# Moving to Japan, help



## tommyhales

ok my dream in life at the moment is to move and settle down in japan but the thing is at the moment i need to sort my life out a bit. im only 19 years old at the moment and i cannot stand the uk so i want to get out.

here are my questions.

1st how much will it cost me to move there, i still live with my parents so to be honist i wont have a lot of stuff to take so a small home is ok for me and i dont care where it is in japan i go, im going to be working and saving for the day so i need to know about how much i will need before even thinking of going.

2. how much japanese will i need to know? iv been teaching my self it for the last year or so but im just a novice, but im willing to buckle down and do it. also is it hard to find places there to lern it?

3rd, how hard is it to get a job. and what type of jobs would be available to someone like me?

for those of you who read this thanks for taking your time


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## larabell

tommyhales said:


> ok my dream in life at the moment is to move and settle down in japan...


Most of these questions have been asked multiple times and, in some cases, beaten to death on other threads of this very forum. You might try scanning down the index page and/or using the search function to find some of those earlier discussions.

But... since I have a few moments to spare, let me summarize my views on the subjects you raise and maybe add a few new things...



> 1st how much will it cost me to move there...


It sounds like you're asking about the initial cost. That's kinda difficult to answer but if I were in your position, I'd start with whatever I could carry in my allotted two check-in suitcases and a carry-on. That eliminates shipping cost. If you find Japan to be a place you'd like to settle, you can always make occasional trips back to the UK to pick up the rest of your stuff.

I assume you're a UK citizen. As such, you qualify for a "working holiday" visa which allows you to come to Japan without having to land a job first. Such a visa is usually good for a year. So let's assume you're looking for a year's worth of unemployed living -- if you do better than that, great. But at least you know you can survive for a year.

I'll use yen since I'm not familiar speaking in pounds and you're probably not all that comfortable thinking in US dollars.

First, assume 100K yen for the trip over (airfare, etc). You'll probably spend a couple weeks in a hotel -- the cheapest ones are maybe 5K yen per night.

In your position, the quickest way to get out of the hotel would be to rent a room in a gaijin house and, if you can stand the lack of privacy, that's not a bad way to make friends and learn what's in the area. But if you think small, there are also private apartments available for not too much more than a typical gaijin house. Either way, assume you'll need 100K yen per month for rent and utilities. You can probably do better than that if you shop around but you should set aside at least that much.

If you go for a real apartment (ie: one room with private bath), you'll need to plan for 4~5 months rent up-front. Other start-up costs include some simple furniture and a TV (since you won't be going out for a while)... but all that can be found for little or no cost if you watch the ads and pick up stuff left behind by ex-pats returning to their home countries. Still, I'd toss in a few hundred K yen for start-up expenses.

One of the more controversial subjects has been how much one needs to survive in Tokyo. My low-end guess is another 80~100K yen per month. On that budget, you'll be eating ramen and beef bowl every day and watching TV at home. But at least you're in Japan, which was the original goal.

If you live outside of Tokyo, you might be able to trim these expenses slightly but you'd also be cutting yourself off from potential contacts for jobs, housing, advice on where to go, etc. Until you're fluent in the language and know your way around, assume you're going to be living somewhere in or near one of the major cities (Tokyo is best, Osaka or Nagoya also have strong ex-pat populations).

That all adds up to just over 3 million yen (US $30K) for the 1st year. These are rough numbers, of course, and if you land a job mid-way through your first year here, the amount of money you'd have to bring with you could be considerably less. But I'd be willing to bet that someone living cheaply could survive the year jobless if they started with 3 million yen in their pocket.



> 2. how much japanese will i need to know?


If you don't plan on working or going out places, none. But if your goal is to get a job locally within the first year and live here long-term, you'll have to get cracking on that Japanese.

Luckily, there *are* places to learn for free. Most of the ward offices in Tokyo (and I would imagine city offices elsewhere) have Japanese classes run by volunteers. And you can also check Metropolis magazine for language exchange partners (where you teach someone English in return for them teaching you Japanese), which has the added advantage of making local connections.



> 3rd, how hard is it to get a job. and what type of jobs would be available to someone like me?


That's going to be your biggest challenge. I've written before (in those earlier threads that you ought to spend some time reading) that there are really only four main ways to land a job in Japan:

1) Be fluent in Japanese and smart enough to compete with native Japanese speakers in the local job market,

2) Find a job with a company in your home country where they're willing to send you to Japan at some point,

3) Possess a skill that is hard to find in Japan and for which Japanese (or foreign) companies would be willing to hire you despite your lack of Japanese fluency, or

4) Teach English.

It sounds to me like the first three aren't likely for you right now and the English teaching market is overflowing with competent job seekers these days so that's not a strong possibility. That's not to say that you *can't* find a job here. One person I know who came here on a working visa just got lucky and managed to make the right contacts to land a job after the first couple months. But he had a degree in Computer Science that helped make him more marketable. If you don't have any particularly outstanding skill or training, and if you can't speak fluent Japanese, you're going to have a very hard time.

That said... if you come here on a working holiday visa, there's little restriction on the kinds of work you can do. So if you make some contacts early on, you could do part-time manual labor (like schlepping boxes for a moving company) and that would be legal work -- those of us who come on regular working visas are pretty much confined to doing work in the field for which the visa is valid. So you have a slight advantage there, being from the UK.

However, as far as planning the trip goes, you should probably assume you'll be jobless for the entire year. As I said before... if you do better than that, great. But at least if you assume no job, you'll bring enough money that you won't have to bail out and go back home before your year is up.

Now... to be realistic... if you end up spending a year watching Japanese TV that you can't understand and eating ramen and beef bowl every day, I doubt that you'll enjoy Japan any more than you enjoy the UK now. It would be my advice to stay where you're at, get a degree in something marketable (ie: Computer Science rather than Black History), continue to study Japanese, and then make the trip when there's a better chance that you'll actually succeed here. In fact, if you become reasonably good in Japanese and earn a degree, you might be able to find a British company who will send you over to Japan on their dime.

If you feel compelled to make the trip now, 3 million yen is a bare minimum (and there will undoubtedly be follow-up replies that contend that even that much is impossible to live on for a year). If you could possibly double that figure as a starting amount before coming over, you'll likely be a lot happier here and less stressed out when months go by and you can't find work.

Good luck...


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## Glenski

I agree with everything larabell has written and would just like to add this:



tommyhales said:


> ok my dream in life at the moment is to move and settle down in japan


May we ask why Japan? What is your precise goal here?



> but the thing is at the moment i need to sort my life out a bit. im only 19 years old at the moment and i cannot stand the uk so i want to get out.


I'm much older than you and have lived in Japan almost as long as you've been alive. Running away from your home country and problems to try sorting them out in another land where you can't even read the language or speak it passably is a mistake in my opinion. You're going to find it very hard to get work here.



> what type of jobs would be available to someone like me?


Not much, even on a working holiday visa.

Picture this: a Japanese person goes to the UK and cannot read/write/or speak English. Who would hire a teenager with those "qualifications"?

Most of the time a work visa in Japan requires a university degree. Those times that it doesn't, you have to have 3-10 years of related work experience.


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