Life in Japan - A Q&A session

Since coming to Japan, I've had a bunch of different people ask me similar questions about living in Japan/getting a visa/Japan in general, I thought this might be a good time to do a Q&A blog post. There's probably some things people have been wondering and never asked, or didn't even know they wanted to know. I also wanted to write about what are common questions to ask before coming to Japan, but I realised I had been doing so much research for almost half my life on coming to Japan, I'm not actually sure what is common knowledge any more!

Visas

I have done an awful lot of research on the different type of visas a UK Passport holder can get for coming to Japan long-term. I feel like I know a lot, not everything, but a fair bit, and I should really share that knowledge as a lot of people don't even seem to know the basics of visas.

Q: What's a visa?

Visas are cool little stamps that go into your passport, that allow you special access to stay in certain countries. The most common that you've probably had before is a holiday visa, you don't need to apply for these, they are issued automatically upon landing, and usually valid for around 90 days. With a British passport, we have access to the most countries (173!) that we can just go to without applying for anything.

Q: What type of visas can I get and how long do visas last?

Japanese Holiday Visas last 90 days. They are actually renewable, but it's at immigrations discretion and if they suspect you want to stay longer because you are working it will be denied, as it is illegal to work in any way on this visa.

I am currently on a Working Holiday Visa. This is valid for up to 1 year from date of entry to Japan, but sadly non renewable past that. Working Holiday Visas entitle the holder to work pretty much full time when they are in Japan, excluding activities that involve selling alcohol or work in the entertainment sector. Working full time however, is not encouraged really, it's supposed to be treated as a year long holiday with the option of working to supplement your activities.

Probably the most common for foreigners looking to stay in Japan long term is an ordinary Working Visa. I find mainly Americans are on this visa, as they don't have the Working Holiday option. A Working visa is different in the way that you need to have a job in Japan first, to sponsor your visa. I think technically you can come on a holiday visa (for 90 days) and then switch to a working visa once you've found a job but personally I think that's really risky as if you don't find anything quickly it could mess up your plans having to leave and re enter.
If you plan to come to Japan for school long-term (longer than 6 months) you can get a Student Visa sponsored by the school, once you have applied and been accepted. This can be with anywhere from a language school to a university, though language schools usually have more relaxed entry requirements, and it can be difficult to get into a Japanese University, especially if you are proficient in the language. Student visas are usually valid for the length of your course plus a couple of months after, though they can be extended if you want to stay at school longer, or need to resit a year, as long as the school is still willing to sponsor you.
There are a few other specialist type visas too, such as a cultural visa, which is quite uncommon and not many are granted every year, and spouse or dependant visas, which I think are self explanatory.

Q: How do I get a visa, and how hard is it?
For a working holiday Visa like mine, I had to go to the Japanese Embassy in London in person to apply, and return a week later in person to collect my visa once it had been granted. Prior to that, I had spent almost a month preparing, as you have to write two short 'essays', a personal statement and an itinerary, explaining why you want to come to Japan and what you plan to do (and it has to be fairly detailed), I also needed 3 months worth of bank statements, with cleared funds of over £3000 to prove I could sustain myself here, and there was also an application form and photos I had to provide. Really, it wasn't that difficult I just had to be meticulous in making sure I got all the details right as if you are denied you must wait a year before you can apply again. Apparently they also only accept 1000 visas a year too, with April being the start of the new year, but I didn't have any problem with that and from my researched I gathered it's not really an issue, not that many people from the UK actually use this visa!
I can't really speak for the difficulty of the other visas, but usually if they are sponsored your contact in Japan initiates the process so I think there is a lot less preparation involved.

Life in Japan

I'm no expert, but I've been here 4 months now (plus 1 month last year) and I'm pretty used to living here now. Also, like I said earlier, I have done extensive research on living in Japan for at least 10 years of my life, I know a lot of things that aren't even necessarily relevant to how I'm living now but might be helpful to someone living alone etc. Who knows.

Q: Why did you go to Japan?
Since I was about 12 it has been my dream to live in Japan. I love the culture, the language, and Pokemon, I decided a long while ago even before my first visit here, that I wanted to stay for a while to experience everything properly. Originally my plan was to apply for the JET Programme. Even though I think I will never ever be able to be a teacher I even prepared to get a TEFOL qualification to teach over here. Luckily, this amazing opportunity to be an Au Pair came up, and to be honest its the perfect situation for me.

Q: What do you do in Japan?
My official job here is as an Au Pair, but I'm not really a traditional Au Pair. The family I am staying with have no children, instead I take care of their dogs (two cute poodles, Kuro and Shiro) and help with the housework as it is literally a mansion so there are a lot of things to do every day. I also spend a lot of time exploring (shopping) and I have Japanese lessons once a week.

Q: How different is Japan (to the UK)?
You can pretty much assume it's almost the opposite. But I really do love it here. There are a lot of cultural differences that I think really make sense in Japan, people are much more kind, you can absolutely not wear shoes in the house, everywhere is always clean and I have yet to eat a meal that wasn't completely delicious. There are a few things that feel a little difficult to get used to even still, the weather is a big one, arriving just before summer started meant that I was leaving 12C England for 35C Japan and that was hard to adjust to. There are also some terrifying bugs here that I can not cope with, and it's no joke or stereotype that there are robots everywhere. Well, maybe not everywhere but there are a few common shops that employ robots to greet you or help you and my morbid fear of robots makes it difficult to accept that.

General Japan 

I do know a bunch about Japan, honest.

Q: Are you allowed to use forks?
It's just kind of expected that foreigners don't know how to use chopsticks. Even now when older people see me using them I get all sorts of unnecessary praise for it, it's kind of funny.

Q: Do the cats meow differently?
It has come to my attention that some animals have different accents and that is true it is weird.

I hope you all enjoyed question time! If there are any unanswered questions though, please feel free to ask me, I guess I can keep this post updated and link to it somewhere!
So for now, またね〜 From Osaka!

Japanese Diary - Catch up!

Sooo.... It's been kinda a while since my last post - a month, oops! Actually, in total I've been in Japan almost 1/3 of the entire time I have here! I can't believe it really, it's been going so fast yet also I feel like I could have been here forever! Anyway, I thought since it had been such a while since my last post I should do a little summary of things I've done in the time. I actually do have a couple of bigger posts on the go at the moment, but procrastination and the fact I cleared up my laptop enough so that I can play games on it now has been getting in the way (Guild Wars 2 by the way, if anyone plays my user name is Roverandomness.4891). 

So what have I been up to these past weeks? Well excitingly, I've had a few visitors to Japan. I've also been investing a lot of time in baking, daring rescues, terrifying bug encounters and UNIVERSAL STUDIOS EEK!

First, I'll just let you all know even though I know you're dying to hear about it, bug encounters are getting their own post, because there is a lot to say about bugs, really there is. Also Universal Studios will probably be getting its own post sometime too, a detailed one once I've been again... ;)

Onto my catch up though, a couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with Kyoko and her son Tyler, who I actually know back from Torquay in England, although Kyoko's from Osaka originally, so it was pretty awesome to meet up whilst she was back visiting family! For anyone around the Devon area (of England), you should pop by Kyoko's place, aka the best Japanese restaurant ever, Maido Japanese Noodle Bar, you will not be disappointed!

We hung around Shinsaibashi for the day, for those who don't know Shinsaibashi is pretty much Osaka's equivalent to Harajuku in Tokyo, and it's great there! There's also an area called Amerika-mura, or America town, where everything is kinda American-y... But from a Japanese perspective, it's interesting anyway! In Shinsaibashi, we ate really good pizza, and wandered around loads of shops (including a really big Apple store!) until we stumbled across a newly opened Cosplay Cafe!

Weapons and props display, all handmade!

Cute balloon mascots

Anna and Elsa!

Base 2_5 had literally opened two days before so they were still establishing themselves, and upon entering we were greeted very enthusiastically by a couple of sweet girls in cosplay, and they showed us around and told us about a lot of the various props and handmade pieces that were around, and posed with us for loads of photos! They also told us to come back in a couple of hours, they have a daily cosplay show in the afternoon, so we decided to do just that. We came back a little early, and sat down to have drinks and cake before the show started, and my dessert was amazing! Strawberry and mango ice cream with chocolate cake and strawberries and cream, in case you were wondering. Japan really knows how to do dessert well. The show that day was an abridged version of Frozen! Both cosplayers looked great and their singing was pretty much perfect, too. After the show we spent a while getting photos with all the cosplayers, we also got interviewed by a TV news crew who wanted to ask me loads of questions about cosplay and it was terrifying T_T Unfortunately despite watching out for it, I never got to watch the show, that's probably a good thing though that all that awkwardness is hidden away forever.

Since Tyler really didn't want to go home, we continued to wander around after that, walking to Namba and exploring some more shops, and a small hidden shrine where you poured water on a statues head before praying, it was cute. Koko and Tyler had a plane to catch back to England though, so eventually we parted ways but I had a fun day!

Obviously we did purikura too

The next visitor I had was actually a weird one, one of Jason's friends from work finally decided to visit Japan after I helped him with visa stuff (He's from Nigeria, so he even had to apply for a holiday visa!) and he spent a few days in Osaka where I showed him around, and we went to USJ whoo!

First stop though, was the Pokemon Center, of course. I've been there tons already (maybe I should make a post about it sometime?) but Zino hadn't so of course we had to go, and as usual it was great. I bought some cute pokedolls and pikachu shaped cake moulds, Zino bought a pikachu pillow the size of me and then a snorlax plush that was even bigger. Still no idea how he got them back on the plane. But the highlight of my trip was Pokken.

If you don't know about Pokken, it's a Pokemon x Tekken fighting came crossover that released in Japan on arcade machines a couple of weeks ago. Arcades are still a pretty big deal in Japan, and the games that come out on Arcade are always being updated and sometimes have huge queues of people waiting to try them out. I've been waiting to try Pokken since the day it came out, and they installed a few machines in the Pokemon Center so perfect excuse to try some, as it was later in the afternoon and no queues, so I got a few games in! You play against other people online though, so actually I had no idea what I was doing and lost the first few times, oops. After Pokemon Center we just wondered around for a while, discovered a new shopping centre I never knew existed and ate cake and ice cream of course.

Welcome to USJ

Next on the list though was USJ. Like I said I won't go into a lot of detail as its kinda big and deserves its own post, but just know there were minions EVERYWHERE, Harry Potter world was amazing but no way were we waiting 3 hours to queue for the rides, I got a souvenir Butterbeer tankard, and everything was really really expensive. 

Welcome to Hogsmeade!

Apart from Harry Potter world though, it wasn't actually as busy as I was expecting which was pleasant, but there still wasn't a lot of time to do everything we/I wanted. We didn't even manage to eat anything the whole day. But I think now I know roughly the layout and structure, next time I go will be a lot more efficient. And skip Jurassic Park its good but not worth how soaked and uncomfortable it made me.

As for other things that have been going on, I've actually been having a really great time baking in Japan! People who know me in person will definitely know that I LOVE cakes and baking, and often don't know when to stop, making 50+ cupcakes at a time and just wanting to bake all the time. Well, here it's not a lot different. With the added bonus of having an entire industrial sized kitchen all to myself, fully equipped with almost everything I need (Except an electric whisk!!!), baking in Japan is super fun and although finding the ingredients I need can be a little bit of a challenge, I've baked a lot. It's also really great that my host family loves cake, especially my 'English' cakes. So far, Apple and Cinnamon Loaf cake and Choco-Orange/Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownies have been at the top, but I've also make lemon drizzle cake, Victoria sponge, strawberry cupcakes and a Strawberry trifle, the trifle being particularly as I made the custard and Strawberry Jelly from scratch, as they are not ingredients commonly found in Japan. Over the next couple of weeks I want to try making Checker board Icebox Cookies too, and pretty much anything else I come across. 

Individual Victoria Sponges, Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes and Lemon Drizzle Cupcakes.

TRIFLE!!!

 Okay, this is probably it for my mini update, I'm going to go work on all my other really long posts now and try and make some sort of schedule ahahahahahaha. As always if you've got any questions you'd like to ask me about living in Japan, leave me a comment and I'll try and be as helpful as I can.

So for now, またね〜 From Osaka,