Our Le Wagon Tokyo batches usually welcome 40 to 50% of students who are flying from abroad. For a lot of them, the plan is to mix learning with leisure, spending 2 to 3 months in Japan to enjoy the country and go through one of our full-time coding bootcamps before going back home. But for some, it is actually the first step for a move to Japan and a new career here.
How did they handle a bootcamp, moving to a new country AND looking for opportunities all at the same time? Do you need to learn Japanese to get by? And of course, what about getting a visa?
We sat down with four recent graduates, two each from our full-stack Web Development and Data Science & AI bootcamps, to gather tips, stories and experiences about their move to Japan. Let’s address the most common questions with them!
with Réda, 33 years old, originally from France. Data Science & AI graduate (December 2023)
I was supposed to move to Japan for an exchange program while in university – It eventually did not happen, but I always had that in the back of his mind. My working holiday visa window was closing (note: it’s available until someone officially turns 31), and I basically took that chance right after covid. I also had some “history” with Japanese, having passed JLPT N4 through a local NPO back in Lille, my hometown.
The bootcamp itself was very cool, and I truly enjoyed those intensive 9 weeks: it was a weird feeling to go “back to school”, but with people flying from everywhere and a topic that I actually enjoyed, it was refreshing.
I got lucky enough to start working with Le Wagon Tokyo right after graduating as a teaching assistant, which was possible thanks to my working holiday visa, so I only started looking for a full-time job 4 or 5 months after graduating. Here again, the Le Wagon Tokyo commu
nity was extremely helpful: the job I ended up landing was shared through one of their career channels. I have now been working as a System Engineer at EPAM for the past 2 months, and it’s been a smooth ride so far.
My main piece of advice is to make the most of your time in Japan and meet as many people as possible – It’s going to be much trickier to build connections once you go back to your home country. Discover the ecosystem of tech companies with English-first working environments, know which companies are likely to hire you, show your face at tech networking events. You need to find people who will pass your CV around internally once you switch to full job search mode.
with Yuki – 31 years old, originally from Brazil. Full-Stack Web Development graduate (March 2025).
I graduated in Computer Engineering, though I have to admit, programming wasn’t really my thing during college. In fact, I had a pretty rough time with it, and so naturally, I ran in the opposite direction and started my career in business consulting. The nature of the work often required us to wear many hats, and I found myself bouncing between extracting data, building dashboards, and making sense of numbers. Over 5 years, I kind of morphed into an analytics engineer without realizing it, a mix of data engineering and data analysis.
Coming to Japan felt like a natural next step. I’m of Japanese descent so I had always felt a connection to the country. I had visited a few times before, and the idea of living and working here was always in the back of my mind. I already spoke Japanese at an N3 level when I arrived, which definitely made the transition smoother.
Tell us about the job search – How did things go?I had tried applying to jobs in Japan before but didn’t have much success. I think Le Wagon’s career support made a difference: I scheduled a 1-on-1 coaching session early in the bootcamp, and received some good tips tailored to the Japanese job market, small things that weren’t obvious but helped me get some leads. I eventually landed a job a couple of weeks before graduating, and literally had my first day at work the Monday after Demo Day.
If you’re considering a move to Japan to work in tech, I’d definitely recommend learning at least some Japanese. I view it as a necessary way to integrate yourself, professionally but also more importantly, personally. And if you’re planning to join Le Wagon’s program, my main recommendation is to focus on prepping yourself. The pace is no joke, and I noticed that those who came in with some foundations had a much easier time.
with Karush – early 30s, originally from Nepal (via Australia). Data Science & AI graduate (June 2024).
Hey Karush! So what is your story?As much as I appreciated the stability of my accounting and finance job, work started feeling a bit… monotonous. I had dabbled in coding before and had some foundation in JavaScript, but honestly, it didn’t excite me the way Data Science did. I looked into coding bootcamps, and Le Wagon Data Science & AI program in Tokyo had some of the best reviews.
Before joining the bootcamp, I had visited Japan a couple of times, and it honestly felt different from anywhere I had lived before. There’s something about Japan – the culture, the pace, the innovation – that really drew me in. I did not speak a word of Japanese when I landed, but I have been working on it over the past year here.
This is actually funny, because I mainly used Wantedly for my job search, which is entirely in Japanese. Job hunting itself was a bit of a rollercoaster: I started by building projects and practicing my skills. Once I felt confident in my abilities, I began applying more seriously, and eventually started working part-time remotely for my current employer, Menteru. The working relationship went well, and it made sense to relocate me to Tokyo soon after.
Think of job hunting like a journey – each application, each interview, each project you build will get you closer to where you want to be. The key is persistence. It might take a bit longer, but if you keep learning and applying yourself, you WILL get there.
with Alexander – 30 years old, originally from Denmark. Full-Stack Web Development graduate (March 2024).
I studied Japanese at Aarhus University in Denmark, graduating in 2021. This led to my employment at a large Japanese private university’s European office, mostly dealing with translation, admin tasks and events. From there, a move to Japan was of course a big decision, but it had been a goal of mine for many years – it also seemed like a great opportunity to change career paths at the same time.
Looking back at the bootcamp, the final project weeks were definitely the highlight. Being able to go from making user stories, designing the schema for the models, producing a prototype in Figma, to developing a full-stack application as a team using Git and Agile development, all this in the span of two weeks, is actually a very impressive feat, and something that companies do not take lightly. The final project that my team worked on was centered around using the OpenAI API, and I believe that having this kind of specialized focus is part of what helped me land this job.
Tell us about the job search – How did things go?I actually found the company (Nightley) through Wantedly, and the whole hiring process was fairly straightforward. I got a casual interview with the company, and after talking to them a few times and a more formal interview, I got the job – All this less than a month after graduating from Le Wagon.
I know that being able to speak Japanese was a big factor in my landing a job that fast after graduation. I do not think your Japanese needs to be at JLPT N1 level to get a job though: what you do need is the will to learn a lot of IT terms in Japanese, and be ready to take a lot of notes during meetings. If you are willing to learn, most likely the company will also help and support you.
Talking to Réda, Yuki, Alex and Karush as well as other graduates in the same situation, similar pieces of advice eventually come up:
Lastly, if you are looking to go through one of Le Wagon’s coding bootcamps: prepare as much as possible beforehand. It will be an intense roller coaster ride, but it may become the most rewarding experience of your life – and the first step in your Japan journey!
Understanding the rapidly evolving world of data analytics is key for those aspiring to work
Since the Covid-19 epidemic, some of you might have been through lots of life changes,
Improve your job search with valuable insights from Killian Dectot, data scientist at Klarna. Use
In an effort to make the city more sustainable, Porto has begun to return public
Is a bootcamp too intensive or complicated for you? Le Wagon’s learning guide gives you
As the 4th cohort of the Speak & Code Academy approaches this summer, the program
