“You must really like Asia, huh?” I get this a lot.
It’s easy to assume that, as I have been here 15 years, and yeah, I do like it here. But it’s not as if I am not interested in the rest of the world and my original plan wasn’t to stay here.
I came to Japan because it was literaly the furtherst place I could get from my hometown. I wanted to escape suburbia, and more than that, I wanted to stop being bound by the intellectual and emotional limitations of a single cultural bubble.
If there are different languages to communicate in, each must have unique ways of expressing things and the way of thinking must be different in each. Even within one language this can be true. Just compare a politicians speech to a Kendrick Lamar song or a Joe Rogan podcast or a Bjork song.
But it’s a big(ish) world so I wanted to go somewhere where I could learn a lot, enjoy the food, and be a minority since around half my friends growing up were minorities in a majority white America (Indian, Korean, black) and another quarter were white from other countries and spoke other langiages (Italian Russian and Polish).
I was always a little jealous of the friends who spoke multiple languages so it was important to go to a country where English was not an official language. I was a bit sheltered in the suburbs and hadn’t seen much, so a country with a low crime rate was preferable.
I had originally wanted to stay in Japan for 2 years because it was my first country and the writing system was more challenging the Western languages. From there I hoped to spend a year in 7-10 other countries and then go back to build a base in my favorite place.
I had a girlfriend who I got serious with though, and she convinced me to wait until she graduated so we could go together. I stayed an extra 3 years before she told me she didn’t want to go with me.
Also to be fair, I never got tired of learning Japanese. Its such a charming language with a ton of interesting expressions and the way of thinking is always challenging for a person from the West. I love being able to conquer that and really get into how locals tend to think, and learn the nuances, the small differences between East and West Tokyo, or between Tokyo and the countryside, or the difference between people who work at Japanese companies and western companies, and the tendencies of different age/gender demographics.
An interesting discovery, people who eatch Netflix in Japan tend not to be bothered by tattoos and marijuana, while people who watch Amazon Prime or cable have extremely negative views of these things.
There are a lot of nuances to a culture and you can dig forever, even in your hometown, but the newer a place is, the more there is to learn.
We broke up right after the earthquake in 2011 when we realized our life plans weren’t compatible. My goal became to get out as soon as possible but I had no idea what other countries were like…Japan is TAME and I didn’t want to get in trouble so I took a two month trip around China…Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Xian and Hong Kong….just to scope it out.
I was surprised at how different the pace was from how I imagined. It was so easy to make friends, wayyyy safer than depicted (not quite as safe as Japan but close, women waking home at night without too much worry ) and later so learned there were certain cities like Xiamen and Chengdu and Yunan where life was slooooowwwww, much much slower than Tokyo but not as isolated as Japanese countryside.
So I got rid of all my belongings and decided to travel around China for a year, doing a visa run to a nearby country or territory every 2 months. The cost of living was around 1/10 of what it had been at Tokyo at that time (now parts of China are more expensive than Japan). So i could basicaly live for two years on my savings from working in Japan for 4 years.
I travelled for about a year while studying the language and after a ton of job offers, I decided to take one….got scammed twice by companies promising a visa but not really offering one. Travelled again for a a year while playingg music and studying, got to know a whole lot of musicians, (some of which have become ultra famous and don’t answer my messages anymore 😆) and some of which became great friends. Found a legit job for a year and then travelled and played around for another year, just going with the flow.
I saw a lot of stuff that most foreigners and even locals don’t see, and totally fell in love with the country, but for reasons you can probably guess and which I won’t talk about here, I decided to leave.
The one thing I will say is, that country changes SO fast, its diffiuclt to start anything. The rent in the village I was living went up 10x in 2 years, from $80 a month to $800 a month, and then tripled in the next 2 years to $around $2500 a month.
Yeah, no thank you.
So my original plan was 5-8 other countries, probably including India, Indonesia, Germany, Italy, and Spain, with trips to South America and Africa in between….but… my first two countries took 10 years and I wanted a base…
Starting in a new country would be a big challenge, requiring a year or two to learn the language and I already had a big network in Japan and the rest of Asia….
So I came back to Japan to build a base where I could always come back to, but Japan, while very welcoming to tourists and short term residents,the Immigration office doesn’t like foreigners settling here, so the visa thing has been a bit of a battle. I’ve talked to a few experts and we are working something out now, but corona really set everything back about 4 years.
Hopefully next year I will get a 3 year visa and after that I might be able to start applying for permanent residency.
I’d like to spend half the year here and half the year in other countries, working on art and community project, really grassroots cultural exchange and art, play music everywhere and maybe even work remotely while I am travelling.
My current destinations overseas are
- Indoensia
- Thailand
- India
- Portugal
- Germany
- Spain
- Italy
- Ghana
- Nigeria
- Uganda
- Philippines
- Venezuela
- Mexico
And that list will surely grow but I don’t want to sightsee. I want to meet friends and DO stuff.
The priority now is being able to invite any friends I make overseas to stay here easily and connect to a community that fits them, whether they are backpacking musicians or crypto bloggers or judt really great people.
I hope to have such a space by the end of next year, and I am taking the neccesary steps now.
I love Asia, but I love Africa and Europe and the Americas and yes, even Australia 😛
Fuck Antarctica!!!!! 🤣 🤣 🤣
Let me know if you visit Japan someday 🔥
This post was inspired by a thread i made earlier. Finally found an excuse to share this part of my backstory, although the yet undisclosed details are pretty deep 😝 I will share those sometime too.
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If you are interested in blogging here and earning some change while sharing ideas and making friends, send me a message on Instagram or Twitter (@ ipluseverything)
ブログで自分の思っていることをシェアしながら小銭を溜まったり新しい友達をできたりすることは興味あれば、InstagramやTwitter（@ipluseverything）でメッセージを送ってください。 英語のオンラインレッスンの興味ある人もどうぞ、メッセージをください^_^
Novels/music/merch/social media/patreon:
https://linktr.ee/selfhelp4trolls
Untangled Knots podcast:
Japanese Upbringing Explained (interview my Japanese student)
Join us in the Deep shitdiscord channel to talk about deep shit, art and cultute differences
Confessions of the Damaged 1.1-1.3 on Amazon
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
