While it can sometimes feel like an easy way towards a visa, the "Spouse of Japanese National" visa is one of the most complicated procedure I had to do in Japan. Luckily, if you have all the information in hand beforehand, you should only have to do one trip to your immigration bureau. I got my first spouse visa 4 years ago. At the time, they gave me a 1-year visa, which from what I heard, is pretty common. Note that of course, applying for such a visa requires of you that you are married to a Japanese national. Upon renewal (which I will explain in this article too), I got three years. I will share with you my experience of the process and hopefully, that will help you in your own application.

Eight months have passed since the March 11th earthquake which triggered a tsunami that devastated the eastern coast of Japan and provoked the worst nuclear incident since Chernobyl. With the initial fears and the foreign media frenzy now over, one could think that all is back to normal in Japan. From inside Japan however, things are still far from normal, even for those who were fortunate enough to live several hundreds of kilometers away from Fukushima and its crippled nuclear power plant. One of the main problems that all people have to face is to ensure their family’s safety as regards to the food that they consume. While the entire population of Japan is concerned, foreigners are a lot more susceptible than any other as they might not necessarily be able to access or understand crucial information regarding to the provenance and relative safety of the food that they purchase.

I f you are going to spend a significant length of time in Japan, I am sure that you will consider the option of renting a flat of your own. Although it is, to most people, a sign of ultimate achievement in terms of settling in Japan, it is also the hardest of all procedures that I have faced so far in the country. After talking to you about how to get a working holiday visa and how to find a job in Japan, I will try in this article to give you the nuts and bolts of apartment search in Japan.

In a previous article, I covered the main requirements for obtaining a working holiday visa in Japan. I would now like to go through the job hunting process which should logically follow. Like in every country, finding a job in Japan can be difficult, particularly at the moment, in a time of economic moroseness. But take heart however, it is not impossible and on many aspects, if you have the right profile and the right approach, you might find the Japanese job market more flexible and full of opportunities than the one of your country of origin. In some cases, some people have been able to completely reinvent themselves professionally in Japan!

I got a lot of demands for an English translation to this one. It took some time but here it is, the translation of my original article. While I was preparing my application for a working holiday visa, I obviously had to read through a great deal of web pages, blogs and forums only to find very inconsistent and contradictory information. In this article, I would like to sum up the main points that I think are essential to make your application successful.