Considering moving to Japan with my Japanese wife and child

6 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Considering moving to Japan with my Japanese wife and child**

   Thinking about moving to Japan with Japanese wife and child

   Good morning everyone. Little background. My wife is Japanese and we have been married for 6 years. We met when she was in the USA when she was working abroad. We have a three year old daughter. My wife has her 10 year green card. My wife currently is a stay at home mom in the states. We are in our mid 30s.

   I know my wife would be so happy to move back to Japan. However, it’s difficult for me to make the leap. I’ve tried to study Japanese and learn the language but it’s very difficult for me. I’m concerned with our ability to move back to the states if we do not enjoy life in Japan. I know the green card is conditioned on being in the USA, so not sure how all that would work if we moved but then wanted to come back to USA at some point.

   I’m sure I could find a job teaching English. But I’m not so much worried about the money as I am adapting to life in Japan without knowing the language. I’ve visited Japan three times over the past ten years and have loved my time spent their each time. I beleive if I emmersed myself in the country and tried learning the language as it’s my full time job it might be possible.

   Does anyone have any insight or experience being in a similer situation moving to Japan with your significant other. Would appreciate any responses. Thank you all for reading and have a good day.

   Question I have…is it possible to find a house in the country with a few acres at least? Her family is from Osaka so I have seen alot of the city but my main goal is to be able to have some land outside major city centers. We enjoy gardening and outdoor activities.

   Ps sorry if this post is all over the place or if I left out any important information. I am torn over this decision but am ready to quit my job sell the house and convert out usd to yen with this attractive conversion rate.

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2. The difference between the cultures is huge; it’s not just the language. I have been here for the best part of 25 years, and it’s still like living on another planet. You would have to be fully on board with the move and committed to learn the language and the squiggly script.

   Depending on what your skill set is, you should only go into teaching English, if you have an advanced degree and can teach at a university or international school. It’s hard and very competitive to get in there. The usual English “teaching” gigs for the gaijin are nowadays basically minimum wage jobs, comparable to flipping burgers at McD’s. As a guy in your 30s you don’t want to be a dancing monkey like that. Very hard to sustain a family of three with the expensive tuition fees for your daughter.

   I think, you should find a job/build a skill and have a pretty good grasp of Japanese, before you jump ship. As you wrote, it might be hard to move back later, should the project fall on its face.

   Personally, I would not do it, mainly because I’d rather not want my child to go through the archaic Japanese school system. But this is for you and your wife to decide.

   Sorry for being a bit negative. Japan can be a great place. But no-one is waiting for you there, you have to build your new life from scratch. How hard would it be for a Japanese, who speaks no English, to come to your country and needing a job to sustain a family? Japan is, IMO, harder!

   Good luck!

3. If you want to move to rural Japan, you can certainly find houses with sizable lots for reasonable prices. Question is, what will you do there? Many towns and villages would be happy to have someone your age doing agricultural work, but is that the kind of life you’d like? There are several youtubers who have done just this. Have a look at some of their videos to see what it might be like.

4. One thing to know is that your wife’s personality may drastically change when she’s in Japan… It’s odd, but true. Japan has an enormous amount of social pressure, which you won’t feel, but your wife will and will need to conform to.

   My own antidote, but my wife becomes almost a new person everytime we visit my home country. So stress free, talkative, like a weight has been lifted off of her shoulders. As soon as we are back in Japan, conformation begins once again. (I’ve also noticed this with friends who went and lived out of Japan for a while)

   If you’ve never lived with your wife in Japan, be prepared for not only cultural and language differences, but also a personality change as your wife goes back to ‘Japanese’, for lack of a better expression.

5. I was all set to move to japan until I had a daughter. The idea of committing my daughter to a rigid school system followed by trying to find a career in a fairly sexist, tenure-based job market made me pause.

   Like, yes you can find ways to thrive as the one who’s different in Japan, but for the forseeable future it’s harder to be a person who sticks out, and it’s harder to be a girl.

   Those were my concerns anyway. There’s still time to change my mind.

6. I’m American, japanese wife with green card, we are going to retire in Japan. She came over to the states knowing very little english and nothing about the US, but did her best here. I’m just going to try to do the same.