Why i HATED Living in Japan [amU3I_2Msc0]

So as you may know, I was living in Japan

for a few months in the beginning of this

year, and I've been back in the UK for a

few weeks now, and I wanted to make a

video talking about why I actually hated

living in Japan. Even though living in

Japan was one of my biggest dreams in

life, there were a few things about living

in Japan that I really didn't like. And I

really think my recent trip to Japan has

been kind of like a wake-up call to me,

and it's made me realize that I don't

really want to live in Japan if that's how

I have to live. Now that I'm getting

slightly older, I'm realizing that there's

a certain quality of life that I would

like to have during my life, and I

realized that those things are not very

easy to get when I'm living in Japan. And

I think the number one thing I hated the

most about living in Japan this year was

how damn difficult it is to find somewhere

that's nice to live that's affordable. If

you don't have a visa and you don't have

loads of money, good luck trying to find

somewhere that's nice to live because it's

just not possible. I think the number one

thing that makes me happy in life has to

be having a nice place to live, somewhere

that's affordable and comfortable and

peaceful and quiet, and you're not

disrupted by strangers living next door or

living nearby causing problems in your

life. And when I was in Japan, I had to

live in this horrible, rubbish, cheap

guest house. It wasn't really cheap, but

it was the cheapest I could afford. So you

can get a nice apartment for a good price

if you can get a Japanese apartment for a

good price that locals pay. But to be able

to get an apartment like that, you need to

have either one of 3 things. You need to

have a job so you can have a visa so you

can rent an apartment. You need to have a

girlfriend, a Japanese girlfriend or

Japanese wife who can get you a nice

apartment, or they already have an

apartment and then you can just move in

with them for free cereal and free rent.

And the third option would be to just make

loads of money so you can actually afford

to live in one of those really expensive

rented apartments that are kind of like

hotels but they cost thousands of pounds

every month. So to be able to live

comfortably in Japan, you need either one

of those 3 things. So number one,

obviously I don't have a job. I'm a

YouTuber and I don't have like a special

entertainer's visa or self-employment visa

because I'm just a small-time YouTuber.

I'm not PewDiePie. I don't make millions

of pounds or dollars every month. I don't

get millions of views. To be able to be

eligible for the business visa or the

self-employment visa, you need to be

making a certain amount of money every

year, which is like $100,000 or something

stupid. You need to have like an office or

you need to have a space where your

company does its business from and you

need to be able to employ staff, like

physical staff, human beings.

Unfortunately, I just don't know how to

make enough money on YouTube to be able to

qualify for the business or the

self-employment visa. So that's kind of

out of the question. Only leave me with

just getting a job in Japan, and I would

not want to get a job in Japan. I had a

job in Japan back in 2011. I worked in a

convenience store, and it was probably one

of the worst job experiences I've ever

had. Working in Japan is so stressful and

so annoying, and I couldn't even last more

than a few months working in Japan before

I snapped and I just quit. So getting a

job to be able to get a visa to be able to

rent an affordable, nice, comfortable

place to live in in Japan is kind of out

of the question. Number 2, getting a

Japanese girlfriend or Japanese wife. Now

I've done that in the past, and I've been

to Japan many times where I lived in a

nice place thanks to having a Japanese

wife or Japanese girlfriend, but I

couldn't really get a Japanese girlfriend

this time because I already have a Thai

girlfriend. And also getting a Japanese

girlfriend these days is very difficult

for me. Number one, I'm getting older.

I'm not young and full of energy like I

used to be. Number two, I'm banned on

basically every single dating app that's

good, and the only ones I'm not banned on,

they're kind of rubbish dating apps that

only have ugly women. And I'm kind of fed

up and bored of going all the way to Japan

just so I can get into a serious

relationship with a 40-year-old woman

from Japan who I'm not even attracted to.

Having a girlfriend in the country that

you want to live in is like a massive

cheat code. You get to bypass all these

annoying things like you need a visa and

you need ID and you need a Japanese this

and that to be able to do anything

complicated, and you can just get access

to stuff like phone contracts,

apartments, just because she's a native to

the country and she can get those things

for you. But when you don't have a

Japanese girlfriend and you're trying to

live in Japan, you don't have access to

all these perks and you get treated like a

foreigner and you have to do everything

the foreigner way, the slow and expensive

way. And like I said, I already unbanned

on all the dating apps, so if I wanted to

get another Japanese girlfriend or another

Japanese wife, it would be extremely

difficult. So the only way would be if I

just went up to women on the streets or I

went to bars. And I'm an extremely shy and

anxious person. I'm terrible at small

talk, and I'm really awkward and bad at

conversation in my own language. Now, I

can speak Japanese pretty good, but I

can't speak Japanese in like a fluid,

smooth, cool way where I can chat up

women. I went to a few bars in Osaka to

try and test it out to see what it was

like, and it was just horrible. It was

really scary. I did try to talk to a few

women, and at first I tried talking to

them in English and they would just like

wave their hands at you and walk away. Or

if you tried speaking to them in Japanese,

you would kind of stutter, your mind might

go blank because it's not your first

language. And as soon as you open up some

dead air where it's awkward silence, they

would use that as an opportunity to ditch

you. They'll say stuff like, oh, we're

going to the toilets, we'll be back, or,

oh, we have to go and get more drinks,

and then you never talk to them ever

again. That's just a lie so they can get

away from you. So I ended up giving up

trying to talk to women at the bars, and I

ended up just talking for hours and hours

to drunk Japanese men or drunk foreign

men, and that was way more fun than trying

to talk to Japanese women. And I just

stood there and I watched the other

Japanese men who are actually very good at

talking to women. I watched how they did

it, and they would just swoop in if any

women come into the bar and they don't

have men talking to them already. Some

other guys would just swoop in and then

come up with some kind of one-liner or

chat-up line, start chatting to them,

start laughing, start making jokes, and

invite them over to their table. And I

just thought, there's no way I could

compete with this. Every time I tried to

talk to the women, it would be so awkward

and so uncomfortable. I can see that

they're trying to get away as quickly as

possible. The problem with dating in Japan

is the women there, they look very cute

and very pretty and feminine and

everything, but they've got zero

personality. They don't put any effort

into trying to make the conversation move

forward. Forwards. They don't put any

effort into asking questions and getting

the conversation going. They just rely on

the man to have all of the chat-up lines

and have all of the conversation topic

starters. And if you're not very good at

that, as soon as there's awkwardness,

they ditch so fast. Japanese girls, they

hate awkwardness, and they think you're

weird or you're like a creep if you're

making it awkward. In comparison, Western

women are so different and so much better.

They're just so much more confident, and

they've actually got personalities, and

they actually put effort and contribute

into the conversation so it doesn't become

awkward silencers. I went to a few other

bars, and this time this British woman

started talking to me, and she was really

chatty, and she was asking me all these

questions like, how did you get started

with YouTube? How long were you living in

Thailand? What brings you to Japan? It

felt like, wow, she's actually interested

in my life story, and she's asking me all

these questions, and I don't really have

to put much effort into this conversation

because she's basically carrying the whole

thing. And it felt great. I didn't have to

put any work into it, and I thought, why

can't Japanese women be like this? And

then I went to another bar, a karaoke bar,

and again She was really chatty and asked

me all the questions. I didn't really have

to put much effort. I felt like I was the

one being chatted up. And that is kind of

why dating in Japan is so difficult. It's

not because the women are ugly or

anything. It's just because it's so hard

to click with them because of the language

barrier, the cultural barriers, and they

just have no personality, or they just

hide the personality very well. And

they're always shy and embarrassed about

everything. So it's hard to like crack

through that ice wall barrier to be able

to actually have a conversation with them.

And it kind of made me realize that,

yeah, I guess I understand the whole

personality is more important than looks

kind of thing now, because I had way more

fun talking to the British girl and the

French girl at the bars than I did with

any of these Japanese women. I always

wondered for a long time why these big

famous YouTubers like Chris Broad and

CDawgVA and Anime Man, why don't they date

Japanese women? They went through all this

effort of moving to Japan and learning

Japanese, and they're surrounded by all

these women in a country full of women

that are really attractive, but they don't

get Japanese girlfriends. And I thought,

why don't they just get a Japanese

girlfriend? And now I get it. It's because

Talking to Japanese women is so difficult

and it's so boring compared to just

talking to our Western women. I had way

better time talking to Western women than

I did with any of the Japanese women. And

for anything to happen physically, first

of all, you've actually got to have a good

conversation and enjoy each other's

company when it's just talking. I also

can't stand how much Japanese women lie.

They lie so much. For example, you can go

on a date with a Japanese girl and you

feel like it went okay, it felt pretty

good, and you ask her, so do you want to

meet again? And then she'll say all this

stuff like, oh yes, I had a great time. I

would love to meet again. Let's do this.

Let's do that when I'm free. I'll let you

know. And you're waiting and waiting and

waiting, and she never messages you ever

again. And she's probably blocked you as

well. She probably blocked you straight

away as soon as the date was over and she

was out of sight. She probably had you on

block already. When I was dating in the UK

a few years ago, at least the girls were

honest. If I went on a date and it didn't

really go very well, she would at least

say stuff like, oh, I'm sorry, but I don't

really feel like there was any chemistry,

or we didn't really really click, so I

don't really feel like we should meet

again, but good luck anyway. Maybe it's

kind of harsh to be that honest, but at

least you know where you stand, and at

least you don't get your hopes up only to

wait and wait and wait and never get a

reply ever again. I hate how two-faced

they can be in Japan. I know they're just

trying to be friendly and they're just

trying to be polite, but if you have no

intention of meeting again, then you

shouldn't say stuff like, oh yeah, let's

meet again. So that was just a big rant

about why I hate dating in Japan, which is

kind of connected to why I can't get a

nice apartment in Japan, is because I

can't get Japanese girlfriend. So for the

third option, if you don't have a visa and

you don't have a Japanese girlfriend,

what do you do if you want somewhere nice

to live? Well, if you have loads of money

and you make like £5,000 or £6,000 or more

every month, then you can easily afford to

just book a rented serviced apartment on

like a hotel app, and it would cost you

thousands of pounds every month. I ended

up booking one in Tokyo because I just

couldn't stand living at the guest house

anymore, and I got this nice apartment on

the outskirts of Tokyo, and it cost like

£100 a night. And I stayed there for a

week and it cost me about £700 for one

week. So to stay there for a month, it

would cost over £3,000. And unfortunately,

I just don't make that kind of money. I

have not figured out, or I just cannot

figure out how to make more than £5,000 a

month. The most I ever made was like

£3,600 a month when my YouTube channel was

more popular. And these days I just make

about, at most I make about £1,600 or

£1,700 on a good month. On average,

probably around £1,000 to £1,200. £1,200 a

month, and then on a bad month I might

make as low as £700 or £800 a month. I

just cannot afford to book an apartment

like it's a hotel in Japan for months and

months and months. So unfortunately, I'm

just not smart enough to be able to make

more than £5,000 a month, and I just

cannot afford to book these apartments for

more than a week. So what are you supposed

to do if you want to live comfortably in

Japan if you don't have a visa because you

don't want to get a job, or you can't get

a job because you don't have any

qualifications? I don't even have a

university degree. Degree, so I couldn't

even apply for like a teaching job at the

JET program. So you don't have visa

because you can't get a job. You don't

have a girlfriend because you suck at

talking to women and you're banned on

dating apps, and you can't get a

girlfriend to get you a nice apartment.

You don't have loads of money because

you're too stupid to figure out how to

make more than £5K a month. Then what are

your options? You could book an APA hotel.

APA hotels aren't too expensive. They're

around £1,000 for an entire month. But the

rooms are really tiny and it kind of sucks

living in a hotel room for more than a few

months. And £1,000 a month is actually

quite a lot of money if you only make

about £1,000 a month. You also have shared

living options like a capsule hotel or

dormitory or a hostel. So capsule hotels

are like a couple hundred pounds a month,

but they have stupid rules like they kick

you out of the actual hotel from 10 AM

until 3 PM because they have to do

cleaning and they have to clean the entire

area, which means you're not allowed to

sleep late and you're not allowed to just

sit around in your capsule during the day

because they have to do cleaning. And

obviously it's very noisy. Sometimes you

might be unlucky and get some big fat guy

who lives or sleeps above you or next to

you and he's snoring and you can hear

everything. You need to get ear protection

and eye masks and all that kind of stuff.

It's just really inconvenient and not a

nice place to live. And the same goes for

places like dormitories, bunk bed

dormitory kind of bedrooms where you're

sharing the room with up to 10 other

people. I have tried it before and it was

not nice. The entire rooms smell like

sweat and body odor. You had all these fat

noisy people snoring and rolling

everywhere and shaking the entire bed.

You got no privacy. It's really horrible.

You can't get any work done if you work

online or you need like a quiet place to

work and do stuff. It also is very

inconvenient. It's hard to do things when

you want to do them because there might be

other people using the shower or people

getting in the way in the kitchen area,

and you just kind of have to live around

other people and it's just really

annoying. It is really cheap. You can live

in a dormitory in Tokyo or Osaka for just

£100 or £150 or maybe £200 a month,

but I really wouldn't recommend it. And

then you have guest houses. Now, I first

went to Japan in 2010 and I stayed in a

guest house, and it was the most fun

experience of my life. I was only 20 years

old, met all these people, got my first

girlfriend from a guest house, and it was

really fun and really cheap. It was only

about £300 £150 for the whole month. So I

thought this time I would stay in a guest

house again, but it was not nice this

time. So basically a guest house is like a

really big building full of hundreds of

people, maybe 150 people or just 100

people, and you all have your own room,

like a private room, but you share the

kitchen and the showers and like the

living areas are shared and the laundry

areas are shared and also the toilets are

shared as well. So if you imagine like a

hotel with a corridor and down the

corridor there's rooms on either side,

like room, room, room, room. And then by

the stairs, there'd be like a bigger room

with all the toilets and the sinks where

you brush your teeth. That's how they

usually are. But this time I stayed in

this guest house and it was kind of

different. It was basically like an

apartment block. And instead of having

room, room, room, room, room, it was like

unit, unit, unit, down the

corridor. It felt like originally the

building was an apartment block with

regular apartments, and they just bought

out the entire building and converted it

into a guest house style. So within each

unit, they somehow put up this really

cheap, rubbish, thin, paper-thin wall and

separated the entire apartment unit into 3

individual rooms with a shower and one

toilet for the 3 rooms. And it was like

big unit. And then within the unit,

little room, little room, little room with

a corridor, little room here for shower

and toilet. And I had the room sandwiched

in the middle and had the most annoying

people living next to my room. I had this

big, fat, tall American guy, like 6 foot,

200 pounds. Every time he took a step,

the whole building shook. And his voice

was so loud. I don't know why American

people have such loud voices. Loud booming

voices. And he worked as an English

teacher teaching English online in his

bedroom. So he was at home basically all

day long every day during the weekday

teaching English. And I could hear every

single word crystal clear. Even when he

was on the phone, I could hear every

single word in the conversation. And he

would have phone calls late at night,

sometimes as late as 3:00 AM. And I got so

mad I actually had to knock on the wall.

And this is kind of weird for me 'cause

usually I don't like confrontation. I

usually just try and grit and bear it and

tolerate it even if it's really annoying.

But this time I just couldn't. He was up

all night on the damn phone talking to his

girlfriend or his mum or something. So I

just had to give the wall a little knock

and then he stopped. But then the next day

he was on the phone again until 2 AM and

then he just never stopped and I just gave

up trying to knock on the wall because

he's not gonna stop, is he? I don't know

why some people are so inconsiderate.

Like, he knows the walls are paper thin

and he knows I can hear everything, but he

didn't make any effort to try and be quiet

or to try and take his phone calls outside

or to try not to talk too loudly. He could

have whispered on the phone and it would

have been slightly better, but he was just

talking in his normal talking volume in

the middle of the night. The construction

of the building was really bad as well.

It was really old and ugly looking, and

the windows in my room were just single

planes of glass. So when the wind was

really strong, it would shake the windows

and there'd be like this rattling glass

sound. I had to wedge little bits of paper

in, little bits of card I wedged into the

gaps to try and stop the windows from

rattling. And then every time someone

opened the the door of the front of the

unit to get into the apartment unit, the

entire building would shake. All of the

fake, stupid, rubbish, cheap walls would

start rattling, and there's like a little

gap of light in between the walls and the

door frame, so you can actually see into

my room if you looked into the gap. Also,

my room was right next to the busy road,

and the traffic was really loud. People in

Japan— Japanese people love their noisy,

loud motorbikes, and they'd ride up and

down the road even late at night, at like

2 AM or 3 AM. You could hear traffic, and

it was so It was either the wind rattling

the windows or the American guy in the

other room being loud or the traffic. The

place actually drove me crazy. I thought I

was going to go mentally insane. And it

was probably the worst place I've ever

lived in in my entire life. And it was

£400 a month, which is not very cheap,

but it's cheaper than thousands of pounds

a month for a rented apartment. And I was

coming from Thailand where I had a really

nice luxury condo in Bangkok, which only

cost about £250 a month. A month. It was

really high up, it was really quiet, had

nice solid build quality and nice windows.

When it was windy, everything didn't shake

and rattle. You couldn't hear the

neighbors through the walls, and it's

really nice. And I went from that to this

horrible crappy guest house in Japan where

I was paying more than double, and it was

just horrible. And I thought to myself,

why am I living like this? This is not

fun. I love Japan, it's great and

everything, but I do not want to live in

Japan if I have to live like this. I would

love to live in Japan if I could somehow

get a normal apartment, like the

apartments that all the Japanese people

live in, and they pay the normal local

price, which should only be about £600 a

month, maybe £500 a month, for a nice

modern apartment with modern fittings,

and it doesn't shake and rattle in the

wind, or there's no noisy neighbors. But I

just can't get an apartment like that

because I don't have visa, I don't have

Japanese girlfriend, I don't have loads of

money. And now I'm thinking to myself, I

don't want to ever have to live in that

horrible guest house again. I don't want

to have to live in Japan if that's how I

have to live. Why would I leave this nice

house that I'm living in now in the UK to

go and live in somewhere horrible? And I

just can't be bothered to get a job in

Japan or find a Japanese wife again. So

for those reasons, I don't really see

myself ever trying to live in Japan ever

again because I just can't figure out how

to get get better accommodation, I think I

would just go there for like a short trip,

maybe a week or two, have a good time,

stay in a nice hotel, eat some good food,

do some sightseeing, and then just leave

and not just sit in a guest house all day

long being bored and being annoyed,

wasting all this money.