I've been trying to find good ways to move to Japan and it's seeming more and more clear that about the only reasonably straightforward way to do that is to spend a while teaching English to get a visa and then convert that visa to something else later. I'm not intending to make a career out of it – this is more a way for me to get into Japan so I can do my actual career (manufacturing office work, which, from talking to recruiters, I seem to have enough credentials in to get hired if I didn't need a brand new visa) – but I'd like to make the most of it and have as good a time doing it as I can manage. I've never really seen myself as the 'let's get excited about English!!' type – I'd vastly rather just explain English grammar in Japanese than try and make people enjoy speaking English – but if it's what I need to do, I'll do my best at it.
That said, I think I'm bringing a significantly different set of skills to the table than your average 'American who just wants a visa', which is why I'm coming here to ask about things. I've got a master's degree in linguistics and I've passed the JLPT N1, and I suspect that both of those things might be able to get me a better eikaiwa job out the gate – something with better pay, better management, and maybe stuff like no requirement to work with kids. The job hunting advice I've seen in looking through this sub is geared much more to people with no Japanese and no apparent qualifications, though it certainly is helpful, so I figured I'd ask around and see what people who know more about the higher levels of this industry know.
(To be clear, the master's in linguistics hasn't given me much directly applicable experience or background; I have had one class on 'how to learn a language when your only resource is a native speaker', but everything else I've done has been on internal linguistic structure stuff, not on education or acquisition.)
Doing some research in this sub has also seemed to indicate that if I absolutely hate eikaiwa, I can leave my contract early and still be in a decent position to convert my visa to something like what I would otherwise be looking for (if I manage the leaving process carefully); is that correct? I certainly wouldn't be showing up intending to do this – I want to respect both the students and the company hiring me – but it would be comforting to know that I'm not basically locked into a full year with serious consequences if I end up miserable.
Also, it'd be nice to move relatively quickly; I know it might take three or four months to set up the visa etc, but my apartment lease expires at the end of August and I don't really want to spend too much time rooming with friends as a bridge situation. It seems like some companies have a kind of rolling schedule, where they mostly start contracts all at the same time; I'd be interested in avoiding companies whose contract start is ages from now.
TL;DR, these are my general questions –
* can I leverage a master's in linguistics and/or N1 Japanese into a better initial visa-sponsoring job? how do I go about finding such a better job?
* you can leave a contract early and move out of the English education sphere if you're careful, right? (what does having a teaching visa but no replacement job yet look like?)
* are there any particular good ways of finding places with more immediate / non-cycle-based hiring timelines?
Thanks in advance!
by sjiveru