I got six downvotes because I asked the same question , rip my karma <| sep |> My wife and i have been considering moving to japan for a few years . everyone kept telling us how hard it is to move there and get a work permit . i kept hearing story after story about how my friends and their friends all got denied work permits unless they were married to a national . So she threw out her cv to a few academic institutions and we talked to somebody at the consulate . The academic institutions all got back to my wife within a couple of days wanting to talk more and the consulate basically said no problem for you and he me can ride your permit for his own . I didn ' t realize how intense they were about the education thing until we went through that . She has a phd in education from an ivy .