Short version:
6 year resident, 7 in April, but current job contract will finish then. Until now just 1-year renewed visas from ALT'ing (contracting companies, not JET) and one short eikaiwa gig. If I go home or possibly another country for around a year at least, if I'm able to find better work and come back, will that gap hurt my PR application down the road?
More info:
M34, American. At the end of this contract I'm done English teaching, and if there is absolutely no other way I'll be allowed to live here then I guess shikata ga nai。
I'm not giving up entirely on searching for other jobs here yet, still reaching out in my network and registered with Hello Work. But I did my first 2 attempts at N2 last July and December, and after failing the first time, the 2nd didn't feel very different. So with no JLPT cert, non-English teaching opportunities are unlikely to come up, even if I'm conversational and have pretty good reading comprehension.
A big part of me is burned out and ready to regroup, sukiru appu and come back with the creds and skills to find work where I can actually use the skillsets I care about.
On the other hand, being this close to 10 years just to mess up my chances at PR now seems like it would make these past 7 years a waste. Unless, of course, I can get N2, which would be way more difficult to study & prep for outside of Japan. Not only daily listening and conversation, but things like being near a good local library full of Japanese reading practice would be something I'd miss.
Ironically, even though up until now I've only gotten 1-year visas, I just got a 3-year one. But only as a shidou-joshu。Sure I'm beyond sick of being an ALT, but ngl that really felt like a weird little sign, like if I gaman suru for those 2 more years and then just ooone more, it would all be worth it. Yeah I know, sunk cost fallacy.
There's also the issue of my age, iirc 35+ is really lousy for PR points but let me know if that's mistaken.
I love it a lot here, I'm constantly learning new parts of history & local cultures outside of work, and I don't need to convince anyone how safe & simple it is to live in Japan. And I'd really like to at least secure PR and then be able to freelance or bartend or just about anything else while able to spend time out of the country. But if it comes at the cost of all the time trapped in these classrooms and wearing my genki mask every damn day, I'd need some convincing.
Would like to hear from anyone with a similar experience, especially since multiple people in person have told me the "late on just ONE tax payment, PR cancelled" story, so the whole process has me paranoid. Because if someone reads this and tells me "I left for a year and now I can never get PR" or something like that, I'd reconsider.
Either way, thanks!
EDIT
Ok it definitely resets the 10 years required for PR, got it
by tsumari-Jicama