hello everyone! I'm wanting to move to Japan for some time with my girlfriend, and I just wanted to know what my best options would be based on mine and my girlfriend's circumstances.
so for me, I am Australian and have been working as a software engineer for a bit over 2 years now, with about 5 or so years of personal experience in that field (not sure if this matters), and I don't have a bachelor's degree. in terms of my Japanese level, I've never taken an official JLPT test, but I'd say I'm between N3 and N2 or so.
as for my girlfriend, she has an Australian passport (although is not Australian, not sure if that makes a difference), and she has mainly worked in managerial positions in the retail industry. she also does not have a bachelor's degree. for her Japanese, I think she's probably around an N4 level or so, but she has not taken an official test either.
both of us are native level in English (I'm just an English native, and she has been living in Australia for a very long time).
the main things I've been looking at so far are the working holiday visa, but I'm worried about how much money we'd be able to make and if that'd be enough to supplement living in Japan since we can only do part time work in generally low-paying jobs (as far as I'm aware, I might be wrong). the other thing I've looked at is the digital nomad visa as it fits pretty well and seems like I can bring my girlfriend in on it, but currently I don't quite make the cut for the 10 million yen income requirement, and job searching has not been very kind to me lol, so I'm not sure how viable that is for me right now.
another question I have is about the working culture in Japan. I've heard it's quite terrible, but is that just on a case-by-case basis and something we can avoid depending on where we look, or is it kind of an inevitable part of working in Japan?
I'd appreciate any advice anyone has, thank you!
edit: I wanted to clarify that by 'some time' I just mean an extended period of time, so that could be 6 months or 1 year or the like. I think some people here got the impression that I was wanting to stay for multiple years and attain PR but that wouldn't be the goal right now especially considering our circumstances, we just want to be able to enjoy Japan for a while. if in the future we want to attain PR then we'd have to more seriously look into it and likely get a degree
by Gennzou