I moved here a few months ago and i love it. I love Japan, the memories I’ve been making, etc. But it’s important to consider what comes next, and I don’t know that I want to stay here forever. But that’s not really the problem I’m facing.
I think I had a pretty realistic expectation of Japan and like I said I love it. I always have loved it! My love isn’t less, but I think it’s changed now. Moving here went from being a life dream to an accomplishment! I’m happy about that! But everyone who moves here knows that there is nothing you can do to prepare for what’s to come. But now my view of Japan is just different. It’s bumming me out a little. Not Japan itself by any means, but remembering what it meant to me them and how I feel about it now. Back when it was something to daydream about! Now it’s coming and going, and my view on Japan can never go back to what it was. I know this is obvious but it’s nice to get some encouragement from time to time regarding these complex and at times overwhelming feelings.
EDIT: I’m sorry I think this was unclear! I love Japan! I’m not disappointed at all. This feeling is not disappointment. It’s just a shift in perspective. I love Japan more now than I did before! I was wondering if anyone reminisces on their younger days. I’m sure it happens, but I was wanting to talk to people with the same feelings!
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Isn’t this true with anything that you put on a pedestal? I don’t think this is unique to Japan anyways. I think if your view has changed you did have special expectations even if you didn’t realize it at first. If you wanted to move to Japan just because it was Japan and not for any other reason like enjoying city life, career advancement or family, I think it can be very difficult, but maybe you need to develop that next goal! That’s my view anyways.
Opposite, didn’t care too much about Japan before moving here ~5 years ago. Just wanted a job and way to live on my own which was impossible back in Florida.
Sure I like some Japanese stuff like media and sumo etc but moving here was not any kind of goal for me.
Definitely fell in love with it though. The safety, people keep to themselves, the cost of living is crazy low compared to Florida.hell I was able to get a house with a yard here, never even dreamed of that in the US.
No intention of even visiting the US again at this point. Japan isn’t some fantasy land to me but it does feel like home.
Nah I feel the same about the country.
Im super racist now though.
I think things start becoming mundane. I remember just being enthused by the way houses were build, the tiny kei cars and the 24/7 convenience stores. But it all inevitably becomes “normal” and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just what happens when you acclimatize.
Between the language and cultural differences it took me about five years to become fully adjusted to life in Japan. I enjoy my life here these days. I don’t miss those frustrating first years at all.
I didn’t have any expectations for Japan when I first visited, honestly. So growing to want to live here came from spending time here. I think in that sense my expectations were realistic when i actually did move.
Anyway, no, it’s just home to me now.
It all comes to dopamine. Life is tied to Dopamine and how you get it. Let me explain.
You set a goal to come to Japan, that was the endgame for you, as a result, ANYTHING that carried you towards that goal created dopamine in your head but not the same amount, the closer you got, higher the dosage you got. And after achieving your goal, you get to the climax of the experience of the path/goal of “going to Japan” so your body no longer gets satisfied with it and you’re feeling lost.
First, it’s not a bad thing to feel like this. Second, if your goal was something higher than just coming to Japan, say “Starting a business in Japan so that you can enjoy the Japan life + don’t need to deal with other people because you’re your own boss.” then after coming to Japan, you would still have that sweet dopamine boosting you until you started your own company, and even then it would continue until you can stabilize the company so that you can enjoy the Japan life.
that’s why they tell us to set our goals high, higher than what you want. If you need $10 then aim for $100 so even if you fail, there’s a good chance that you would still get that $10 and if you don’t fail, then you get $100. For your situation, you aim to start a business in Japan right? if you fail then there was a good chance of you now being in Japan anyway.
Another danger of setting you goal low is that. you might be feeling good enough to not pursue further after coming to Japan and reaching your goal. The amount of joy and accomplishment you earned might be enough make you feel satisfied and you might not find the motive to do more in yourself. By low, I don’t mean that coming to Japan is a piece of cake. It’s just that when setting a goal you stretch yourself to move to another continent already, what’s adding “creating a company” compared to that? It’s just that you’re adding extra shit after your main goal so that you don’t feel lost. If that makes sense
I guess I’m lucky that I came to Japan before the internet was really a thing, so I wasn’t saddled with the burden of being a know-it-all.
Hardest part of achieving your dreams is then having to live your dreams. Harder than a lot of people expect.
The first year is really hard.
My personal observation is that more than half of the people I know who studied Japanese in school and loved Japanese culture ended up being disappointed after living here and moved back. On the other hand, many of the people I know who didn’t speak any Japanese before they moved here ended up loving it. Maybe it’s all about perspective. Expectations lead to disappointment.
Yep. Nailed it. Christmas syndrome.
As a Japanese American, I never had much expectation moving to Japan as an adult. Grown to love its quirks over the years, but I never considered here or the US (or any other country I’ve lived in) to be perfect or some type of “dreamland”. There’s always pros and cons to anywhere and that was my expectation going in.
Not knowing any Japanese was fantastic. You dgaf about anything, because you can’t understand it.
Before I came here what Japan meant to me was a crippled old guy in my childhood neighborhood who had a sword and a military cap and vintage binoculars from some island, and cool portable transistor radios.
So the impression it gives me has improved immensely.
I am probably the exception in that I had pretty low expectations of Japan, *twice*, and both were surpassed greatly. I came first briefly as a tourist 10+ years ago, but then I didn’t speak Japanese and knew virtually nothing of Japan back then, so just did the basic of temple hunt (Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc), so my experience was “pretty good but not that remarkable”. Much better than expected though, since I was scared of my non-working-flip-phone (maps) + no wifi anywhere + non-Japanese, but a couple of times people guided me and that helped a lot.
Then I came to study few years later (because of “robots”) as an exchange student and holy cow, those were probably the best 6 months of my life, by very far. I had a lot of great years at my university back home, but these were just next level, everyday. This was 2015.
I knew living here wouldn’t be as “high” as those student years, but decided to come live here “at least for a while”, and while most of the things that made university so great has faded naturally away from my life with age, I still love the “life style” from Japan. Yes, I do miss the university years, but in a “ah those were great years” and have long accepted that they are gone and life just keeps going.
Mind you I’ve somehow managed to skip “the worst” people complain about Japan by working in IT for US companies. I also try and usually escape the summer, that’s the only period I really think Japan has too backwards, and my only fear is with global warming these heated months will become longer and longer.
Actually, I feel the same. I feel like my dream has came true and now I feel like I am stuck here. I can’t do anything right now as I feel like idk what I want to do next. What I feel now being an adult living in Tokyo is just lonely.
First 1-3 years in japan it was so hard and hated it here now I love it so much
The only thing I miss is the feeling of “newness” it used to have. Ut that’s not something specific to Japan per se; it’s just the novelty of being in a foreign country. Even just walking around random neighborhoods was an adventure in itself for me at first.
‘The Tokyo I knew nothing about was so much more interesting than the Tokyo I know everything about’ — Tim rogers
Coming here as a young, 19 year is vastly different than a 39 year old family man.
I think if I had moved to the USA or Finland, or any other country, there is a stage where the extraordinary becomes the ordinary. I think that applies across the globe.
Still can’t handle a Japanese breakfast though.
I love the country even more now. I have a foreign salary and the yen is weak. You can waste soo much money and do stupid shit. End of the day you haven’t spent any at all. Enjoy a queen life, buy everything cheap and hope the trend continues.
I would stay forever seeing as my wife and her family are all Japanese the only problem is it would be incredibly difficult for me to get a job out here that could support our family with my lack of Japanese.
No. While I really love Japan ages ago, I’m fully aware that it was an Axis power and other crap. I didn’t have a romanticized view of the country. Japan, to me before, is just an interesting country. And since I didn’t/still don’t really have a life, it remains to be an interesting country. The changing flavors of the conbini contributes to keeping things interesting.
I do miss what anime was too me if I strech what missing something means. It was something I enjoy before. Now, it’s more of a reminder that I have study. (Which I would have done, have I had a life.)
Things you just don’t worry about in Japan:
* Getting shot;
* getting sued;
* dying homeless because you or a family member got sick or had an accident;
* being seriously harassed about politics, religion, or race by idiotic nutjobs.
Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t worry about those things most places I go. Just one place, really….
I miss the cheap prices :/
When fruit was affordable and half of vending machines had drinks less than 100円
It’s definitely better then before. I will admit I have become very pessimistic since moving here however.
I’ve never seen so few of Japan since I moved here. Nice where the time I could travel for months and visit some slow life village lost in the mountains… sigh.
I kind of had no real expectations of Japan. I knew things I saw in tv shows and movies weren’t really the reality of course, too.
It was never my plan to move here, I had zero intentions of having a life here. All I wanted to originally do was come here on holiday someday.
Somehow I skipped that plan and straight up moved here instead and after almost six years, this is my life now. Kind of like that joke where you’re in IKEA and got lost and think, “I guess I live here now.”
I don’t regret it though, and it was a bumpy first 5 years (due to non-Japan reasons) but I made it alive and I’m doing great.
Japan wasn’t much to me before besides another country I wanted to visit someday, but now it’s home.
I feel like as time goes on I get a better and better grasp of what Japan is. I just spent 23 hours riding a motorcycle on 下道 across the country and seeing so many different little towns has also caused my thinking to change slightly, even after about 8 years here.
I don’t think that’ll shift in thinking will stop, and it shouldn’t stop.
Went from hating it to loving it. I’ve been here a long time and I’d never want to relive the first half.
I feel like the standard of living for middle class people is way shittier than it was in the mid-00s when I moved here, and back then people aged late-30s and over would lament about how much better things were in the bubble at least once per conversation.
Before I came to Japan it was the land of technology, anime, games & cute girls.
After having lived here, to me it’s the land of cheap rent, cheap food, cheap everything, cheap health insurance, walkable cities, shitty work, quality food, clean environment, next-to-zero crime & cute girls.
No, for me. I felt much better being here and planning my next steps vs being worried about overcoming the hurdles of getting here. Perspective changes, of course, in ways we can’t anticipate, but I am still here after all these years and likely never going back.
I lived here as a kid for a few years bc military and I didn’t appreciate it them but that’s what led me to come to love japan, so I fell in love with what the reality of Japan was first and other parts later so it was the opposite for me
Reality never matches fantasy.
My experience was different. I knew nothing about the country before coming here for work a few decades ago. Back then I thought it was a bit backward but charming. Now I find i mostly describe it as stable. But if I’m honest I don’t spend much time thinking about the country, or where I happen to be living. More about work and family and maybe beer.
Why do so many people that live in Japan feel so much guilt for expressing negative emotions or doubts about their experience? It’s fine if you DON’T love Japan.