Moving to Japan as a CPA

Hi there,

I feel like I am mostly typing this to myself to see if my plan is a bad idea or not, but also helpful to see if any others are in similar positions.

Moving to Japan has been something that I thought about for years, but after thoroughly reading advice from this forum and many others, I decided it would be a bad idea career wise. However coming up on 2025, it's something that keeps coming up in my mind especially after my most recent visit. However, I can be very risk adverse sometimes which is making me think like this would all be a bad idea.

To give some background, I am an American in my early 30s and am a director in Accounting (Controller for those who are familiar with the term), I am also a Certified Public Accountant and honestly and am making very good money even considering the HCOL area I live in. These three things (the role, the license, and money) were the basis of my career goals over the past 10 years and I knew for sure that I would never consider a move unless I met these goals. Well things escalated quickly a few years ago and after a series of lucky moves, I made it to where I needed to be. Honestly if I was smart, I would continue to just work here for as long as I can, continue to max out my 401k, and just march on with my hobbies. This is not meant as a brag, but kind of what I am competing against doing the "smart" thing mentally. I have been working since I was 14 years old and have basically never not had a job at some point in time, and have built up considerable savings over the past few years.

So why move to Japan? I believe it's multiple things. One is I have always wanted to immerse and integrate into another culture, it's one thing to try to do this while traveling and another entirely to do it while living there. I've met basically all of my goals in America, short of owning a home, which is something I no longer wish to do for a few reasons.

In planning for this, there many things I wanted to consider first, especially after reading many posts in this sub:

• Am I running from anything or do I expect Japan to fix any "problem" I have? Nope, in all honesty I could just stay where I am at for almost the rest of my life. But on the other hand, moving to Japan represents a new challenge that if possible to overcome, is something I would likely be proud of forever.

• What about being isolated in a different culture? This is not something I am worried about for a few reasons that I don't want to go deep into, but I am wholly prepared for it in my own way.

• What if I fail? This is probably the biggest one, Japan is something I want to do long term and failure for me would basically be failing to either learn the language and/or failing to get an adequate job. I think worst case scenario would be things not working out and I basically move back to America and just continue on with my career, it's definitely just a bit scary especially for someone who has almost never not had a job.

• Am I concerned about (very) poor work-life balance? Oh the things I have had to do in Accounting, while I would certainly love to avoid anything bad, I have significant experience in this area.

As for the plan? It seems that language school while job hunting would be my best bet. My goal would be intensively (and I mean intensively) study to get to N1, which combined with my CPA and experience, should hopefully be attractive to companies there. The language really is the biggest thing for me, I've studied on and off for a long time but with the prospect of moving being so distant, it was hard to stick with. I was able to use it quite a bit during my last trip and significantly cut down on English which was great, but I would not claim any sort of competency past maybe early N3, but even then.

So yeah I don't expect anyone to read all of this, although I am curious if anyone here has something like this while being at a similar level in their career. Some parts definitely feel easier for me, I have no kids, no pets, divorced, so not much tying me down here.

Side note: My research has indicated that the US CPA license is respected in Japan and I would not need to obtain a Japanese CPA license (from the sounds of it, this would almost be impossible without being fluent). If anyone has any experience in this area, would be appreciated.