Hey all—I want to start by prefacing that this is more of a "what-if" post, rather than me committing to immigrating to Japan from the US. It's just something my partner and I talk about time to time, often spurred by current events (e.g., the 2024 US election), and I was curious about this community's 2-cents about our thought process and its viability, specifically the visa process. Would absolutely love brutally honest feedback.
For some background—as I mentioned, my partner and I (unmarried) are currently in the US and in our mid-20s. We're both US citizens by birth, but my partner has dual citizenship with Japan through her mother and has both a US and JP passport. She's fluent in Japanese, while I've studied it for about 4 years in college and received my bachelor's in both Computer Science and Japanese Studies. I haven't taken an official fluency exam at all, but I'm relatively comfortable with speaking and writing the language with native speakers. My partner has her bachelor's in chemistry.
We've both had the opportunity to briefly travel and live in different parts of the world, so we're somewhat familiar with the emotional and financial baggage of moving long-distances. I believe her family owns a rural home, but we would prefer living in a metropolitan area.
We have a vague idea of how things could go down, but I have a few questions about the immigration process:
- I understand that her dual-citizenship is a gray area, and she would need to choose if confronted by legal technicality. But our understanding is that she could just decide to return to Japan for any reason, keep her Japanese passport, and then I come on a travel visa, we get married, and then move onto a spousal visa? What kind of additional complications does her "dual-citizenship" introduce, if any?
- We think the best "jumping off" point would be being offered a career opportunity first, rather than just moving first then finding work after? Things like applying to a English-teaching program to help take care of moving and initial income—a short career vacation for a foot in the door? I have a few colleagues that joined the JET program since graduating, and a few of them were able to pivot into a long-term career in Japan closer to their actual degrees, so that seemed like one good approach for us.
- How much money should we have prepared for upfront costs? Most of my research told me that most people on this subreddit in the past few years needed about at least $10k for a relatively comfortable move, which is more than doable with money I have set aside in savings/investments, plus a bit more from down-sizing and selling my car/furniture.
- A bonus question: I'm Korean-American and I'm very much aware that this can make me a target with certain people in certain areas. Anybody have personal experiences as a Korean male living in urban Japan?
by seeecretsunday