I want to move to Japan from America

...actually i was being sarcastic. the post should very obviously not have been taken seriously. :-)

Update. Joined the air force, and getting PC's(stationed) to Japan after short stay in Idaho.

I've been hoping for an update on this one! Are you sure the air force is the right choice? Won't you be locked in for x number of years as a result? And do you get that much of a choice about where you are stationed? Will you be able to get the "Japanese experience" you've been hoping for from within an US base? (I suppose you can travel outside it on your days off...)

Hopefully it's the right choice for you. Good luck.

I thought you were going to Walmart. Anyway, U.S. Air Force bases in Japan are in the middle of nowhere, and U.S. military bases are the U.S., not Japan. So I hope you do your best to try and go out of the gate and socialize with the locals as well as the expats who are pretty different from people inside the base. Peace.

Umm... I think I am missing here something. You started this conversation saying that you want to leave the US as quickly as possible, and now you want to join the US military in the hope that they will station you in Japan (as opposed to lets say Iraq)?
This turn in the conversation for shows for me, that you have really no clear idea what you want. So probably:
1) travel to Japan and Germany for a short trip (a few weeks maybe)
2) decide on your favourite
3) get a degree (either in US, Germany or Japan)
4) try to find work. Finding work in Japan is not easy, if you dont have experience.

I had a friend who had already been working in Japan, was quite fluent and had to leave her job and was unable to find a new one within 3 months and then needed to leave Japan. She had work experience, a BA, and Japanese, but with the visa system here you cannot just take up any job to get you through.
I also had friends at Japanese language school (attended 1.5 years, still not really fluent), who after graduating and passing N1 also did not manage to find a job and had to return.

That said, Japan is a great place to live, but you need to be able to live here and thats not that easy.

Actually the idea of marrying a Japanese might be the easier option. At least easier than joining the US military, and more likely that you will actually end up in Japan and not Iraq.

He said "joined" the air force, not "joining". He cant simply quit now.

To sum this up in a way that makes sense.
I spent 1 year on station in Idaho when I was luckily (because im a first term airman) able to PCS early as the normal would be 2 years.
Air Force was the only choice that made sense to me. It's hard to explain, but either way I needed the life experience. I'm also taking my younger sister on a 1 month(ish) trip through Japan, and then going to visit a friend stationed in the UK. Already been planned, and scheduled.
As far as I can tell when it comes to the Japanese experience, no I wont be able to see it first hand unless I take a lot of leave to experience it. (You don't get a choice on station. I just got very lucky)

You don't get stationed in the middle east in any career field, and I don't even think any branch. You deploy, but that's just six months. Also i'm not in a career field that is ever in danger when deployed.

Plus free
-food
-housing
-utility's
-collage
-plane trips (This is 50/50 space A flights are unreliable)
-and what ever other entitlements I cant think of.

So you've done this to be able to move to Japan, but admit that you won't get the experience you wanted once in Japan. So what was the point of doing this, again?

It's been a couple of years since you started this thread now. In that time you could have been halfway to a degree that could potentially land you a working visa in Japan, where you could actually, you know, live in Japan like you wanted to.

Congrats, many years ago I joined the USAF for the exact reason you did. Sadly, I got medically discharged early into my career but it was for the best because I realized that I joined the military for the wrong reasons. Further more, I qualified for 9S100 (was applied geophysics back in the day) but my recruited pushed me to go in under something else since 9S100 jobs are a rare thing to come by.

Either way, I'm older, wiser and now attempting the journey to Japan again. This time as an entrepreneur.

Yeah my recruiter talked me out of linguist into open mechanical. I liked the idea of a low skill job in the first place and got 1p0x1(AFE) not awful, but definitely not career job.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this. The Japanese government provides scholarships to get your undergraduate degree in Japan; they are very competitive, but it provides you with airfare to the country, tuition, a stipend, and Japanese language education. The process is quite long and involved, but there's no reason not to at least apply.

http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/english/html/mext-scholarship-info.html

However, as a U.S. citizen, getting a degree from an American college and using that as a springboard to study abroad in Japan is also a very good option, as other people have mentioned.