Good day, as my date of moving to Japan approaches, my work holiday visa has already been approved. I was struck by my foolishness.
My plan is to land in Tokyo, spend there few days and them travel to town A to spend life with a family that has two children that 7 and 5, I have never met and help them with their chores \[found them through volunteering site\]. After two months I’m planning to move in with single-man in his mid 20s \[in town B\], also help out with house chores and social media \[found through same volunteering site\]. Thus my journey would continue like that for half a year.
I wonder what cultural norms I need to keep in mind and if my plan sounds to good to be true.
3 comments
This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
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**Living with families in Japan and helping them out**
Good day, as my date of moving to Japan approaches, my work holiday visa has already been approved. I was struck by my foolishness.
My plan is to land in Tokyo, spend there few days and them travel to town A to spend life with a family that has two children that 7 and 5, I have never met and help them with their chores [found them through volunteering site]. After two months I’m planning to move in with single-man in his mid 20s [in town B], also help out with house chores and social media [found through same volunteering site]. Thus my journey would continue like that for half a year.
I wonder what cultural norms I need to keep in mind and if my plan sounds to good to be true.
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I mean, just don’t be completely cringe and it should be okay I guess, though your plan is super weird to me personally. Are you saying you’ll work in exchange for accomodation basically? I guess that’s one way to do it.
And more importantly, are you a woman? Moving in with a single man living alone sounds fishy to me. Dangerous even.
What volunteering site is that?
So I’ve never done any volunteering as you describe, but I do live in Japan.
I will say that it’s not a cultural norm to host foreigners in your home for long periods of time, so the people who are willing yo do this will be somewhat outside the cultural “norm.” This can be a good thing— perhaps they’re interesting people who spent time abroad and want that sort of interaction again. It can also be a bad thing— maybe they see you as a cheap source of labor and plan to exploit you.
Even if they’re lovely people, you could find yourselves incompatible to live with, which is made even more difficult by generally having small living quarters.
Obviously you should have a backup plan in case things go south quickly. Do you have enough money for sharehouses or other housing if you need alternative housing quickly?
ETA: agreeing that if you are a woman the arrangement with the young man sounds sketchy. I would absolutely not do that.