Re:I had a somewhat similar desire (Score 1)

This seems a good option if you're wealthy enough to afford a year abroad (esp. Japan) focusing on language learning without having to worry about work. I don't know a lot of fellow IT workers who can pull that off, but I'm sure there are plenty who can.

It also assumes you can just legally show up in a country and remain for a full year, and then remain after that year to work, which I don't think is possible everywhere. Most countries want to know why you're there and for how long. For instance, when I lived in Holland for three years in the '90s, the default option an American got coming over with his passport in hand was a 90-day tourist visa. If you stayed on longer than that you could get deported. I was lucky enough to be in a band full time, so it wasn't like I was looking for "white jobs", where your legal status in the country is something they ask about, but as I started to get comfortable there and started making plans to stay full time, and legally, working legit jobs, it started to become important for me to start working towards legal residency. And in a country like Holland, with the social system they have, it wasn't impossible, but it wasn't easy. A lot of people (from all over the world) wanted in on that social system.

Even with those two issues surmounted, I don't get that it's detrimental to learning a language to land a job and to start working right away. You still have to go out and socialize (from buying bread at the bakery, to trying to hook up with the local vegetation at the night clubs), so you're going to be forced to learn at least some of the local language -- even in the most English-friendly (but non-natively English speaking) countries.