Working + living in Japan

I'm currently a 20 year old british National.

I don't have a college degree but I can speak fluent Japanese.

I have a Japanese girlfriend named Natsumi who I met about a year ago online, since then we've met twice and she's stayed at my house for a period of 3 months over christmas.

Currently I'm in work in the uk, but to be honest, I miss my girlfriend. She can't come over to England and stay again because she's my girlfriend (For some reason if she tells the immigration officer when she lands that she's meeting her boyfriend they'll try to deport her), so I'm trying to get over to Japan.

The thing is it costs a lot of money to keep jumping between England and Japan, and neither of us can afford to fritter money away on 2 week-1 month long visits.

We just want to settle down together, and I don't want to stay in England.

So my question is, how can I move to Japan, get a job and finally live with my girlfriend for a long-term period of time without a college education?

What kind of channels do I have to go through? I know there's always the option to go for a spouse visa, and get married, but to be honest, we met a year ago. I'd love to marry her but, someday. Not now.

And I feel if I said anything about a spouse visa to her it'd seem like I'm using her to get into Japan, which is NOT the case. So I want to do it on my own, without using her nationality as leverage in any way.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

I just want to live with the girl I love and work honestly in Japan. -_- Why is life so hard.

If you are a UK national, you can come on a Working Holiday Visa - which allows you to stay in Japan for six months (or one year?) during which you can do casual work to earn some money. (The intention of this visa is to help young people see other countries while providing them with a way to earn some pocket money to help with the travel expenses.)

If you are without a college degree, probably this is the only option right now. With college degree, your options will expand significantely.

BTW, when your girlfriend wants to visit you in the UK, she can maybe say that she is going to do sightseeing, and will be looking for an English language school to study in the future. I'm not encouraging lying, but having a boyfriend in the UK should not make her worried about deportation...

The working holiday visa is definitely one of your best bets.

If you have the money, a study visa would probably be a much better bet in the long term. It would be a lot easier to get a job in Japan with a degree.

You may also want to look into UK companies and that have offices in Japan (plus the government). You may be able to find a job through one of them, since fluency in Japanese is not all that common in the UK.

I'm not completely sure about this, but from what I've researched so far, if you work as a freelancer, you don't actually need a work visa if you don't work for Japanese clients. Basically, it has to be doing something where it doesn't matter if you are in the UK or Japan, you could still do the same job. I would double check that before trying it though, I have yet to see anything official on if they have a policy against doing that.

Matheau,
I'd be careful about the freelancer thing. You say a job where it doens't matter where you are, but this is where Japanese Immigration authorities approach comes in - they grant visas (thus permission to stay) to those who *need* to be in Japan, for work, for study, or for family circumstances. So if you don't need to be in Japan - there is no visa category for that. But if you stay in Japan, you need to register as a resident, pay taxes, etc., so then a visa does become an issue. I believe the consensus among regulars on this forum is that you cannot do freelance work unless you have other status unrelated to employment, such as Spouse visa.

John (and Matheau),
Yes, if you can find employment with a UK company/entity that sends you to their Japan office, that would be another option.

You miss her but not enough to marry her? Marry the girl.