Teaching Job in Japan with No Degree

I am currently pursuing a degree, taking classes online, but do not have one yet. My girlfriend, who I have been dating for three years and who is Japanese, and I are hoping to get married in February. We met on my first visit to Japan and have been traveling back and forth to see each other several times a year. This is predicated, though, on the hope that I will be able to work using a marriage visa. Otherwise we would need to wait until I graduate next May. This was our original plan, but its hell to be apart.

I have a TEFL certification but no teaching experience, outside of about 6 months of volunteer work. Will I be able to easily find a teaching job in Japan? I've heard demand is high, and requirements low if you do not need to be sponsored for a visa. I would be living in Saitama, for context. The pay doesnt have to be great, just enough to suppprt myself. I have savings to support about three months of job searching.

Doubtful you will get a look in as an English teacher. Your qualifications are substandard.

If you are getting married. Then a spouse visa is most likely better. No qualification requirements and you can get any job.

Get your degree. You could probably easily find a job teaching, but English teacher is a dead end job unless you are a certified teacher or pursue a masters degree in ESL.

The number of foreigners teaching English in Japan as a career is incredibly small. You don�ft want to teach English for a few years get fed up and have no degree to fall back on.

Ask yourself this, �gIf I was in my home country, would I stop my studies to go work retail?�h Because teaching ESL in Japan is about the same as retail wherever you are from.

It's an extra three or four months wait. If you were two years away from graduation then I could perhaps understand you questioning what to do, but it's three or four months for something which could potentially affect every aspect of your life, your happiness, your family's standard of living.

If you rush off to Japan when you are less than half a year away from graduation then frankly nobody should hire you. Sorry to be blunt, but it's not a smart decision at all.

Get your degree.

Thanks for your replies so far, everyone. It looks like it may not be too dofficult to get a job.

That said, I do wanna clear one thing up. I'm not planning on discontinuing my studies; ive spoken to my school and will be able to tale all the courses I need online. So Im not intending to teach as a career, it would be just until i graduate May 2021.

It's actually a myth that foreigners need a college degree to get a job in Japan. You just need a company that will sponsor your work visa.
The problem is that there's a lot of non Japanese people with degrees that want to teach English in Japan, so there's very stiff competition, and most language schools require that you have a degree. Your TEFL certificate would help as would your volunteer work, but the odds of getting someone to hire you with those things alone are very slim.

I know this because I had a friend who owns a language school in Japan. She hired me as an employee and I lived in Japan, working for her, for about a year despite having no college degree and no teaching experience.