If you want to go into education, you should get a degree in that, or finish off your religious studies major.

Finishing off my religious studies major is neither something I want to do nor is it something I'm able to do.

If you'd like to teach English in Japan all that's needed is any sort of college degree, and down the line even a religious studies degree with be more useful.

I don't know that I want to teach English in Japan, but I know that I like having that as an option. If I were to do that, I don't see how having a degree in Japanese would harm me, if any sort of college degree will work. As for the religious studies degree being more useful, I would strongly disagree. My intention with that originally was wanting to teach comparative religion, but the academic study of religion in US schools is becoming harder and harder to find as the programs that used to exist are dropping left and right. I had actually originally intended to go to the school I am now going to because the closes thing I was able to find to being able to study religion was doing a religious studies minor there, but I contacted a professor in that program several years ago wanting to get more information and she informed me that she was the entire religious studies program at that point, and at the end of that term, there no longer would be one. Through some chance, I found another school that actually had a program, and as a major as well. They told me that it was a legacy program that had been there since the founding in the 1890s and wasn't going anywhere; yep, it's gone now, too. And the dream of teaching at a university has pretty much died as I've watched as full-time professors, especially in areas like religious studies, are being replaced with adjunct professors who often have to work multiple jobs and different schools just to try to make ends meet. I had an instructor once who taught classes 3 days a week and worked at Starbucks the other days so he could afford rent. So I'm not sure I would say a religious studies degree would be more useful.

Certainly, before you decide to devote your life to Japanese you should do that 6 months in Japan and decide if you could make a life here.

I never said I was going to move to Japan. I am only trying to go there for 6 months. I think that's good advice, and I thought if I liked it there while studying, maybe after I graduate I might want to go back, but having never been there, I can't make such a proclamation yet.

In any case, good luck in learning Japanese and studying in Japan.

Thank you. I'm sorry for ranting a bit, I've had a very bad day.