Why I can’t live in Japan ever again

Today I have a pretty important

declaration to make.

I don't think I'm ever going to go to

Japan ever again, and the whole idea of

living in Japan completely uninterests me

or disinterests me.

So as most of you know, the idea of living

in Japan and Japan in general has been a

massive part of my life for pretty much

all of my adult life until the recent few

last years.

It all started when I was about 17, when I

started to watch anime, where I became

obsessed with Japan and obsessed with the

idea of dating a Japanese girl and

marrying her and eventually moving to

Japan.

And when I was really young, 17, 18, 19,

or even earlier, 16, I used to hate living

in the UK.

I used to think life in the UK was so

boring, so miserable, so depressing.

And why would I ever want to invest money

and time into setting up a life in the UK

when I kind of hate it here?

And I thought Japan was this perfect

utopia which had everything I wanted, all

the things that the UK didn't have, like

safety, nice people.

I fit in there visually because I'm Asian

looking.

And also things like modern cities,

technology, cool stuff like bullet trains,

sushi, all that kind of stuff.

And the UK just had nothing that really

interested me.

It's probably mainly an age thing, I

guess.

When you're younger, you don't really want

to be living in the countryside in the

middle of nowhere.

You want to be in a city, an exciting,

bustling city full of energy, lots of

opportunities to meet people and hang out

and go drinking and date girls and do all

the kind of stuff that you want to do when

you're young.

But now that I'm approaching my 40s, I

realize I don't really want to live in a

bustling, noisy city.

I want to live in somewhere— I want to

live somewhere that's nice and quiet,

peaceful, where I can just enjoy nature

and I have a car and I can drive around

and it's nice and peaceful, not busy and

hectic.

It's kind of strange because all the

things you disliked about the country that

you live in, for example, the UK for me,

all the things I disliked about the UK

when I was younger, I actually have come

to appreciate now that I'm older.

And yeah, there are things about the UK

that I still dislike.

For example, cities and towns in the UK

are pretty horrible and full of the worst

people of society that you want to avoid,

but I think that doesn't represent all of

the country.

The whole country is not just London,

Birmingham, Manchester, and all the crappy

towns everywhere.

The country is 90% countryside— beautiful

countryside, by the way— great scenery,

very peaceful villages.

And if you can get a nice place to live,

for example, this place I live in now,

it's probably the best place I've ever

lived in my whole life.

It's really peaceful, quiet, nice, and I

feel quite safe and comfortable here.

I made a lot of attempts to try and move

over to Japan.

It started in 2010, really, and I've been

to Japan every single year since 2010,

apart from 2015 and those 2 years, 2021,

2022, because the country was locked down

and no one could go there.

So apart from those 3 years, I've been to

Japan every single year since 2010, which

was 15 years ago now.

And I've probably been to Japan probably

over 15 times on an individual basis.

And I have tried to live in Japan many

times to get a permanent visa.

It started off with a student visa when I

first went there, went to a Japanese

language school, and then I eventually

actually considered going to university to

get

a degree so I could eventually get a work

visa, and that didn't last very long.

And then I gave up on trying to get a work

visa and I got the working holiday visa

instead.

And then I worked in a convenience store

for a few months, and it was probably the

worst job I've ever had.

Japanese people are extremely rude when

you're serving them as someone who works

in a shop, and I just get triggered when

people seem to think Japanese people are

so polite and so nice, which you see a lot

on the internet, when actually I've never

met or encountered more rude people in my

entire life than when I was working in

Lawson, the convenience store.

So it didn't last very long in Lawson, and

I didn't stay for the entire year for the

working holiday visa.

And then I just gave up on trying to get a

visa, and I just dated around and hooked

up with Japanese women.

And then I attempted to get married twice

to get a spouse visa.

First time was in 2014.

I nearly got married to the chlamydia

girlfriend, but it didn't really get very

far.

And then I finally successfully got

married in 2018 to my ex-wife, and I lived

in Japan for about two years as a spouse,

and then I just felt like I didn't really

want to live in Japan anymore.

It's boring.

I don't like it anymore.

All the things I fantasized about living

in Japan thought it was so great to live

there.

I didn't really think that way anymore.

And after two years, I felt like yeah,

I've had the experience of living in

Japan.

It was okay, I guess.

It's not amazing.

I kind of miss the UK, to be honest.

And then I decided to leave.

And a lot of people ask how come I

achieved my goal?

I achieved my dream of living in Japan

finally after.

Nearly 10 years of trying to get a visa

and moving there, I finally made it come

true and got a spouse visa.

And I could have just lived there

permanently if I was just a good husband.

It might seem crazy that I threw it all

away, and I guess the reason is because I

felt like I achieved the dream and I lived

the dream for long enough to not really

care about it anymore.

You only really want something when you

don't have it.

When you have it, you kind of don't really

care about having it anymore.

You want something else at that point.

And I did kind of miss things about living

in the UK, and I started to hate things

about Japan.

For example, I mean, life is already hard

enough.

When you throw a layer of difficulty,

which was the language, it's like you got

the language barrier and the difficulty of

doing things in a different language.

You add another layer of difficulty on top

of life, which is already challenging as

it is, and it just seems unnecessary.

Everyday life is simple enough, especially

when you can speak some decent Japanese.

I can get by pretty well, but when more

complicated things happen, like I want to

get a mortgage I want to buy a house, I

want to rent a house or an apartment, I

want to buy a car, or I want to get a car

on a PCP contract and borrow money to get

the car, or even getting a phone contract.

Anything that involves contracts is kind

of a pain in the backside because you need

a visa, you need a Japanese bank account,

you need proof of income, you need all

this stuff that you might not have.

And then on top of that, you need to be

able to do it in Japanese, which I

wouldn't really be able to do because I

just— I feel quite confident just having a

basic conversation in Japanese, but if it

came to anything complicated like

contracts or loans, that kind of stuff, I

would be pretty lost.

So you either need an extremely high level

of Japanese or you need a Japanese woman,

your wife or girlfriend, to help you out.

So you end up feeling like a child.

As a man, you don't really want to live a

life where you depend on your wife to be

able to do stuff like you're a baby.

You want to be able to do stuff on your

own independently, and it just doesn't

feel good to need your wife to help you do

basic things like renting a place.

Buying a new phone, getting a car is kind

of annoying.

And I also feel like there's just more

opportunities in life if I stay in my own

country because I don't have to worry

about visa problems.

I don't have to worry about language

barriers.

If I want to, I can just go and get a job

to help make ends meet.

And I could do stuff that I can't really

do very easily in Japan without having to

need someone to hold my hand to do it.

So I feel more like an independent adult

in the UK.

Just remember living in Japan when I was

married and sitting in that tiny shoebox

apartment when my wife was at work,

feeling extremely bored, thinking, is this

all my life's ever going to be?

Living in these tiny Japanese apartments

behind this hospital in this sleepy

Japanese town or city.

It just felt really, really miserable and

boring.

And I felt like I'm gonna waste my entire

life if this is my entire life and there's

nothing more than this, which I kind of

felt that way at the time.

And I do remember actually getting very

angry over food.

I started to get really irritable because

I couldn't eat the food that I really

wanted to eat.

It was very hard to get certain types of

food like British food.

For example, proper pork sausages, not

those boiled wiener things they sell in

every Japanese supermarket.

Proper cheese like Camembert, which isn't

just the fake plastic cheese with 5%

Camembert in it, which you can't even

taste.

And proper bacon.

I really love British bacon and you just

cannot get that in Japan.

It might sound weird because a lot of

people think the UK is not famous for

having good food, but there's a lot of

food in the UK that I really love.

Love and I really want to eat on a daily

basis.

Pot noodle, for example, Cornish pasties,

pies, meat kind of stuff that they just

don't really do in Japan.

And maybe there's like a specialist shop

that does them, but I don't really want to

have to hunt down and search for a

specialist shop for everyday daily items

that I expect to be able to buy from your

everyday supermarket.

And to be honest, I'm just not that crazy

about Japanese food.

Some of it's okay, like udon, tempura,

that stuff Okay, sushi is okay, but I'm

not gonna go crazy over it.

I do really love yakiniku, and that's the

one thing I do really miss from Japan

because we just don't really do yakiniku

here.

We don't really do those thin slices of

meat like they do in Japan, which I do

kind of miss.

But in general, I just have— my diet is

more of a British diet, and you can't

really get that in Japan.

Japan's attempts at doing Western food is

all terrible.

They have weird sandwiches.

Their sandwiches are terrible.

They put all the filling in the center of

the sandwich, and the corners of the

sandwich have no filling.

The fillings are really weird.

They have stuff like cream strawberry

sandwiches.

I don't like the weird egg mayo stuff.

It's all weirdly sweet.

The bread's really bad.

The sausages are really bad.

They always have the same types of

sausages, like these fake bratwurst or

wiener things, like the orange reddish

wiener things don't taste like proper pork

sausages.

Their bacon is basically just the same as

ham.

They don't seem to know the difference

between ham and bacon.

They seem to think it's the same thing

when it's not.

And also the bread there is really weird.

It's really hard to get hard, thick bread.

The bread is always really soft and kind

of sweet.

Even if you go to a bakery, they'll just

have the same kinds of bread products

like, I don't know, French croissant or

like the Danish pastry.

And it's all like soft and sweet.

They don't have sourdough or sourdough

like a French baguette that's actually

hard.

They'll have these breads like a roll of

bread that looks like a baguette.

But it's not the same as a proper French

baguette with the hard crust.

It's like very soft and weird.

I just— they can't do bread.

They can't do anything Western well.

It really does affect your mental health

when you can't eat the food that you want

to eat.

And I didn't grow up in Japan.

I wasn't raised in a Japanese family, so I

didn't grow up eating stuff like udon and

noodles and wasabi.

So I don't really want to eat Japanese

food every single day.

I get sick of it.

Also, I've kind of lost interest in dating

Japanese women.

It's just really boring having to date a

40-year-old Japanese woman you can barely

really have a conversation with her.

And even if you can, it's kind of boring.

So for those reasons, I don't think I've

ever— I don't think I'm ever going to go

back to Japan again.

There's nothing in Japan that really

interests me anymore, and I quite actually

like my life in the UK now.

I think it's a lot better than my life in

Japan when I was married.

So yeah.