Japan Working Holiday Documents
These are the 2 documents I used to get a Working Holiday Visa to Japan as a trans woman in 2024.
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Itinerary
October 2024
I will stay in Tokyo for a few weeks while I look for a house share.
I plan to use Oakhouse to find a house share which is foreigner friendly and has an English website.
During my first few weeks I will acquaint myself with the Tokyo area and gain an understanding of where I will want to stay.
In particular I plan to visit:
- The Imperial Palace, especially at night
- Glitch coffee roasters, i have heard the best coffee in Tokyo is here
- Kawago for its Edo-period castle town
- Halloween in Tokyo. I was hoping for Shibuya but it might be banned, so perhaps somewhere else.
- Join a japanese language class, there’s some in Shibuya which look nice.
November 2024
I plan to seek out some rock climbing gyms in Tokyo as it's my hobby and get used to rock climbing in Tokyo.
November also has some tech conferences (Open source summit) I would love to attend.
As well as this I plan to visit:
- Kabosu the dog statue in Chiba and the great parks there
- Bookoff super bazaar for the largest second hand bookshop in tokyo
- Tokyo german village
- Kamogawa sea world
- Kamakura to experience the seaside
- Enoshima Island for the view of Mt. Fuji
- Visit Disneyland
December 2024
I will spend Christmas in Tokyo, hopefully with my house share. I plan to see as much of the sights as possible.
Somethings I plan to do are:
- Try a KFC christmas box
- Visit one of the many markets like Yokohama or Shibuya
- Visit Shinjuku Ni-chome, the largest gay town in the world
- Find presents and gifts to mail home to my friends. Possibly from Harajuku
January 2025
I will move to Osaka and spend a few weeks getting used to living here, having to find a house share. I will probably use Borderless House to find one.
Some big highlights I want to see are:
- Osaka castle
- The aquarium
- Visit universal studios
- Visit Dotonobori.
February 2025
I plan to visit Sapporo for the world famous snow festival. I will still be renting a house share in Osaka.
While in the north I also plan to see:
- The Hokkaido Shinto Shrine
- The Sapporo Beer Musuem
- Odori Park
- Shikaribetsu Igloo Village
- Asahiyama Zoo
March 2025
It should be cherry blossom season by now so I plan to find great parks like:
- Kema Sakuranomiya park
- Daisen Park
- I have heard the Japan mint head office has nice sakura trees.
I also plan to visit nearby areas like Nara. In particular:
- Asuka with its weird keyhole like rocks. It is said that these stones inspired the Pokémon “Unknown”.
- Todai-ji temple
- Nara park, especially to meet the friendly deer
April 2025
It is the world fair in Osaka. I plan to spend as much time as possible seeing everything I can.
The opening ceremony is on the 13th, but exact details have not been released yet.
It’s held in Yumeshima and tickets cost 4000 yen to walk around the expo.
There are not many details on any events related to this yet other than the expo itself.
My plan is to keep April mostly free so I can enjoy the expo.
May 2025
it’s my birthday this month so I plan to visit:
- Awajii Island for all the parks and especially the Minature World Park.
- The Awajii monkey centre
- And finally take a cruise to see the whirlpools as i have never seen one in my life.
I also plan to visit Hiroshima to see:
- The Atomic Bomb Dome
- The memorial Musuem
- The peace memorial.
- Hiroshima Orizuru tower to make a paper crane and drop it into the building.
June 2025
I plan to visit Nagasaki to see:
- The Atomic Bomb museum
- The Peace Park
I will also take short detours to:
- Huis Ten Bosch, the theme park which mimics a Dutch village
- Saruiwa, the monkey rock
- The life size gundam in Fukuoka
- The Miyajidake Shrine
- Beppu, the spa city.
July - End of stay
I will still be living in Osaka.
I plan to start applying for jobs in the UK again to ensure I can transition back. It can take a while to find a new job, it took me over 110 applications to find my current job.
I imagine most of my time will be in interviews but I plan to do somethings like:
- Visit the Osaka expo fair again. It runs until October and each month may have different events or shows.
- There is a language course from July to August at the Osaka Japanese Language Education Centre. It’s an intensive course so most of my time will be spent doing this or interviewing.
Since I plan to leave in late September / early October from August onwards I will need to dedicate all my time to make sure I can transition back to the UK.
Purpose of Visit
I'd like to stay in the country for longer than 6 months and have the ability to support myself through part time work if needed.
Some of these reasons are:
Language Learning
I have been learning Japanese for a while now and I am sitting my JLPT N5 in the summer.
1 year immersing in the language would help me learn Japanese quite well, especially by making friends with people in the country.
## Professional Development
Ever since I was a child and I first saw robots in Japanese restaurants I have been fascinated to visit.
Currently working in tech I know Japan is at the forefront of the technology industry. From conferences in Tokyo on Kubernetes, to the semiconductor industry and finally to the Osaka World Fair.
Some of these conferences only happen once a year, so I would need to be there for a whole year to experience everything.
Rock Climbing
At the 2020 Olympics Sport Climbing debuted. The Japanese have long since held a strong grip on being world leaders in sport climbing with competitors such as Ai Mori and Tomoa Narasaki.
I would love to go to their home climbing gyms and try some of the climbs there. A lot of the climbing gyms in the UK are not for olympic athletes, and it would be amazing to visit some in Japan and learn some of the techniques from other climbers to help advanced my climbing.
Some popular climbing gyms I plan to visit are:
* Bpump Ogikubo - Famous for hosting many world-class climbers. I have heard that because so many olympic climbers train here there is no easy climbs. It is all very difficult, and would be fun to try to see how many of them I can do.
* Urban Base Camp - Yuji Hirayama trains here and is considered one of the best climbers in the world.