What is your life in Japan REALLY like?

30 comments

1. [deleted]

2. Just like life in Canada, but without the snow.

   Edit: on a more serious note, it’s been nice. I’m ethnically Japanese so I blend in. My boss is American so my workplace is just like home. I live in the city and don’t need a vehicle to commute to work. I love kawaii things and there’s plenty of it everywhere for fairly affordable prices. Conbini are great for night owl me craving some snack. I am managing to save a little money. I have learned to live with less in a very small apartment. This winter is a breeze compared to the -30 hells I lived through in Canada. Oh and clothing fits me. And it comes in the colours I like in prices I can afford in fabrics I prefer. There is also a large Brazilian community here on which I can rely on when English-speaking services come at a premium.

3. My response will be similar to others’. Yes, I’m really happy with my life and am glad I chose this path despite my daily routine being pretty much the same. I never really fit in all that well with most other Americans outside of my small circle of friends anyway, so I’m a bit of an outsider in both places (I’m Caucasian with central-European-looking features). At least here, when I go outside I find shops/food/clothing/places-of-worship/atmosphere/customer-service that I really, truly enjoy.

   When visiting here for the first few times many years ago, I didn’t speak any Japanese and found getting around alone to be very difficult and lonely. I looks like things have probably gotten easier since then, but it’s hard to judge that properly since I now speak, read and write the language fairly proficiently (enough to use in a professional capacity). After learning some basic Japanese back in my early, visitor days (early 2000s) that’s when Japan *really* started to become a wonderful place for me and I developed ambitions of relocating here.

   It can sometimes be tiring to have locals react to me as though I’m a tourist, but that has pretty much disappeared in 2020 since there aren’t any tourists, and everyone knows that the only foreign people here are obviously residents.

   I still have language difficulties from time to time as well, like when going to a doctor or a lawyer. But most highly-educated professionals know some English and will helpfully re-phrase things when they see that look of non-comprehension appear on my face.

   Even during this pandemic, life is good. There are certain, fleeting moments when I miss my hometown (Chicago) but those moments pass quickly and in 8 years of living here such feelings have never been enough for me to consider moving back there (not even close!).

4. I was expecting a lot of comments saying: all I do is work 12h a day from monday to saturday. On Sundays I’m too tired to do anything.

   That’s what I’ve seen on 9gag and that’s what my friend is going through (I’ve never been Japan though).

5. After a few years it’s the same as back home, just different. I first came to Japan on a Working Holiday Visa and for half a year or so I felt like a kid in a candy store. It’s just home now. There are days when I love living here, there are days when I want to pull my hair out, but mostly it’s just average.

6. There are a lot of really boring people on this sub, I guess.

   Yes, most of the week is going to be just like anywhere else: wake up, work, go out for a drink or to the arcade for a couple hours, eat dinner, sleep. But there’s so much to do on weekends. Bar/snack hopping, day trips to pretty much anywhere by train, shrine/temple visits, mountain climbing, finding little hole in the wall restaurants…

   Daily life is not too different from anywhere else, but there’s so much to do to fill up free time, especially in the first year when everything is still shiny and new.

7. It’s been great. I’m Asian so I blend in and there’s no culture shock. The experience of 4 seasons + amazing geography is to die for. The food is out of this world. Language is not too tough since i understand Kanji. I can get a car for <USD$5K!

   My only 2 gripes, which are very controversial, are that it’s more unsafe here than where I come from in Singapore, and the paper work. This safety experience, however, will be untrue for 99.9% of the redditors in this sub. Also, back home I could have registered/changed my address, paid my bills and paid my taxes all through the same app in less than 10mins.

8. Your mileage may vary.
   For the ones happy with their lives in Japan, there’s thousands of us who would just kill for the oportunity to live and work in the US.

9. I’m hoping to eventually not find a shit job, so I can enjoy actually Japan.

10. Right now: Cabin Fever.

11. I came here with my family from a third world country so everything is significantly better. Well, except for the cost of living.

12. It’s cold. I’m from Florida and I’ve never had this long of 0-10c weather. Actually moving here was the first time in my life I’ve used heat somewhere I’ve lived.

    In all seriousness, there are differences, like the amount of paperwork for simple things, paying bills (combini vs online), but not having to have a car (payment, insurance, fuel, finding parking) is quite nice.

    I moved here because work opportunity presented itself and my parents and grandparents moved to Asia a few years ago, so I figured why not. Due to the labor laws, quantity of national holidays, and amount of vacation days, I will actually work less than I did in the US.

    There are pros and cons to everywhere.

13. I want to move to Japan too.

14. Before coronavirus, the major difference between life here and life in Los Angeles was that my daily commute sitting in LA traffic was replaced with a crowded train (which, there are pros and cons to both; trains are great, but commuting on one of the worst lines in Tokyo makes you yearn for the solitude of being alone in your car).

    Now, I’m working from home. Back in LA, I’d be doing the same. But here, at least I can go to a restaurant if I want. That’s a bonus in my book.

    Otherwise, aside from the obvious “I speak Japanese in public” differences, it’s similar. I work. My husband goes to work. He comes home, we cook dinner. We go grocery shopping or run errands on the weekend, like going to Costco or the drug store or whatever. We walk the dog. We watch TV. We go out to eat. We go on day trips. We go to museums (before coronavirus), etc.

15. Your day to day life will mostly be the same anywhere you live. Food, culture and language will be different. But you work / go to school, go home, repeat. Just be aware. There are plenty on things to do in your time off. And it is EXPENSIVE!

16. In a way, it’s too early to tell. In another way, I think I’m going to enjoy it. All the teachers at my school are really friendly and while some services are annoying to get started, after that things are fairly convenient. I’ll be moving from my apartment to a house in June – that’ll be a real test.

17. I’m glad I moved. I do miss the US from time to time but I don’t regret moving.

    I took vacation trips to the prefecture I now live in before moving so I knew what to expect.

18. I’m paid better than I was in my previous job back home, and I’m paid well for Tokyo, so I’m able to enjoy some comforts here. I think I would feel very differently about life if I was underpaid and had to live in a crappy apartment and survive off konbini food.

    My job has a good working environment and I enjoy the company of my coworkers. I miss them quite dearly after Covid happened and we went fully remote. It’s quite normal for coworkers at my company to (voluntarily) go for meals together or to do some hobbies together. I’ve done things like bouldering, potlucks and snow sports together with them. I get the impression the company culture is quite unusual for Japan though.

    I find that I never run out of things to do. Being in Tokyo, there’s always something else to explore. And it’s easy to get on a train to the suburbs/countryside if you want a breather.

    The main thing I’ve disliked about being here is that if you aren’t fluent in Japanese, forming deep social connections gets exponentially harder. Your social circle becomes more limited to expats, and while there are lots of great people around, they also tend to move a lot.

    You generally have to be *very* proactive about socializing and joining communities if you want to have a good social life, or find a romantic partner, or else you’re probably going to be lonely. Back home you would at least have some college or childhood friends to meet up with sometimes.

    I’m also finding it difficult to improve at Japanese – I’m at N3 level and can have simple conversations, but having deep meaningful discussions is beyond my reach for now. I’ve taken lessons but it doesn’t seem to be sticking as well as previously. Strangely enough, I found the quality of my Japanese lessons back home higher than here. Here they seem to just read straight from textbooks/materials a lot. I think I need to be a lot more disciplined about consuming content in Japanese regularly.

19. very cold, poor…and hungry. But if I work hard, do a good job, don’t ever take any sick days then I think my company will recognize someday, promote me and then I can move into that sweet leo palace. Nahh all half-jokes aside, life is good over here and you don’t need much to be happy.

20. I have learned to cook so much junk food. So really I miss the junk food in the states the most of all. Hell, I miss all restaurants these days. My youngish kids are overall happier living in the countryside vs the city, so that might be a positive, but without living in the countryside anywhere else, tough to say if that is a Japan thing or not.

21. Important Context: Hired straight out of college as a proper (non-software) engineer in a niche industry with a splash of bilingual interpretation. So, dream job & dream country and my Japanese is well enough that I’d regularly be asked to fill-in for officially certified interpreters when the situation merited it.
    Living in Japan did not live up to my expectations. Although, I am willing to admit my expectations were not realistic and plenty of people had warned me in advance of how I was romanticizing Japan in an unhealthy way, but still needed to experience the disappointment myself anyway to really get over it.

    I am glad I made the move though, I learned a lot about myself that I would have kept in denial had I not made the move.

    Some key things:

    1. I do think the entry level compensation package I was given has me objectively better off than had I taken an entry level position in the US. However, as we approach the transition from entry level to “experienced” level work the value proposition for that same compensation package dramatically drops. Particularly if you are young, highly skilled, and the company is too slow to act to properly make use of your skills.
    2. As always though, one company is not representative of Japan. The company I worked at wasn’t completely unreasonable, but unsatisfactory none-the-less. There absolutely are better companies that I could seek out in due time, but there are a number of reasons why I won’t.
    3. Going through Corona in Japan, probably, has been better than what going through Corona in the US would have been like. Which speaks to the quality of service the Japanese government provides to its citizens in terms of social programs, management of crisis, and so on so forth.

    Specific reasons I won’t continue in Japan:

    1. So, I have a reputation on the Japan resident subreddits for my extended and profound distaste for slacks… or moreover my intense appreciation of shorts / leg freeing garments. Through therapy this was revealed to likely be a symptom of my repressed gender identity as transgender. Japan is not LGBT friendly. I would quite literally rather wear a skirt than conform to Japan’s ideals of masculinity and/or other societal expectations.
    2. Even if we substract the transgender aspect of my disinterest in conforming to Japanese society, there are still ***plenty*** of ideals valued in Japanese culture that I thought were pretty neat as a high school exchange student, but in actual practice in the adult working world absolutely despise.
    1. A good example is the indirect communication style. In some circumstances, this often results in some really nice tact for delicate situations. In other circumstances, it is a huge obstacle to productivity and addressing problems in a prompt manner. So much time gets wasted on saving face for people who frankly deserve and/or need that wake up call (myself included).
    2. I used to appreciate Japanese humility, I thought people actually had a healthier relationship with their abilities relative to the world. Now, it inspires the upmost contempt at just how superficial and insincere it is.
    3. Originally, I thought the reserved nature of the culture was pretty great. At the moment, I think this has more of a “bottling up our problems until we literally can’t anymore” effect that makes people in Japan over-react to otherwise little things. Don’t despise it per say, but do think it is an unhealthy aspect of the culture.
    4. A lot of things that Japanese culture values would fulfill the DSM-5 criteria for Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. Thinking through that lens, that “Japanese culture is OCPD normalized” you can start to understand why Japan is so resistant to change and/or has such a huge preference for procedure and order. I’m sure plenty of people are not going to like the idea of equating an entire country’s culture to what is viewed as a mental
    complication in the US, but it fits all too well and I confirmed it with a properly certified therapist.

    I could go on, but I think we get the point. For many reasons, I’m not a terribly good fit for Japan. While I was willing to adapt and become a part of Japanese culture when I was an exchange student in high school, I am not willing to adapt and become a part of Japanese culture as an adult.

    This comes from a person who swore up and down that there was a high probability of changing to Japanese citizenship before they moved here. So sure of this perceived inevitability that I even gathered birth certificates in anticipation of the application before I moved… although the whole “issued within 6 months” theme that Japanese bureaucracy tends to love probably would have made that a moot point had that come to be.

22. My daily BAC level is a lot higher.

23. If you have any “expectations” of how Japan will change your life, you should not move to Japan.

24. Pretty chill, started with the English route and used my downtime to study Japanese. Got to a good level in about a year and a half and then peaced out of English teaching into a job in Japanese media. It’s can be difficult but it’s fun, I get to travel a bunch for free and my colleagues are nice.

25. This is probably because I moved to Japan from Taiwan and am new, but not that different than when I lived in the USA. It’s colder, few scooters on the streets, and things are in Japanese. The biggest difference seems to be how fishing licenses are handled and I will try to untangle that this year.

26. This is just the thread I needed to start the year

    .. in a depressing way

    &#x200B;

    I keep looking for jobs in Japan but it seems nobody needs a PHP developer that didn’t bother to learn at least a dozen new front-end frameworks and couple extra languages for good measure, and if they do, they usually want people with N2-N1 or that already live there

    I’ll keep traveling to it (whenever borders reopen), beats not being able to see it at all I guess

27. Like others have said it’s not a whole lot different. I come from Los Angeles and living around Tokyo, so going from a big city to another big city won’t be a huge difference. There are actually many differences, but they even out like Laika_Cat said trading commuting in traffic in a car to commuting on a crowded train or with housing there’s many cheap options but they are smaller sized apartments and require huge upfront costs.

    As for meeting others, like others said it’s challenging making good friends without being fluent in Japanese. However I feel like making new friends in Los Angeles was also challenging. I am between N4 and N3 and my husband is fluent in speaking Japanese so it helps sometimes when we could go out. My Japanese is not good enough to make good friendships mostly shallow ones unless they are fluent in English. I have my husband here and some friends that live here so it does make it easier not being able to make many friends(most of that is due to covid).

    I feel my Japanese classes in the US were better(someone else had a similar experience). Although now I am finally taking a class that is more comprehensive than the ones I took in the US. I thought moving to Japan would increase my Japanese dramatically, but for me that was not the case and in fact had the opposite happen because it took a while to find classes that helped to improve my Japanese. Also getting settled in Japan took it’s toll.

    My work is the greatest downfall. I had a pretty good, easy going job back in the US and my current job pays significantly less and is more stressful. I am sticking with it because it’s not the worse job, I like my team and it gives me enough time to study Japanese. If I become fluent in Japanese I will have more opportunities in Japan, but I do worry about my ability to become that proficient. My husband ended up getting a job that now pays him more than he made in the US (once again fluent in Japanese).

    Was it worth it? I would yes at least for the experience. However I would do it differently if I was to do it again or if there were better options. Since I had a stable, good paying, easy-going job then I would have waited until I reached around N2. If I had kids in the US I don’t know if I would have moved to Japan unless one of us got a cushy expat package to move to Japan. If I had a mediocre, soul sucking job in the US then maybe I would have gone to Japan sooner. If I had a stable, good paying, easy going job working on something I was super passionate about then I would have never left or would have been very disappointed in moving.

28. I’m loving it. I came from a shitty health insurance situtation the United States and narrowly avoided not being able to come here because of Covid so I’m *really* happy I made it here.

    I’m in a rural part of Japan but I love it here. I have a car and I’ve been able to do a lot of traveling. There’s so much neat shit around. I’ve been to a bunch of temples and shrines, and I’ve gone into Tokyo a few times from where I am. It blows my mind i can just pay my bills so easily.

29. For me, it was bad, but I understand it was because I was still undiagnosed. I thought I had become sick and I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting better. Blamed Japan and left. But it wasn’t Japan’s fault after all. So I guess my answer is the same as everyone else’s. Pretty much the same you’d be in every other place, but it’s Japan.

30. Please don’t come from China, Korea, and Vietnam anymore.

    There are too many of them, and the crime rate is too high.