Why I HATED being Married in Japan

So as many of you know, I used to be

married in Japan to a Japanese lady, and I

thought I'd make a video about why I hated

being married in Japan to a Japanese lady.

And the reason why I decided to get

married in Japan in the first place was

because living in Japan and having a visa

and being able to be in a happy

relationship had always been one of my

long-term dreams and goals in life. And at

the time, I had to decide between being

married and being in an adult relationship

and being able to live in Japan, or go

home and live with my parents again as a a

27 or 28-year-old, which was just kind of

lame. At the time, it seemed like a

no-brainer to say yes when my ex-wife

proposed to me, and I decided to get

married and live in Japan. Unfortunately,

married life in Japan wasn't as great as I

thought it would be, and I started to

regret the decision after a few months. I

think for most people, marriage is already

a pretty difficult thing to do, even when

you're both from the same country. But

when you're married to someone who's from

a different country who has such a

different culture to yours, then it just

makes it even more challenging. And I

think the most challenging part about

being married in Japan was having to live

with a Japanese woman and having to kind

of adapt to her ways of life. Because I

watched a lot of anime and Japanese drama

before going to Japan, I thought I had a

pretty good understanding about what

Japanese people would be like to live

with. And I thought it would be easy to

adapt to the stuff they eat and the things

they like to do. And I thought the

language barrier wouldn't really be a

problem because I could speak pretty good

Japanese. But I was wrong. And actually

living with a Japanese person was a lot

more difficult and challenging and

frustrating than I initially expected.

And I think that in the end, my marriage

failed because there were so many tiny

little things that all built up to become

this massive thing that was just making me

feel kind of unhappy in Japan and made me

not really want to be married anymore.

And that's what ultimately made the

marriage fail. One of the most challenging

things about being married to a Japanese

person probably has to do with food. Now,

as someone who's from England, from

Britain, who grew up eating a lot of

Western food, I really love Western food

and I have it nearly every day for most of

my meals. So it would be things like steak

and chips, pizza, chicken pies, fried

stuff, and kind of Italian stuff like

lasagna and shepherd's pie. But the

problem is Japanese people eat very

strange stuff. Now I like Japanese food

now and then, you know, I like sushi and I

like ramen, but that's not really what

Japanese people eat all the time.

Japanese people don't have sushi and ramen

and yakiniku and all that delicious stuff

every single day. The typical Japanese

diet is extremely bland and boring,

mostly consisting of just white rice, a

bit of fish, maybe some miso soup, and

then lots of green slimy looking seaweed

kind of vegetables and pickled stuff and

grated radish. In the beginning, I didn't

really complain too much about the food

because I didn't want to upset her and I

wanted our relationship to go well and to

go smoothly. But after a while, I started

to get a bit sick and tired of all this

weird bland food, and I just started to

really crave Western food. When I'm

starving hungry and stressed out and tired

after a hard day of work, I really don't

think about grated radish and mounds of

slimy, wet-looking seaweed stuff and white

rice and tofu when I'm thinking of what do

I want to eat that's really delicious and

meaty and satisfying and fulfilling. I

think of stuff like steak and chips and

pizza and burgers and hot dogs. And there

were quite a few times where we fell out

and had a bit of an argument over dinner

where she wanted to have something

Japanese, traditional Japanese food like a

bit of rice and some salmon, some tofu

with some raw onions sprinkled over. And I

just really wanted to have something tasty

like burger and chips or steak and chips

or beef pie. And then she didn't want to

have that, and we ended up just eating

separate meals. She would go and make her

own Japanese meal, and then I would just

sulk and then go off to 7-Eleven and I'll

get a microwave burger or some fried food.

And I also started to really miss certain

types of food that they didn't really sell

in Japan, or they did sell in Japan but it

just tasted really different to what we

have here in England. For example, the way

the bread tastes over there, the way the

bacon tastes over there was just

completely different to what I'm used to

and what I like to have. They don't even

have cheese and onion crisps or any of the

crisps that I actually enjoy eating. So

when it came to food, I started to feel

extremely stressed out living in Japan

long-term, and I started to really crave

the stuff that I was used to having back

home in England. And it just made me into

this miserable person all the time when it

came to mealtimes, and it caused quite a

few arguments and fights and probably

contributed towards the failure of our

marriage. And the whole food problem kind

of ties into the next reason why I

probably felt very miserable and unhappy

in the marriage. And that's just mostly

because I felt so homesick. I really

started to miss my house here in England.

I started to just miss being surrounded by

people who spoke English. It starts to get

really lonely and kind of miserable

feeling when you're in a country where

most people just speak in a foreign

language all the time and they don't

really understand you unless you speak

their language. And you start to miss your

home native language and you miss the

sound of I remember one time I was buying

an expensive gaming laptop, and because it

cost so much money and I used my card to

try and buy it, my bank thought it was a

suspicious payment and they blocked my

card. So I then had to phone up the bank

to get my card unblocked, and it was the

first time I got to speak to another

English person in probably half a year,

and I felt so emotional over just hearing

another person who had an English accent.

It was really strange. Even if you can

speak pretty good Japanese, sometimes you

just don't really feel like speaking it

because it takes extra effort, extra

brainpower, power, and you just kind of

miss speaking in your own language. I even

started to get fed up of hearing the

Japanese language after a while. Even when

we had dinner, we would have the TV on and

there'd be some kind of Japanese program

on, and it was just starting to sound

really irritating, and it just sounded

like noise that I wish I could shut off.

But because my wife wanted to watch it, I

had to just sit there and watch it with

her. For example, she would always put the

TV on straight away first thing in the

morning, and she'd wake up quite early,

maybe 7 AM in the morning, and I'd still

be in bed, still kind of half asleep, and

all I could hear is is Japanese TV

shouting. You have no idea how irritating

Japanese TV can get after you've had to

tolerate it for months upon months. It's

just like constant noise blaring out at

you. In Japan, they like to think that the

noisier you are, the better of a time

you're having. So when it comes to TV

programs, they try to be as noisy as

possible to try and make it seem lively

and entertaining. And it just results in

nonstop shouting, silly sound effects for

the editing on the programs, and it just

gets really annoying. The same thing

applies when you go shopping. So when you

go into any kind of shop, they'll just

scream these kind of welcoming phrases at

you, which is supposed to make the

customers feel welcomed into the shop.

But it just made me feel annoyed because

I'm going into the shop trying to look for

stuff and I've got staff screaming at me.

It kind of depends what kind of shop it

is. Some shops like convenience stores,

they're not too bad. But then other shops

like electronic shops or camera stores,

they'll just have competitions on who can

scream this welcoming phrase the loudest.

Also, nearly every single shop in Japan

has music playing really loudly. So you've

got this music, you've got the staff

screaming at you, and it just creates this

really noisy environment. And I started to

really miss how in England you can just go

into a shop and the staff don't even say

anything to you, and there's probably no

music playing most of the time. I remember

when I first came back to England after

getting divorced, I went to the

supermarket and I remembered how quiet it

was, and I was just amazed. There's no one

screaming at me, there's no really

annoying music playing on repeat, on loop,

over over again. It just felt so peaceful,

and I really didn't miss the shopping

experience in Japan at all. Another big

problem I had with my wife was

communication. Communication could be very

difficult at certain times. Even though I

could speak pretty good Japanese,

conveying certain things proved to be

pretty difficult, and I ended up just not

bothering because it just took too much

time and effort to try and explain this

thing that I want to say, and I didn't

know exactly how to say it in a good way,

so I just gave up. And sometimes I just

didn't even bother trying to say what I

wanted to say and ended up creating this

kind of breakdown in communication between

us. Also, when it came to humor, it was

very difficult to explain to her the kind

of humor I have. So I kind of have like

this sarcastic kind of dark humor, I guess

you could say, and this doesn't really

translate well into Japanese. Most of the

time when I was just trying to be funny

and maybe failing at being funny, she

would just get upset and angry instead.

And when I tried to explain to her it was

just a joke, she would say stuff like,

but you're not a comedian. Why do you have

to make these silly jokes? They're not

even funny anyway. I just found it kind of

sad and depressing that she didn't really

understand my sense of humor, and my kind

of humor that I liked didn't really

translate well into Japanese, and it just

upset her all the time, which was really

weird because I didn't really find how she

could take offense at some of the stuff I

was saying when it was clearly and

obviously supposed to be not taken

seriously, or it should have been pretty

obvious that I was just joking about, and

she just got offended and upset. We had

massive arguments over several things I

said that were just said in jest, and I

wasn't being serious. Worst thing would

be— the worst memory that I have would be

when I would do a livestream and I'd just

be saying silly stuff like I usually do,

and she would hear it. She would be

watching it. Maybe she'd be on the train

back from work, and then she'd have a

look, and then she would catch me saying

some of this silly stuff, and she would

take it to heart and get really offended.

And she would come home and then start

shouting at me, or even sometimes she

would start hitting me. She would come

home, like, start slapping me on the side

of the head. And sure, it wasn't really,

really painful, like getting punched in

the face by a full-sized man, but still,

it was kind of annoying, and I don't

really like being slapped like that. And I

started to feel really bad anxiety every

time I could hear her footsteps coming up

the stairs as she came back home, and then

the keys turning in the lock. I'd feel

really anxious. I'd be worried that I

might have said something on a stream and

she's gonna be upset and moody again. I

could kind of tell if she was upset when

she came home because she would be really

quiet and she would give me this stare.

She would give me this ice-cold stare and

then I would know that I messed up. But I

didn't really know exactly why I messed

up. I didn't know exactly what I said that

was causing her to be so upset. And we

would just have really awkward moments

where we just weren't talking to each

other because she was upset over something

I said on a stream. It was really

difficult trying to explain to her that I

wasn't being serious and I was just joking

about. And I kind of prefer it if people

didn't watch my livestreams if I know them

in real life, because livestreaming for

hours and hours and hours is kind of—

well, it takes a long time to stream for

that many hours, and you start to run out

of things to talk about, and I start to

feel a bit bored, so I start to talk about

weird stuff. This is what I do for a

living, and it would have been nice if she

had some understanding and she was a bit

more supportive and just let me do what I

had to do to bring the money in, because

at the end of the day, this is where the

money is coming from. This is how I get to

pay for the rent and for the food that we

ate and for the trips we went on. It was

all thanks to streaming and YouTube that I

was able to afford these things. And it

would have been nice if she just let me

get on with it and let me do my job. I

don't know why she wanted to interfere all

the time and get involved and try to

control what I was saying. But it was like

she just wanted to control me all the time

and control what I was saying. You know,

don't say this, and don't say that, and

don't say this about me because of X, Y,

and Z. And that was another problem I had.

I didn't like how controlling she was. It

was like she didn't give me much freedom

and didn't let me just do what I wanted to

do. It was like I had to ask for her

permission to do anything, really. I don't

really like being told what to do. I like

to be able to do what I want to do when I

want to do it, how I like to do it. And I

don't like being nagged all the time. And

being married, it's just like you're

constantly getting nagged. You're

constantly being told what to do and how

to do things. You don't really have much

freedom. You sacrifice so much freedom and

liberty when you decide to get married.

And I realized that it just wasn't for me.

I prefer to be alone and be single if

it means that I get to have complete

freedom over what I do and how I do things

again, even though sometimes it can get

lonely and a bit sad. I just didn't really

feel like sacrificing all of my freedom

was worth what I got out of the marriage.

But the number one thing I was really

unhappy about was something that's kind of

silly to complain about because it's kind

of obvious you're going to have to

sacrifice it when you decide to get

married. The number one thing I was

unhappy about was not being able to meet

any other girls anymore, even though I did

meet other girls secretly and eventually

got caught. It was just kind of

frustrating because I had to sacrifice so

many opportunities to meet other girls,

mostly because it just wasn't possible to

get away with it. When I decided to get

married, I thought I'd be okay with not

seeing any other women anymore. I thought,

well, I've done a lot of that already in

my past. I've managed to spend most of my

20s just meaninglessly meeting women

randomly and having casual encounters and

very short relationships that only lasted

a few months. And I thought I got that out

of my system and I was ready to settle

down with someone that I thought was quite

nice looking. She wasn't fat or ugly, so I

thought, yeah, she seems fine. But then I

started to feel really bored just being in

the same relationship day in, day out. It

was like every day was the same. There was

no more excitement to be had anymore. And

I started to get a lot of messages from

women from my channel and also dating

apps, because for some reason women like

me on dating apps, I guess, when I'm in

Japan. And it just became so difficult to

resist the temptation after a while,

especially when it became so easy and I

had to put in no effort to be able to meet

these other women. It's just sometimes it

just became really, really risky. For

example, there's one time I went on a date

with this girl I met on Tinder. This was

before I got married, but I was still

living together with Chihiro in the same

apartment. And we went on a date, we went

to Mos Burger, and then she took me back

to her hair salon place where some things

may or may not have happened on the floor.

And it was getting pretty late, it was

around 7 PM around the time we were

finishing, and I was in a real rush to get

back home. And I was rushing to get to the

train station, I was on the train, and I

thought I made it just in time. It was

around 8 PM I arrived back at the train

station, and I thought I'd got away with

it. Well, I did, but I nearly got caught.

So I got off the train and I was heading

up the stairs, and then I felt someone

pulling on my arm. I turn around and it

was Chihiro. She was on the same train

back home from work that I was on, and I

was just slightly ahead in a different

carriage. But she saw me going up the

stairs and she stopped me and asked me

where I was. I had to quickly say that I

was just at the camera shop and I was

looking at cameras and doing a bit of

shopping. Thankfully, she believed me and

nothing bad happened after that, but it

was really scary and I really didn't want

to risk losing my relationship with her

just over a few of these one-night flings

kind of things with not very attractive

women. I wouldn't want to lose my marriage

or my relationship with her just for one

of these Tinder dates or hookups. And I

had to start thinking more carefully and

had to start blocking some of the women

that I was meeting because they just

weren't really worth risking everything

for. And I just remember feeling so

frustrated because I kept thinking, well,

if I wasn't married, there wouldn't be any

problems. I could be meeting with these

different women whenever wanted to. I

didn't have to worry about rushing home

quickly before I got caught. I could just

stay overnight with them, and there'd be

like an unlimited amount of possibilities

and doors that would be open to me if I

didn't have this whole marriage thing

holding me back. But the silly thing is,

I got divorced and then I was able to meet

as many women as I liked, but then I

started to not really feel interested in

meeting all these different women. And the

amount of women that I was able to meet

after getting divorced dramatically went

down after I had to leave Japan and come

back to my home country. Where I find

dating to be a lot more difficult here in

England compared to how easy it was in

Japan. So the irony is I lost my marriage,

lost the ability to live in Japan, and I

was quite comfortable in the marriage, I

guess you could say, from kind of domestic

comfort kind of way. It was, it was nice

in a way. It wasn't all bad. Well, it

wasn't all negative. There were some

positives, and I do miss those positives

now and then, and I do kind of miss being

married sometimes. So the irony is I lost

the marriage and that comfort Plus, I also

lost any potential gains that would have

been had from not being in the marriage.

So I don't really know if I can

confidently say that getting divorced was

the correct decision. I guess in some ways

it was the right thing to do, but then I

do kind of miss being able to live in

Japan, and I do miss having a wife

sometimes, and I don't really like being

alone and single every single day all of

the time. So I'm not really sure if, if it

was a good idea in the end to get