When the COVID-19 pandemic decimated her family's cattle farming business in Vietnam earlier this year, one 23-year-old foreign student who had spent around 18 months in Japan was soon left without the funds her family usually sent to cover her university tuition fees.

With Hanoi under a complete lockdown from February through April, she couldn't return home. Forced out of the university's animation studies program and no longer considered a student, she couldn't work legally in Japan, either. Running out of money to live on, by September she could no longer pay rent and had to move to a nonprofit shelter.

So while a decision by immigration authorities on Monday allowing former students stuck in Japan to work up to 28 hours a week didn't make big headlines, it was a moment of jubilation for the Vietnamese former student and others who share her predicament.