Hey guys, my partner and I have wanted to experience living in Japan for a long time now, we both studied Japanese in school (and are still actively studying) and are trying to figure out how to get over there together. She is a teacher so JET was an obvious choice for her and something she really wants to try. I want to continue my studies and have a strong genuine interest in attending a Japanese language school. The problem is, because of the tight turnaround between JET placements and departure, its nearly impossible for me to apply to a long-term school after we know where she will be, so I would have to apply before she knows and just hope it is close to her placement (no way this would work out lol). I considered that maybe I could first attend a short term school, which allows you to apply sometimes only a month in advance, and while I'm attending I could apply to a long-term school that I know will be close to her. The issue here is that for the long term school you need to get a student visa, which generally needs to be done in your home country and only after you have applied to the school. I also considered just applying for a school to meet the deadline and then transferring somewhere closer after the fact, but from how it looks online transferring language schools can be a nightmare. Finally we considered trying to predict her placement based on the 3 preferences JET offers, but I hear that people only get one of their top three choices about 30% of the time; it feels incredibly risky to bank it off that.
We have no expectation that we'd be able to live together or even within the same town, but it would be a miracle at this point if we could even end up as close as an hour or two away. Has anyone ever successfully done something like this? Is there anything I'm missing here that could look into? Thanks for any help in advance, I know this is a HUGE longshot but we're trying our best anyways because its something we really care about!
by Pale-Apartment8182