First, sorry for the long post...

I'm a nearly-30 year old American living in Taiwan with my wife, studying Chinese to get ready for graduate school in early Chinese philology/history. I applied to a few MA programs here and think I may get accepted, but then we found a really amazing job opportunity for my wife in Osaka, and it looks like she might get hired for it.

At first glance this may sound like a bad career move for me (though it's a great one for her), but since Japanese is a requirement for pretty much any PhD program I may apply to in my field, spending a few years in Japan learning Japanese will help my application a lot, even if in a different way than getting an MA in Taiwan would. Doing an MA in Chinese in Japan is also an option, if we decide we want to stay that long. There are several respected scholars in my field in Japan (hence the requirement to learn Japanese), so it's an option I'd be happy with, and I'd be able to continue working on my Chinese at the same time.

So I have some questions. I've done some searching here and on other sites, but sometimes you just don't even know what you don't know, so I figured I'd ask, and hopefully people could point me in the right direction at least. If I had the time, I'd just keep digging around Google, but we'll have to make a pretty quick decision if they offer her the job, so I'm hoping this will help us find more of the information we need.

The first is a work/visa question. If my wife gets the job, I get a dependent visa, which as I understand it means I don't have to be enrolled at a school or working for a company to stay in the country. I plan on self-studying Japanese unless I find that being in a school will help (it certainly did with Chinese, though of course it has its shortcomings). I do freelance translation (Chinese-English), proofreading, editing, and tutoring work in Taiwan, and I'd like to do the same in Japan. Is that allowed? Do I need a work permit if I want to freelance or can I just get to it? This sort of thing is pretty gray in Taiwan (and if you know anybody with a higher social status than a street sweeper they can talk you out of trouble), but I understand it's a bit more cut and dry in Japan. I'm just having a hard time finding information on it.

How is the accent in Osaka? I'm accustomed to learning a "standard" language and conversing with locals who speak with a very non-standard accent, and I've come through it with the sort of accent that a well-educated native Mandarin speaker from Taipei might have. Even when I change my pronunciation around mainlanders, they still know I learned Chinese in Taiwan, because my word choice, phrasing, and intonation is Taiwanese, and I wouldn't have it any other way. But I'm wondering if the situation in Osaka is similar? Is Kansai-ben mostly like standard Japanese, but with a few distinctive differences? Or will it be like studying Mandarin in a Cantonese-speaking environment?

If I do decide to do an MA there, how difficult is the university entrance exam? Is it something that's worth doing one of those university prep courses for, or is it not a big deal. Taiwan's is insanely difficult for a non-native speaker, but fortunately we don't have to take it. Taiwanese people test into grad school, foreigners apply and write a research proposal. By the way, doing that (in Chinese!) was also a really difficult process.

What sort of salary should we hope for, if we want to live reasonably comfortably, say on the edge of town, or even just outside town? It might take a while for me to get up and running with the freelance work, so at first we may have to live only on her salary. The job is at a really nice international school, and I know at one of the big schools in Tokyo they get just over 500,000 yen per month, plus a housing allowance. But that's Tokyo. Is around 400,000 a reasonable expectation for an international school in Osaka? From what I've found, that should be reasonably comfortable, right? Sorry if that sounds like a stupid question, but the cost of living in Taipei is really cheap compared to Japan, so it's hard for me to get a good idea of what it's like. We eat like locals most of the time here, but we do go to western, Japanese, or pricier local ones a few times a month. Our social life is fairly moderate for expats, but we do like to go out some with friends.

I'll actually be in Osaka and Kyoto for the next 6 days (for vacation, not related to the job), so I'll get a feel for what the city is like at least. I may not have a chance to reply while I'm on the trip, but I will be reading any responses.

Again, sorry for the long post, but generally I find the more information, the better. Thanks in advance for any help!

My guess would be that the work visa thing is also a bit of a gray area in Japan. If your clients and payments and so on are outside of Japan the Japanese government pretty much has no way of knowing that you're working. If you have a dependents visa you can work up to a certain number of hours a week (I think after getting permission from immigration). If you were doing freelance work it would be pretty much impossible for them to prove that you are working more hours than the limit, and I doubt that they would really care that much. To be sure you really need to check with immigration, but be aware that for this sort of gray area you might actually get different answers depending on who you speak to.

It is very hard to say in terms of living expenses as it varies so much from person to person. My wife and I are a similar age to you and living in Osaka and I'd say that about 300,000 a month is enough for most of our daily expenses, a couple of meals out a week and basic shopping needs. Anything more than that can be used for savings, travelling etc.

Intial housing costs can be expensive because usually apartments are not furnished and may require payment of an initial lump sum when moving in.

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bflatnin Wrote:I do freelance translation (Chinese-English), proofreading, editing, and tutoring work in Taiwan, and I'd like to do the same in Japan. Is that allowed? Do I need a work permit if I want to freelance or can I just get to it?

The "dependent / designated activities" visa (R-家族滞在/特定活動) does not permit you to work. However, you can apply for a permit that will allow you to work 28 hours a week or you if you get a full time job you can apply for a work visa of your own.

For freelance work from outside of Japan you obviously have the option of working illegally, but you might want to at least apply for the additional activities permit as it is fairly trivial and painless to get. If you decide you want to get your own work visa based on your freelance translation I would be happy to discuss my experiences doing so. (Hint: As an American it's very, very easy.)

Obviously being fully legal has tax implications and doing anything illegal carries some amount of risk.

IANAL/TINLA

Yeah, as dismox said rent isn't too high in Osaka, especially when compared to Tokyo. About 40,000 a month would get you something really quite basic, 60,000 might get you something a bit newer and in a better area, and above 80,000 you should be able to get somewhere that is quite new and also a decent size for two people.

There are also a lot of cheap shops and restaurants (plenty of expensive ones too) so it is possible to live reasonably cheaply if you have to.

Thanks so much for the responses, guys!

Just got back from the trip last night. I really, really loved it. We actually spent more time in Kyoto than in Osaka, but we spent enough time in Osaka to know we'd really like living there.

I had little trouble understanding people when they used the little bit of Japanese that I do know, and had no problems carrying on a few conversations entirely in Japanese for simple things like asking for maps, paying at restaurants, chit-chat about where I'm from, etc. I did notice that people tend to pronounce the 'u' in です, ます, etc. more fully than on the textbook recordings I have, guessing that's a Kansai thing?

I'd like to keep everything fully legal in Japan if I can, and I don't mind abiding by the working limitations. It will give me the time I need to study Japanese, after all.

We haven't heard anything back from the school, but they were on spring break so it may take some time. We'll see how it goes. I'll be working on my Japanese one way or the other anyway.

I just realized I never updated this.

The job in Osaka didn't work out. No big deal. We're still in Taipei, but she actually got a job—an even better one—in Tokyo starting this fall, so I'll be moving there in August. Her school will give me a dependent visa and a work permit. I'll be able to keep translating there, and will also try to find some work tutoring English. Her school will let me tutor there some, and they pay well for that. The primary objective will be learning Japanese though.

Anyway, thanks to everyone again for the help.