years of experience that can theoretically be subbed in for a bachelor’s for visa purposes, but proving that 10 years would be difficult if not impossible due to multiple companies on my resume having gone belly-up. So practically speaking, I need a degree.
—
My goal is to gain the ability to stay long term in Japan reasonably quickly and cheaply. I’ve visited Japan several times since I was forced to drop out and it never lost its shine, and in fact it becomes more appealing over time. Life there “clicks” for me in a way it hasn’t anywhere else and so if I can, I want to try to settle down there (preferably sooner than later… I feel age creeping up on me).
So here’s my current thoughts on making that happen.
Finishing the degree in Japan makes sense to me for a couple reasons:
– It gives me another two years of life there to make absolutely sure that long-term residency in Japan is something I really want.
– It offers an immersion environment for language learning that’s unparalleled, which will be important if I’m to live there long term.
– TUJ is easy since I have prior history with them (just need to re-enroll) and it’s *cheap*. Way cheaper than any of the options accessible where I live in the US, especially taking the current USD → JPY exchange rate into account (which can be locked in with a multi-currency account).
As noted before I’m now aware of TUJ’s reputation (I wasn’t back then), but as far as I can tell I should be able to get hired locally on experience/resume alone — the degree is only needed to satisfy visa requirements (please correct me if I’m wrong). Also because it’s so cheap, I’ll be able to afford to pay for it out of pocket and *not have to take out loans*, which is huge for me.
Following this, even with pessimistic figures for both save and spend, it looks like by the semester of Spring 2025 I can have expenses for two years of tuition and living expenses saved up in addition to the considerable emergency cushion that’s already in the bank. If my current US employer allows me to continue to work for them part-time during school, I can begin in Fall 2024 instead and come out the other end with more money than I started with. If a variable changes to make things look shaky, pushing plans out one more semester to allow more savings to accumulate fixes it all.
During this period of saving expenses up, I’ll also be studying Japanese, polishing off the rust that’s accumulated and making it reasonably usable again.
The most troublesome thing might actually be getting my cat ready for the trip. I was not expecting that to be as much as an ordeal as it appears to be, lol.
As graduation approaches, I can then re-evaluate the situation and decide if I want to stay. If yes, get hired by a local company, transfer from a student visa to a work visa, and work there long enough to be eligible for permanent residency (which I might be able to expedite with the highly skilled point system). If not, pull the eject lever and return to my old full-time job in the States.
This seems like a reasonable enough course of action to me, am I crazy? Apologies if it ran on too long or if I’m missing something obvious. I’ve been mulling this over and patching together research for a while now and really just needed a sanity check that I can’t get from friends or colleagues. Thanks.
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What is the reputation of TUJ?
Frankly this is the first (and possibly *only*) time I’m going to go ahead and say “Sure, TUJ would work for you”. Excuse me for a second while I have a heart attack…
Right. So pretty much all the usual arguments against TUJ don’t really apply in your case.
First and foremost: You’re aware of the issues, and seem like you’re in a position to mitigate the major problems.
Second: Like you said, you’ll be trading off your resume when you graduate, not your diploma.
Third: Because of your second point your main criteria for choosing TUJ is “In Japan”. Which is usually not a great reason, but as you’ve described it makes sense for you.
It’s certainly not going to be the *cheapest* option for finishing your degree, but it’s certainly a valid one. It would almost certainly be cheaper to transfer to an online school in the US and complete your degree that way. You could complete your degree while working full time, and thus have even more savings than you would otherwise. You could solve the “in Japan” part by signing up for language school for a year or two.