I'm a 35 year old male living in the USA. I currently have no college degree. I know that stacks the deck against me, but I'm wondering what the best path forward would be. I'd like to leave the US as soon as possible, and understand that I'm kind of racing the clock in terms of age for the Japanese job market.
Japan/Japanese familiarity:
I've been to Japan for 4 different 2 week stints. I have a few friends that live in the greater Tokyo area (though I'd be fine with living elsewhere) and we've had a lot of talks about what living there is like (work culture and such). I'm aware of what I could be getting into in that regard.
I'm taking the N5 in December, and should be able to pass it fairly easy. I've finished Wani Kani and the Tae Kim book, and do well on practice exams. I do about an hour of Anki cards and bunpro a day, listen to some podcasts for listening practice, and try to watch some dramas or read whenever I have time. I know the N5 doesn't get you very far, but I haven't taken a standard test in years and would like to just do an easy one before I decide on trying for an N3 or N2 next.
Work experience and current resources:
I'm currently 5 years into working as a technician at a data center, and for ~12 years before that I was an electrician in my family business. I taught myself C++/Python/PCB design, and have completed a contract software design job for a Fortune 500 company in the past. I haven't formally worked at a software company though. I work night shift at the data center, and on most days about ~90% of my shift can be dedicated to studying, which is how I've been able to pick up programming and Japanese.
I've currently got about $35,000 saved, and at my current clip of savings could probably put away around $15k a year. If I were to sell my car and some music equipment I've got, I could free up at least another $10,000. I also co-own a house, but my plan would be to rent out my room rather than sell my share so that I’d still have a cheap place to return to if things don’t work out.
The different paths that I had looked into were:
-Going to language school in about a year (time to save/get N5 if school requires it) -> taking that for a year or two try to get an N2 -> applying to college or senmon.
I like this plan because it gets me there the soonest, and has plenty of 'off ramps' in case I get there and decide I don't like it. However I've heard that some colleges and senmons don't like taking older applicants because it could hurt their employment rates. Not sure how feasible this one is. I think if I work part time while there I could save up for it pretty quickly.
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-Trying to complete an accelerated degree program -> language school to get N2 -> apply to jobs while in Japan:
It looks like some people have had success getting through the Japanese visa process with degrees from places like WGU. I've looked into strategies for wrapping one of those up in 6 months to a year and a half, which given how much time I can dedicate at work to working on courses I think I could do fairly quickly.
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-Temple Tokyo campus computer science program:
I can qualify for in state tuition for Temple university, which has a computer science program on their campus. I hear it kind of sucks, but I don't really care. I'm already pretty damn good at programming. It'd mostly just be to get there quickly, and get a degree. This seems the most expensive out of any though.
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-SSW visa:
I'm not sure if my electrician experience would qualify for this because it was half small business/half self employed. It's hard to find information on this path in general. I skimmed a sample test for it and it seems pretty esoteric in general. I'd probably want to go to language school first. Know very little about this path. Working construction again would kind of suck, but if it's my only option I guess it's my only option.
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-Wait out my job another 5 years while continuing self study Japanese-> get an N2 and/or apply to language school -> look for jobs while there:
This is my least favorite option because it involves being in the US for even longer and applying for jobs when I'm even older. I'm not even sure how well 10 years of data center experience is valued vs other areas of IT like cyber security and software engineering.
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I've left off going to a 4 year school in the US, because at that point I could wait another year and have the 10 years IT experience I'd need for a visa, plus it'd be so expensive that it'd set me back pretty far in terms of savings (especially since I'd likely have to quit my job to attend classes). I guess I could do it, but it seems counterintuitive at this point.
Thanks for reading this far if you have. Any insight is appreciated. I know it's a long shot, but I can generally will myself through some pretty miserable grinds, and would really like to do this if possible.
by Low-Lingonberry-6031