Language School as a 30+

Interesting, I went to the same school and at 24 was on the younger side. A lot of the school was made up of taiwanese/thai that were late 20s/early 30s i think. I met a few people that were under 20, but that was it.

> 2) Come here with a spouse that does #1 on a Dependent visa If your spouse is doing #1 on your visa, you may want to rethink your relationship. Unless you are into golden showers... haha

luckily for me i am a computer engineer so i may have an in that way. If not, marry my way in!

>Get a job that will sponsor a Visa. For most people that post here, that pretty much means something in a research field, software engineering, program management, or extremely specialized hardware. This is probably the best way but it's also way easier said than done. It's hard enough to find a job posting where they are willing to entertain the thought of hiring a foreigner who needs visa sponsorship, and then you need to have strong enough Japanese that you can show well during a job interview (N2 is the absolute bare minimum and even then more companies seem to want N1 these days). I interviewed for one of the big 3 consulting firms in Japan as a subject matter specialist (I have a STEM Ph.D and research experience at a top-tier university in Japan) and the interviewer straight up told me I was perfectly qualified for the position except they need me to be able to give a full-on case study interview in 100% Japanese. That was a hard no on my part. It's kind of a chicken/egg problem though. You need really strong Japanese to be able to get a job in Japan, but it's really hard to get your Japanese to "professional level" without having any professional experience in Japan to begin with. How do you learn professional Japanese if you've literally never even sat in a business meeting in Japan before, or dealt with Japanese customers before? Sure you can go to language school for a year or two, but then you have to contend with the fact that when it does come time to get a job, your resume is going to have a 1-2 year gap in it. If you are in your 30s and 40s, you will be competing for these jobs with 'middle tenshoku' people who probably DON'T have this gap, so you will be at an automatic disadvantage (in addition to the disadvantage of being a foreigner). It's not impossible, but I feel like it is quite rare that people are able to move to Japan because they managed to get hired and sponsored from their home country.

What is your field of expertise? Even if you complete language school and somehow get N2 out of it, it can be extremely hard to get a job here when you are older unless you have a skillset that is in high demand or extremely specialized. You will need a student visa to go to school, and will probably want to start in April so you can do a full 2 years. After that, even if you get a job, you will have to return to your home country to process the visa change. After you get a job and visa change, you will need to do that job, pay all taxes on time, not get any tickets or infractions or anything for the entire time till eligibility for Permanent residency and then actually clear PR hurdles to be able to stay long term. Clearly not impossible as me and my wife are here, but don't look at this as you get here, learn some Japanese, convince a kombini or day job place to hire you, then set to stay. Getting a working visa isn't easy even after learning Japanese.

It is not without its challenges, but still loving it. My wife got the job, though I was offered a few almost immediately after arriving. For now, I am not working and instead focused on learning Japanese and making our place more comfortable and our weeks more predictable. What that mostly means is I keep things clean and do a lot of meal planning and cooking. First 3 months after arriving can be a lot to take in. A company named Tokyo Orientations helped us a ton. They got us through our first 2 days of getting residence cards stamped at municipal office, setting up bank account, local phone numbers, and all the other immediate needs. Grocery shopping for cooking continues to be an adventure. I am constantly learning new ways of doing things I took for granted in the States, which I love.

ha so finally feeling you haven't got much time for yourself once school starts is not me being an old sluggish guy? once you've done 宿題 , school time, and looking/doing your part time job, there's not a lot of room left for fun ^^'

Could you let me know where your class was located too

Oh, thank you!!