Im 40 years old. My girlfriend and I have been living together for two years in Australia. I was working on sponsoring her for Australian residency. But she recently spun around and said she doesn't want it. She wants to go back to Japan and she wants me to come with her. Which is just great…. except I worry about how I am going to make money. My Japanese is very very basic (working on it). Here in Australia I make good money running a warehouse but I don't think I'm fluent enough to do same there. I have no degree. I'm too old for a working holiday Visa. I have savings but that will dry up before the first three months I'm sure. Perhaps I could do a TEFL course and teach English down the track. My girlfriend is great she says she will take care of me while I work it out but I'm keen to stand on my own two feet as soon as possible. Some advice for anyone who has been through a similar situation would be great.
by Silver-Mode-7067
28 comments
Do remote work first. Warehouse ops or support gigs in English are doable. Learn Japanese daily. TEFL only if nothing else sticks. You’ll be fine if you keep moving fast.
Are you getting married? You can’t move to Japan without some sort of visa (spouse, work, etc).
For a work visa you need a degree or 10+ years of related work experience to the job.
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What are you gonna do with your visa if you are not married to her? Also, what does she think you getting a job in Japan? Is she supportive?
What’s driving her move? Family? Does she want to get married? A lot of women here scramble to get married in their mid to late 30s. It can be quite traditional/conservative. If you’re not the guy, she might be thinking it’s time.
Anyway, you won’t be running warehouses in Japan. Without very strong language skills, which take years to build, you’re likely to be an ESL teacher for very low pay. I would give this a lot of thought if you have a decent life in Oz.
she prolly just in the culture shock phase rn bro let it ride out. and btw, grinding in japan, if its english teaching for low salary is not the move…. if u dont have a transferable skill it wont be fun
Your options are basically 1) she sponsors you as your spouse, or 2) you get your own working visa. Regarding these two options:
1- she can only sponsor your visa if you’re married
2- you can only get your own work visa if you have
A- at least a bachelor’s degree AND a company wants to hire you, OR
B- over 10 years of relevant experience AND a company wants to hire you
…if you’re making good money in Australia in your current situation, I wouldn’t necessarily make this move.
ETA: are you sure she WANTS you to come? Bc another option is that she’s trying to kind of indirectly initiate a breakup with this situation.
Well I think you have more than 10 years of work experience in logistics then … you could try to find international companies sitting in Japan maybe in and export or something …
If you want to come to Japan that bad, get married to her first. If you don’t want to get married, you probably shouldn’t go to the other side of the planet where you’ll be one bad argument away from being in a dire situation.
As I think you are probably seeing from the other comments, your visa is going to be the thing that needs to be sorted out. If you get married and start out on a spouse visa, you have the option to work at most things, with your language level being the limiting factor.
If marriage is not on the cards, she can’t sponsor you and you’ll have to find a job that will, but without a degree I don’t believe English teaching can get you a visa. You could consider language school and finding a job after that, and maybe getting married in the meantime. That will require money and you’ll only be able to work a limited amount as a student.
I would put my foot down. My wife is Japanese and I met her in the U.S. but I did live in Japan for four years and have a very strong command (and certification) in Japanese. That said, the work environment in Japan is not great. I would retire there but wouldn’t go back to work.
Without Japanese and a degree, your options are going to be extremely limited. You are probably looking at a gaijin bar or some sort of manual labor. SOME ESL companies will hire you but many won’t without the degree. The crappy ones will only pay you 200K Yen a month which is barely $2000 Australian before taxes. Unless she earns at least 450K a month, you will struggle a lot.
I am just being real because a lot of people paint Japan as some utopia but it is not.
Yes sounds a bit tough. About the warehouse thing. Japanese fluency is an issue of course, but unless you have really unique skills and warehouse tech that Japan doesn’t have, there are possibly tens of thousands of Japanese people doing that already – and doing it the Japanese way. There may be a niche market for you – targeting foreigners for example, or Overseas<>Japan logistics. But to determine whether this is viable is going to take some research…
And that’s IF she can sponsor your ***spousal*** visa. So you’d need to get married first. If I were you (easy to say that I know…) I’d talk it out first with her, explain the pain points, and the inevitable issue of marriage. Then, maybe, as a test, don’t quit your job, just take time off and go there for a month or two. See how things go.
Don’t do it!!! Unless your warehouse managing came with a degree behind it (not being snarky, I know those exist) and you can find a job BEFORE leaving I say stay right where you are. It sucks, but she’s the one that had a change of heart and wants to go home. She’ll have her family there to help support her, you will only have her. And even if they say otherwise, no woman wants to financially take care of her boyfriend or husband unless she’s uniquely independently wealthy. Tbh, you’re 40, that’s way past the age where you just pick up everything and follow a woman somewhere “cuz of love”. She can break up with you a few months after the move and you have nothing. Nothing there and nothing to return to Australia for, only your family, if that’s your home country.
For Someone you haven’t married? Yeah no. Stay in your country with your job. Unless you can speak good Japanese you won’t have a lot of opportunities outside those English teacher opportunities that pay just enough if you’re in the middle of nowhere or little to nothing if you’re in big cities like Tokyo or idk you randomly get lucky. You could get scammed out of your salary and make it seem like it’s such a good deal but it’s not. If you have a teaching license that’s another story too. And as others have pointed you cant be sponsored unless you’re married. Like didn’t she think about that before dating you or going to Australia ? I’m saying this as someone who left their country for japan because of marriage. But it sounds like homesickness and you need to make Australia work for her or call it quits because she wants her life in Japan where she was able to work and be independent. Encourage her to go out if you haven’t and to make friends. Build a life in Australia for her if you plan to marry her. Do things from her culture and plan dates in places that serves her food, buy her snacks from her country. It isn’t easy to give up your life in your country so she will have moments like this a lot so think about that for the long run.
Any part-time airline jobs nearby, you can squeeze in for the flight perks and visit each other back and forth?
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Will be difficult finding a job in Japan with your resume. Also you guys need to be married for her to sponsor you
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It will be very hard with what you have now. If you visit on a tourist visa, you’ll need to go back to Australia to get your visa…and make sure you don’t overstay it or you put your risk at getting sponsored. And like everyone else said, without a job lined up, and without being married, you’ll have a tough time
TEFL and English teaching will be your fastest way to a visa and a job. After that you can learn Japanese and figure it out. Or stay in English teaching
I’ve been living in Japan for almost 6 years now and heres my 2 cents on the matter. Getting a job is not too much of a trouble, there’s alot of choices but it would really depend on your level of japanese. But with the bare minimum or zero japanese language knowledge, factory work related jobs through work agencies are a good way to start. Even english teaching is viable. Just know that the japanese have a very different work culture than most countries and its not for the faint of heart.
I would not move if I were you especially after only dating for 2 years. It’s a drop in the bucket for what potentially could be the worst time of your life.
You will be fully dependent on your partner. Also people change up once back home and around their close community and that could be awesome or bad.
Also Japanese work culture can suck. I work in hospitality and admittedly with okay Japanese you could probably find work but at the bottom rungs the pay ain’t great however some places can be super chill to work at. I manage but I took a pay cut to work for a smaller place with a more chill attitude. As far as work hours, I actually do better than in the US, where hospitality can be even worse of a slog.
I live okay on my salary but I get paid about 1/3rd I did in the states. I also feel like it’s way way harder to advance through the ranks as a foreigner vs a local unless you come in already at the top of your career.
40 yo to Japan, and she is a GF not a wife. Good luck Sir. It will depends on your luck, but not impossible.
not a good idea at all given the fact that japan places a lot of emphasis on degrees, that the JPY is a weak currency and the country has a bad economy, and becoming completely reliant on your spouse is a bad thing as it opens the door to abuse especially if you are alone in a foreign country and aren’t fluent in the language. you also can’t get a spouse visa since you aren’t married, which means you need a work visa, which is a pain because you’d need to find a permanent employee position which is hard to get if you don’t speak japanese. people who don’t speak japanese are also more vulnerable to workplace abuse and being laid off out of the blue.
also you mentioned she wants to support you ‘while you figure things out’, but she can’t support both herself and you financially on a nurse salary here, especially not in big cities where you are most likely to be able to find a job as someone who doesn’t speak japanese.
there is also the fact that you are 40 and at this point you should keep focusing on saving and investing for your retirement, rather than starting life from zero in a foreign country, without any specific goals in mind.
TL;DR don’t listen to her as that could likely ruin your life and the resulting situation could be very difficult to fix
I see a lot of comments which are super helpful but it may also be worth considering starting your own business and developing a new skill. Theres money laying on the ground in Japan you just have to know where to find it.
My wife and I run a business together and starting out we basically just hung around at events run by people in the industry we wanted to be in. From there it was easy to catch clients or find out where the power vacuums are in Japan.
This will also make taxes a bit more forgiving and even if it’s just you running the business you can file a lot of expenses under the company to keep your taxes low. Hope this helps
My brother.
No. You cannot give her all the love she deserves on a teacher salary in japan.
Just tell her you guys can vacation there but stay in australia.
I know it is hard to say no to someone you love but you are stable and if it is not meant to be it is not meant to be.
Same age, I basically just did this exact thing, but my girlfriend and I were on the same page with our life plans. We were already common law partners back in my home country so we got married as soon as I arrived in Japan (literally the next day).
I couldn’t work for the first few months, waiting for my status to change, and spent that time doing a TEFL course and learning Japanese. Then I started job hunting.
I have a university degree and, even with that, it was brutal. The competition was fierce. There are actually jobs teaching English that pay pretty well, but the thing is that you can’t get those jobs. The people who’ve been doing it for a decade get those jobs.
I’m now working somewhere that pays pretty decent, but it took some job hopping at first and using some connections I had made. I really like my current employer and got kinda lucky with them.
Without a degree, though, and no Japanese language ability, you will have a very hard time finding a decent job teaching English. With your warehouse experience, you’d probably be better off looking into getting into a labor job. There are manual labor jobs here for people with minimal Japanese, but note that it’s minimal, not zero. You need to have at least N5 if you want to try to do them.
I would actually recommend you go that route, not the TEFL route. The warehouse labor jobs here don’t pay much, but you will use Japanese at work and if you study at home, your Japanese will improve quickly. With your experience, you could probably move up the ladder and get a better paying blue collar job here within a few years.
All of this is dependent on you and your girlfriend actually being serious about building a life together, though, and getting married.
EDIT: Never mind, this is fully off the rails. Locked.
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