Becoming Japanese

A few months ago an American interested in becoming Japanese mentioned to me that he looked forward to not needing to repay his crushing student debt he left back in America. The United States has gone through an unfortunate bubble of costs for real estate in tech areas (ex. Silicon Valley), healthcare, and education, have seen its costs escalate wildly out of control over the past few decades. Most people attempt to solve the education cost dilemma by taking on student loans, which is a special type of loan that you must eventually pay back — you cannot escape the debt by declaring personal bankruptcy. This seemingly inescapable debt, compared with the changing nature of the workforce where people who choose non- STEM  employment find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet compared to past generations, has led some to consider desperate measures. Some have proposed intentionally forcing the government's hand by collectively not paying student debt en masse — suc...

(Most graphs in this post are redrawn to reflect absolute numbers instead of percentages) Last year, I encouraged people who were native English speakers in living in Japan, regardless of whether they were naturalized Japanese citizens or not, to participate in a short 26 question survey run by Victoria Ferauge, an American academic expat (and political advocate relating to various nationality issues) who has lived in various parts of the world including Osaka and Versailles, France. Over six hundred (615) valid participants were tabulated from June to August of 2016, and the results were published for the University of Kent on March 24th, 2017 as part of a master's dissertation. I received permission to republish the raw data and add my interpretation here. Of the questions, the first two questions: Do you live in Japan? Are you a native speaker of English? … determined whether or not the remaining 24 questions, listed below, would apply. Disclaimer : while the ...

Japan, like many other countries, has a "high skilled worker" only preference (with no quotas or caps) when it comes to the immigration of single people with no pre-existing connection to Japan. Thus, most of its visas — such as Instructor, Engineer, Specialist in Humanities, etc. — have an implicit college/university four-year (not a short-term) degree requirement. Actually, most of the working visas also don't explicitly require a degree. In lieu of a degree, they normally want evidence of industry experience. This industry experience requirement can often be as high as ten years, and they often won't count any work done, even as a full-time employee, performed as a minor. The result of this policy is that if you don't have a degree from a non-associate non-trade school institution of higher learning, getting permission to legally work in Japan is difficult. Naturalization, however, has no explicit college (or even high school) graduation requirement. Li...