Hello,
Will try make this short as I can. I guess I just want to hear other peoples thoughts on the situation. For a very long time I’ve had the idea of moving to Japan with my family. I met my wife who is Japanese while she was working/studying in Australia back in 2014. We went to Japan together a couple of times since and stayed one month the first time in 2015 and again in 2016 for two months (if I remember right) we stayed in Tokyo, Kyoto and where her home is in Fukushima country side. Only her mother lives there. I don’t mean to talk it up but I fell in love with her family home because it’s surrounded by green rice fields and creeks/rivers etc. Her house is on top of a hill with about 10-20 other houses below. You walk outside the front door and you just see endless fields of green and the other houses. Its like a tiny little town surrounded by green rice fields and trees. You have to walk a good amount to get to another similar bunch of houses. If you’ve seen that movie My Neighbor Totoro (I only seen this because the kids watched it a lot when they were younger) it reminds me so much of that place. Anyway, I’m not here to blab on about how beautiful Japan is (from what I saw anyway) but more about what people think of my situation which I’ll get into now…
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So we are a family living in Australia with my wife and 2 kids planning to or really thinking hard about moving in the next couple years or so. We can really just go anytime if we want. I work from home, self employed. I can work anywhere in the world if I have a computer and internet. We have a place to stay with her mother if we want. I personally love it there and it’s very dreamy like where you would wanna retire and live for the rest of your life (if you like Japan and country side) The only issue is well, nobody wants to live with a parent when they are adults, especially almost 40 with kids. I mean, we would have to stay there anyway for a while as we wouldnt be abe to just rent a house right away. We do have savings so money isn’t a problem. My wife isn’t working and looks after the kids, but again we have the money saved already. Plenty money to give us a good start to go live in Japan. I would probably save a lot more money over there too as I pay weekly rent where I am. Her home in Japan was built way back by her father who has already passed so it would just be simple stuff like bills, food and kids.
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I have another problem with my mother though, we are very close and she is not very happy about me leaving as she will pretty much be alone but my older brother would still be here. They live like 5 mins away from each other but he is single so she would really miss my kids mostly. I guess there is video calls these days but yeah, that would be a tough one. She is trying very hard to keep me here saying it’s a better life here in Australia and you will regret it, don’t go, earthquakes, the bad weather this and that… you’ll be lonely if you go and something happens with you and your wife etc etc.
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I am also unvaccinated so I dunno exactly what happens with that. I think I read somewhere if you aren’t vaccinated you just need to quarantine and isolate for a while? I dunno but I would be willing to do it just to move there. I’d like to avoid it for now though. The covid thing is also not helping with this plan of ours. I dunno if we should just wait it out for a few years or just go ASAP? I also have a very old dog who I can’t leave behind so as bad as it is to say I am hanging around until it’s that time. My father also just passed away three weeks ago. I dunno, after all this I feel like just packing everything and taking off and go to Japan like I always wanted to. I know I haven’t been there long but I’ve always felt like I really just wanna live there. From the time I spent I never had a day that I didn’t enjoy. I live in a boring area where I never go out, like ever. I would never even walk around where I live just because I hate it here. I don’t live in the best area of my city so there’s a bunch of losers that are always nearby. I mean I don’t have problems with them but it just puts me off when we drive past and see them or whatever. We do live near the beach so that would be something I’d miss… that and my mother and brother but nothing else to be honest. Nothing about the country I would miss (no offense to any others who live here). At the end of the day, me and my wife know 100% we do not want to live where we are forever. We both want to go to Japan. I keep thinking about it and miss it, especially her home in Fukushima.
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Some other things like my kids I might be worried about. I want them to be speaking English fluently with me because I don’t know much Japanese and well neither do they.. but actually they probably know more than me since my wife talks nothing but Japanese to them. I’m a bit worried growing up in Japan will make them more Japanese and I might not be able to connect with them as good as if it were in Australia? The culture is just very different. I dunno.
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And I think one last thing that I totally forgot… of course the biggest concern for me is the natural disasters which basically doesn’t exist where we live now. It’s a very sunny beachy place here. The beach is just 5 mins drive or so but we don’t really go that much. My wife goes with the kids a lot to play but I don’t go anywhere really. I know if we were in Japan I’d be going out way more because I just feel safer and enjoy exploring everything. I just feel different when I’m in Japan.
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Now I’m not sure what this post is exactly about maybe I just wanted to write it up for myself but please feel free to offer any advive or suggestions. Probably doesn’t seem like there’s a question here so it’s more like sharing my thoughts about it and wondering what people think about us moving there.
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Thanks!
11 comments
Is there a question somewhere in there? I’ll admit I started skimming after the first couple giant paragraph, but as far as I can tell you don’t really have a question.
While we’re generally happy to help folks out, it’s easier when they have concrete questions about the moving process. “This is my life story, what should I do?” is basically impossible to respond to in any sort of helpful manner, because *we are not you*.
38 years old, but writes with the brevity and clarity of a 13 year old on LiveJournal.
> unvaccinated by choice
> dad’s body literally still warm, wants to immediately leave newly widowed mom because JAPAN
> my neighbor totoro
> never leaves the house, even to go to the beach with wife and kids
> thinks Japan will be “different”
> doesn’t speak Japanese, thinks inaka life will be easy (RIP wife)
You don’t need Japan. You need to talk to a therapist about some of these issues, dude.
All I can say is go do it, don’t wait.
>Hello,
Will try make this short as I can.
Word count : 1181.
I know why you posted this thread, and I also understand why you got some of the responses you got. With that said, I’ll give you a bit of personal advice as someone who moved their family here and there but ultimately settled on Japan.
At your point in life, and at the ages your kids are at, make sure you make this decision for the happiness of the entire family and not just yours or your wife’s. Your kids are still young, but because of that you should realize that they will grow up in a Japanese environment, and if ever there comes a day you say let’s head back to Australia, or to America, or wherever, that they will be coming with different cultural baggage than you. As someone at a similar age with a similar family, I realize now that every future move I make has to be for their sake and not mine. I would love to live in Scandinavia, or California – and even have the means to – but I’m also realizing how drastic a choice like that is now that my kids are not as young. You don’t need to lock yourself into Japan forever, but you have to come to terms with Japan being a permanent piece of your kids’ development, and that may (or may not) greatly impact your future life decisions.
Another issue is, as you already brought up, family. Once something happens, and usually that something is bad, you will feel guilty and helpless. Hopping on a flight is never the same, and while life can inevitably draw us to places far from home, you have to mentally prepare yourself for all of the incredibly heavy issues that will come with dealing with things remotely/long-distance.
Japan is a fantastic place. Australia is a fantastic place. There are many fantastic places on the planet. I wish we had multiple lifetimes to experience them all. If you have the chance to give your family a unique life experience, there are usually more pros than cons. But do take some time to look farther into the future than just a few years. Try to envision how your kids, your career, your wife’s happiness, your happiness will all be shaped by Japan’s culture/community, not to mention its social/professional/government/education systems. I may have focused a bit too much on the monetary side of things, the ability to practically be able to do anything, rather than focusing more on whether we should or shouldn’t do it.
I live in Japan and am from Oz.
If you don’t speak Japanese you might feel isolated living in such a rural area, but it wouldn’t bother everyone. Grocery options will be bad there if you want foreign stuff, but you can order online. Your kids will go to Japanese school and be japanese. My 4 year old is not Asian at all and still likes the Japanese shows and stuff. She’s fluent in English now but I imagine it will be harder the older she gets.
You might not go out way more in rural Fukushima because there’s not much to do and you’ll need a car to go anywhere. I’m not sure such a rural area is your best choice?
Hi,
First of all, most people in this subreddit will always tell you that moving to japan is a bad idea, or that your motives are not good enough. I suggest looking somewhere else for advice or encouragement.
With that out of the way, I can’t really give solid advice since our situations are very different (familywise, mostly). What I can say is that moving to a different country won’t necessarily change your motivations for, say, go out and do stuff. It can however give you some stimulus to do so, but in the end it is your conviction to do said stuff that matters the most.
I’m a strong believer in that the person that knows what they want is the one that has a better understanding of the situation and, perhaps the most capable of giving advice. That is to say that some people on this sub seem to forget the fact that they were in your situation at some point. Hell, some even seem to have never been in that position, not even close; and they come here and post their responses anyway.
My advice to you then, would be to do whatever is in your power to carry out whatever you want to do. It is that simple. Wether a decision is good or bad is merely a judgment on a past event, so you wouldn’t really be able to know before commiting. However one can really tell you have a strong desire to move to Japan just by reading your post, which I find very worth mentioning. Then again, I don’t have a wife and kids, so I can’t and most definitely won’t say anything in that regard, but it definitely affects the outcome.
Sorry for being extensive, I get fired up easily when people try to turn down other’s dreams.
Thanks for what? You didn’t ask any questions.
Gotta consider the logic in moving your kids to a place where they don’t speak the language, though. Sounds brilliant. 😉
Get vaccinated ffs … solves so many issues.
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Wish more people would share their own experiences, the good parts and bad. My wife (Japanese) and Myself (American) have dreams of moving back to Japan as well. We have children 3 & 1 and would like to make the move before they are in grade school.
I have many of the same concerns: missing my family, parents are getting older and heath concerns, kids being able to adjust to new schools, will they be teased or bullied for being different, will I feel lonely or isolated without a friend group, will I have to rely too much on my wife to handle all the things that need doing to live (e.g. setting up bank accounts, paying taxes, contracts, etc)
My feeling is that even if we moved to Japan it wouldn’t be permanently. I’m honestly hoping and thinking we could move back and forth between Japan every 3-5 years.
From everything you said I would say go for it! You only have one life and you’ll never know if you don’t try. Worse case it’s a lot harder than you imagined and you move back to Australia; best case you and your family grow in life experience and are very happy.