How to keep Japanese in my professional life after graduation

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for advice or experiences from people who might have been in a similar situation. This is more "life/career advice" than strictly language study, so if it’s not appropriate here, feel free to let me know and I’ll take it down.

For a long time, I had this idea of moving to Japan and working there. It was never a hard goal, more of a dream in the background, but it motivated me a lot in studying Japanese. Now, life has changed a bit. I’m in a serious relationship, and my partner has no interest in moving to Japan. I don’t want to pressure him into something he doesn’t want, and I am fine living where we live as well, so I’ve quietly let go of the idea of living there long-term. We have talked things over, and we both like Japan, so traveling there is something we definitely want to do in the future. I'm very okay with it (like I said, moving was never a hard goal) and that’s also not what this post is about (I’m not looking for relationship advice), but it gives some context.

I’ll be graduating early next year with a master’s in Natural Language Processing / Computational Linguistics, and I’m planning a working holiday in Japan right after. The details are not fully clear, but it happening is pretty much decided. But what comes after feels really uncertain.

The closer graduation gets, the more I realize how much of my motivation for learning Japanese was tied to the idea of living in Japan. Once I’m back from my working holiday, I probably won’t be able to spend an extended period in Japan again, and that thought has been a little disheartening. I don’t ever see myself quitting Japanese, but I do want to find a way to make it a part of my professional life rather than just a hobby.

So I guess my question is: as someone going into NLP/Computational Linguistics (and staying in Germany), what options do I realistically have to incorporate Japanese into my work? Do any of you know of any companies/research groups in Europe that deal with Japanese language technology? Has anyone here combined Japanese with a career in linguistics, tech, or translation? Or maybe even freelanced (e.g., translation/localization) on the side?

If you’ve ever been in a similar spot (loving Japanese but not sure how to use it professionally without moving to Japan) I’d love to hear how you handled it.

Thanks in advance!