Eng 
日本語 
Dedicating 6 months of your working holiday visa to learn Japanese, is a great path for you to get a job in Japan!
After graduating college in France and gaining 5 years of experience at a startup IT company, Fabrice chose to come to Japan with a working holiday visa. Why did he choose to give up his position of IT manager of a company that was growing rapidly and take the challenge to come to Japan?
I always wanted to experience working overseas. I thought it was my last chance to have a working holiday visa. I hesitated between USA, Canada and Japan, but I decided to try Japan which was the most culturally different from France.
He came to Japan and started taking Japanese lessons once a week. At the time, he had a level around JLPT N4 and could hardly make a conversation. But he decided to apply himself to improving his Japanese conversation skills during the first 6 months. He had heard about Coto Japanese Academy from an engineer friend living in Japan.
As an engineer, I must say, I was gladly surprised by the quality of the website. Clear and simple with a great design, it is beyond all the messy Japanese websites you usually have for schools! (laughs)
After comparing prices with other places, he must say it was a little more expensive. But with the small size classes, the individual counselling and the experienced teachers, he decided it was worth it. He enrolled first for 3 months and was so satisfied that he applied for 3 more months for a total of 6 months of intensive course.
I’m very surprised with my improvement since I came to Japan. In the first 4 months, I could already talk mostly in Japanese with my Japanese friends. So much, that I surprised an acquaintance I had met on my second month in Japan. I’m using more and more Japanese in my SNS communications, and people around me are surprised with my progress as well.
Fabrice began job hunting after finishing the 6 months course and brilliantly got a job at a major IT company that is popular in Japan. We asked his advice to people looking for jobs.
The many different customs of Japanese job interviews gave a very interesting experience. For example, there were 8 interviewers for just myself. If I had one advice, it would be to train yourself by taking interviews for positions that you are the least interested in, before applying for what you really want.
Having Japanese skills will also give a good impression, even if it’s not required! In my case, having taken a Japanese course for 6 months helped in convincing the interviewers that I was serious about living in Japan.
Next step
Above all, he is excited about his new job experience. He wants to learn more about Japan and he’s happy he can use the Japanese he learned so far. He successfully passed the N3 in December and this year he wants to raise his level to reach the N2. We look forward to his future success!
