I moved 10 times in 4 years to live in Japan

And the mantra that kept me going.

I moved 10 times in 4 years. Five of those times were in Japan. The rest were a result of choosing to live there.

Getting to Japan meant unplugging my whole life, but once there, I’d assumed that life would achieve some sense of normalcy.

Then COVID happened.

It began with a breakup.

My former partner and I met when I was 23. After seven years together, people discussed our hypothetical marriage as if it were inevitable: my hairdresser, random strangers, my partner’s mom.

But there was no ring on my finger and I didn’t want there to be. I didn’t see that marriage happening anytime soon. Maybe I wasn’t the marrying kind, I thought, or maybe it would happen one day later on.

Our final four years together, we lived in a duplex in Baltimore. It was cheap, perhaps because the basement flooded up to a meter high. The water caused stray cat litter and waste to gunk up the floor. I was the one who had to vacuum the dirty water out each time, but that low rent made it so hard to leave.

I kept the door to the basement closed when anyone came over, but I felt a nagging shame that kept me from feeling good. That mess nagged at me; my foundations were cracked. I could never seem to get it sorted out. It felt so heavy and out of my control.

In ways it was an analogy for my life in general: comfortable enough, but off.

A few days before turning 30, I started to wonder…What if a relationship isn’t just a relationship? What if a relationship is really the absence of every other possibility? What if continuing to be in a partnership I’d begun at 23 (which felt like two lifetimes ago) meant I was saying no to every other match? Every other life I could ever have? Was I really prepared for that sort of decision?

Without getting into the finer points of that relationship — I’d tried to change things, I tried to deny it, but deep down I knew it wasn’t the forever relationship for me.

I needed a life change. But the question was: how?

Life Change

In trying to find a new path, I was discouraged at first. Money was an issue, I couldn’t even wrap my mind around how to afford anything other than the $1000/month apartment I’d shared with my partner.

I was out of practice living on my own. I was 30 and hadn’t been single since I was 23. So I lingered in the same apartment for at least three months after we broke up. He would have liked me to stay for six months more.

But when I realized we were just going to keep doing this weird emotional dance where he was secretly hoping we would get back together, I realized I needed to get out fast. It just wasn’t healthy.

As soon as I made that decision and began asking around, I found a place to stay. Taking that leap to move out proved to be a rapid change of pace that I desperately needed and thus began my string of moves.

Moves:

1. To a friend's house, renting a room

Who Am I?

I desperately needed a life change but that didn’t mean it was easy. Moving itself took a long time, in hindsight maybe breaking it up into lots of little trips wasn’t the best idea.

But it was the emotional change that was the real difficulty. I struggled to keep steady on my feet as wave after wave of change rushed into my life. But I was making it happen. My companions were a little whisper inside of me encouraging me on, as well as a high pitched whine wondering where I would end up, and who I would become.

Bit by bit, my old and familiar life crumbled to dust. As it fell behind me, I began to face big questions. Who am I? I didn’t realize how tied up my identity had become in the trappings of my former life. Over and over again, I began to realize how much I was letting go from leaving my previous relationship, my home, and everything else.

Who was I without being a girlfriend?

Who was I without 10 shelves of books and my own office?

Who was I without my beloved cat who promptly passed away as soon as I moved out?

I did not know really. All I knew was that I was making huge life decisions and they felt right. My inner compass was steady. I had vacillated for years and now I just had to trust myself. To trust that I would be okay.

So now what?

After a conversation with a friend, I decided to try to teach English in Japan for a year.

It called to me. It wasn’t a choice, and it wasn’t a dream. It was something else.

Once the idea struck me, I accepted the vision and fully committed to it from that moment on. The idea felt right — and experience has taught me to trust that kind of feeling, or else. Bad things happened when I say no to it, and good things happen when I say yes.

Friends of mine had taught English in Japan, so I felt certain I could do it, too. But a move on this grand scale added even more troublesome questions:

I was still wrapping my mind around leaving my old apartment. Who will I be if I’m not anchored in the same state or even the same country?

Who will I be and how will I survive if I don’t have any friends near me for a whole year?

There was no way to know, but that didn’t stop me. I was doing it, moving towards something different. I applied to several jobs in Japan and kept taking steps to get ready.

I don’t remember exactly when it was but at some point I added my mantra to my phone background:

“You will end up where you are supposed to be.”

Going to Japan

To fund my moves, I got a new part-time job. In addition to graduate school and my business as a copywriter, I was also a massage therapist. It was a lot to juggle, but I knew it was all temporary.

After moving from my old apartment, I could have stayed where I was for years, but I still felt like I hadn’t changed my life enough. In my limited spare time, I fixated on the one thing that felt clear and right: going to Japan.

If you think it is crazy and random, a lot of other people in my life did, too. But I knew it was right for me. My gut is always right. Plus, I’d already bulldozed my life and it didn’t feel like I had much to lose.

About six months after moving in with my friend in 2018, I passed the final interviews to get a job in Japan. I was told I could start teaching English a year later, the following spring, but that it would depend on when spots opened.

Now it was all about getting organized. I had just finished my Master’s degree in Spiritual and Pastoral Care so I had a little bit less on my plate. I could spend more time tackling the massive list of things to prepare for my trip. I didn’t know exactly how much time I had left to do it all: filing back taxes, filling out complex immigration documents, getting a new passport, learning Japanese, saving money, downsizing my possessions, and more.

The enormity of this goal was all I could focus on. I didn’t plan to live in Japan forever; after that year abroad, who knew? Focusing on the next step was all I could really handle.

Slowly I tied up all my loose ends, culminating in a move to my Dad’s house. Spring of 2019, I rushed to get all my things to his house as quickly as possible so I could hop on a plane as soon as my English-teaching company told me to. And then I settled in to wait.

Moves:

2. To my dads house in Maryland awaiting placement in Japan

Ready or not

“I have made it! I am where I am supposed to be!”

My company had kept me waiting for three months past when I expected to leave from my Dad’s house, but eventually I got the green light.

The first day I got to Japan was in July 2019. I was exhausted from the long flights there, but unable to sleep because it as midday. My hotel room wasn’t available until four. Somehow I made it until then to crash.

The next day, my company began my training and let me know the big news. Although I‘d waited over a year for a placement and they’d told me exactly what day to arrive, saying they were ready for me in Japan — they really weren’t. I didn’t actually have any school to teach in, yet.

So for the moment, after my stay in the hotel, I didn’t have anywhere permanent to live until they figured out what school to put me in. For the moment, I had to stay in temporary housing.

Moves:

3. To temporary housing in Japan awaiting work placement in a school

My real job

My temporary housing was a bit of a pickle because I had to acquire all the necessary things for living beyond what I packed in my two suitcases, but I also couldn’t get too comfortable. I didn’t have a car and I’d have to move as soon as they knew where my real placement would be.

After about two months, as I’d feared, I got word that my new home would be a distance away. My temporary room hadn’t had a mattress, so I’d had to buy one. Now how was I going to move it?

It would be impossible to take on a train, so I had to rent a car to get my things to a new apartment. Luckily, I’d come prepared with an international passport.

Unfortunately Japan drives on the opposite side of the road as America. Having never driven on the left side of the road before in a foreign country, I was terrified. And for good reason; I ended up scrapping up my car, and getting a nasty parking ticket. My phone died and my destination was incredibly difficult to find. The whole trip and its aftermath took years off of my life.

But physically I survived, and I was happy to finally “arrive” and call someplace home. I began working with enthusiasm at my new school shortly after.

I told my friends back home that I really liked my new job. Maybe I wouldn’t just stay one year, I could see myself staying for a few.

Mountains hugged my countryside village and at night it was so quiet. There was almost nothing around me compared to the metro area of D.C. and Maryland, where I’m from, but it felt fresh and full of possibility. Without all of the distractions of my previous life, I was making progress on my writing and creative projects, which filled me with joy.

The screensaver on my phone had come true. I was where I was supposed to be, at last my hard work had paid off. Or so I thought.

Good thing I never changed that screensaver because only a few months later, I began to hate where I was.

Moves:

4. To an apartment for my work placement

Right place for me? Maybe not.

I had a lot of dead time between classes. About ten to fifteen hours a week. This was really awesome at first. There wasn’t anything else for me to do, since the class material was 99% already created and set in stone, so I would read books, write my own books, or listen to music I was recording. Doing this, I was happy as a clam.

But then coworkers at my school began to complain about me. They submitted their anonymous feedback to my bosses in the big city. My boss then called me, and told me what the complaints were.

“It’s against your contract to read,” my boss said and I had to change my behavior.

I was shocked. Other people at my company regularly used free time between classes to watch Youtube or read fantasy books. I checked with everyone I knew, and I was the only one that had been told off for this. But since the customer (people at the school) was complaining to my hiring company, they had to lay down the law on me, citing fine print in my contract.

A little voice in the back of my head reminded me that if I lost my job, I would also lose my apartment. My apartment was rented in my company’s name. If I needed any extra motivation to respond to the negative feedback, fear of being homeless without a job in a foreign country that I spent years trying to live in certainly did the trick.

Since I couldn’t read, I had to kill time in a more culturally appropriate way: I stared at a screen unmoving for 10–15 hours a week. Inside I was pissed about what a waste of time this was. I hated it. I would have rather give blood (something I don’t like!!).

Despite this sacrifice, there was no reward in it for me. There were always more complaints.

My work environment began to trigger traumatic memories and feelings on a daily basis. Working in high school with stressed-out students grinding with no joy in their lives, began to remind me of being in high school grinding with no joy in my own young life. Trying to please my co-teachers so they wouldn’t complain about me, and still having my every movement reported and criticized, reminded me of the fear I constantly felt as a teen due to emotional abuse and bullying from both authorities and my peers. I focused on my breathing, and put one foot in front of the other but it was a lot.

After all the hours of staring at screens and developing new lesson plans that my co-teacher would never let me use, trying to do everything right, I was really looking forward to a winter break.

But two days before the vacation, I got a call from my boss, the parting gift of another long list of complaints. There were about 20 and they all made me want to permanently glue my hand to my face.

One complaint was “The students don’t understand your jokes. Do you notice? They are not sure you noticed that the students don’t understand your jokes.” Yes, I noticed! The two times I ever tried to make any jokes were so cringe I just stopped making jokes at all. At least I must have managed to contain my horror and embarrassment at being so unfunny.

It frustrated me so much that I only needed to mess up once for something to be jotted down by whoever was reporting on me. Like one day I had terrible back pain and left work early. I hadn’t worn a bra that day. Of course someone told my boss, so this joined the list, “Students could see your nipples and they were talking to each other about your breasts.”

Now that I’d received the deluge of complaints, I barely knew what to do with any of them. Some were about complex problems I was not equipped to solve, but mostly they were about things that only happened once. They were confusing, unnecessary, and unhelpful. It felt mean.

I hate everyone

This game of telephone is a common way to give feedback in Japan to “save face” but I hate it. I can’t ask questions to clarify. Things are too vague or general for me to do anything with. I could make a mistake once, a month ago, and it would make the list. I wanted to murder someone.

In theory, these constant rounds of criticism are supposed to spur constant improvement. I love improving and growing in general but I do not respond well to constant microscopic criticism without positive feedback.

My boss could tell how hard I was trying and actually sympathized with me this time. She said, “I hope you try to enjoy Japan outside of work so this is not all that you remember.” But, still, they had to honor that the school was their client, not me. I had to go back to work daily with people picking me apart and try to meet them at least halfway.

I’d never done badly at any job before, including when I worked in US schools. My confidence and enthusiasm for my teaching job turned to bitterness and resentment.

It‘s culturally normal for my colleagues to give me the occasional grunt or tiny nod of approval for doing something right, but it did little to boost me up. They were the same people who ripped to shreds on a regular basis and probably would again. I couldn’t trust them even though they were the only people I knew in the whole town who spoke English. Since I couldn’t say for sure who was talking about me at work, and could only suspect, I trusted no one and couldn’t wait to be rid of them.

I really did try.

I tried to assimilate into Japanese work culture and not give excuses,

I tried to respond to the criticism and say sorry even when it wasn’t my fault,

I tried to carry my contract out to the letter; never read any damn books, never write to amuse myself or soothe myself, and just kill time staring at a screen, bored to literal tears.

But at this point, it was indisputible that this was not working out for me.

And I dunno, maybe it is not just me? The work culture in Japan is famously brutal, leading to high levels of burnout and mental health issues. Maybe this sort of thing is part of the high suicide rates in Japan? If someone comments and calls me a snowflake, you are getting deleted.

Perhaps not all parts of every culture are inherently good just because they are common or long-lasting. I do my best to respect other cultures but Japanese work culture is my god-damn kryptonite.

Surviving

I’d planned to spend my winter break having fun to make up for my unfun job. Instead, I spent a good chunk of the two-week winter break curled up in the fetal position, trying to shake the feeling that my life was the worst and I was the worst. As people would find out during COVID, being isolated is bad for your mental health. I have past trauma, my job was retraumatizing me, and I was alone in dealing with it.

Since I had been doing a lot of work with my emotions before this, I could observe myself to some degree. I reached out for help. I did things to try and feel better. And I could see that someone else in my shoes, who felt as I felt, might have just given up living. My brain was looping all the feelings of the worst years of my life, and I’ve lived through some bad shit. I was lucky to still be hanging on.

It took over a week to get my nervous system back to semi-normal. If only they could have waited until January to crush my spirits. I seriously considered jumping on a plane to go home and just get out ASAP. But even though staying felt horrible, leaving didn’t feel right, either. There had to be some reason I was here… and the school year was only a few months longer.

I put a retirement countdown on my phone so that every day I could check the number of days I had left in my job. There were over 100 days left. I remembered what my boss said about enjoying Japan, and looked back at the number. Well, shucks. One hundred days is too long a period to just be miserable all the time, waiting until it passes. I had to find a way to have a better experience.

I made the most of the final days of my break. That would turn out to be life changing, although I didn’t know it at the time. For about five days, I traveled Japan and I also got to play some of my original music at open mics, including one where I sang with a band backing me up for the first time.

On another musical occasion, I ended up not being able to play music, as the venue had closed for the holiday. I didn’t find this out until my friend and I had already arrived at the venue to meet up. We told everyone else not to bother coming but with nothing else to do, we wandered around Osaka and spent the evening alone together for the first time. It sparked something and after that, we began dating.

We both knew our relationship wouldn’t be long term because I would have to leave. My contract ended mid-March 2020 and I planned to leave Japan.

What was the point of all this?

Where am I meant to be? How will I end up there?

For a while I had been digesting my next steps. I knew for sure that I had to get out of my job, which meant I couldn’t stay in my apartment. As I contemplated what to do, I also contemplated why I had ended up in Japan in the first place.

Had I really gained anything by coming here? Anything as massive as the effort to get there? Or the sacrifices I had made?

Perhaps if I knew why I had ended up in Japan I could determine my next steps more easily. I did not regret the trip exactly, but it had been really difficult with fewer rewards than I had expected. As a very reflective person, I tried to piece together the higher purpose and meaning of my trip like a puzzle without a guiding image.

It was hella confusing. Why was I here, again? I‘d never been super into anime or manga; I liked travel but had never wanted to see Japan specifically before my friend had told me about her trip. On paper, there really was no logical reason for me to live there.

All I was doing was following my intuition because bad things have happened when I don’t. I had felt so called to be there, and the idea had given me this really good feeling. I thought I’d arrive and be so happy like all my hard work had paid off, and I had made it to where I really belonged.

But after six months in Japan, at the end of 2019, I felt let down. Emotionally, I was struggling. My distance therapist was good but not cheap.

Speaking of, I took a pay cut to go to Japan. I only made about $1000 a month after rent. I worked 8 to 5, but they paid me for 25 hours a week to avoid giving me other benefits. An hour of therapy was $150. I could only afford my therapist, along with my other bills and debts, because I took remote meetings with clients on weekdays at 6 am or 9 pm. I was still working my writing and copywriting business on the side, but this wouldn’t last forever since I didn’t have as much time to market myself.

I couldn’t pin down a specific benefit of visiting Japan. Instead of going to temples and parks to blissfully meditate, almost none of those places have benches or places to sit down. One or two temples made an impression on me in a deep way, but most did not.

However, I had to acknowledge that the process of getting to Japan and living there had resulted in a lot of changes, like I had wanted. I had learned a lot about myself in new situations and grown quite a bit. I couldn’t use social media most of the time since the English world was generally asleep when I was awake, which freed me from that addiction (can’t say enough good things about that). My thinking had shifted, I had slowed down.

But even as I mentally gathered some of the good things about my choice to come to Japan, the big questions still lingered:

What is next? Where am I going to end up?

I hadn’t seen my family in Italy for about a decade so I decided to see them next. I bought tickets to see them for a few weeks in March 2020 after my job ended. Then I’d have a fun adventure in Lisbon, feel the sun, hear singers and travel to the water’s edge.

After that, I didn’t know what else to do with myself but return back to my home state, Maryland. I figured once I was done in Italy, I could crash at my dad’s house for a moment before going to live with a friend of mine. It was affordable and wise. The logical choice.

My tickets and bus spots were all purchased months ahead of when I needed to leave. What I could never have predicted is that COVID would blow up all my plans.

When you make plans…

Seeing my family in Italy was important to me but COVID was there. Every single one of my flights was canceled just a few weeks before I was supposed to leave.

My plan! It had all been so clear. I grieved how it crumbled so extravagantly. It had all made such perfect and logical sense, what would I do now?

I wasn’t chomping at the bit to buy a new ticket out of Japan. First off, because now I didn’t know where to go.

Secondly, because COVID was making everything really hard to predict; would my next flight be canceled, too? Should I just buy it at the last minute rather than risk another cancelation?

Thirdly, because money stressed me out. I knew from experience that I would not get a refund for those flights back right away, if at all. My savings were not plush; my job had not paid well enough to give me much buffer to restart anywhere.

I cringed at the money I’d have to spend now to get an international ticket on such short-term notice. The lease on my apartment would end in a few weeks and I had nowhere else to go, would I have to go to a hostel?

Lastly, because I didn’t want to go back to America. That would end my traveling adventure too soon, but lack of money was the real reason I had planned to go to America after stopping in Italy and Portugal and that hadn’t stopped being a factor.

One second I was trying to sleep on the question of what ticket to buy and when, and then in the next blink of an eye, COVID cases were sweeping through America, as well as Europe.

COVID Anxiety

I found out on a Friday. I had only a few days of work to go. This is the point where I got text messages, voice messages, and zoom calls where my loved ones were freaking out. They said that if I didn’t get ready to buy a ticket back at short notice I could end up stranded and locked out of the USA!

My job and lease were practically over, and it had all been hell anyway, so there was no way I was going to continue living where I was through an indeterminate pandemic. I should just leave now! In this chaotic, dangerous time, I decided to prepare an immediate escape hatch.

In a fit of panic, I trashed anything that couldn’t fit into my suitcase.

For years, my mantras had helped me through every weird transition, every change, every anxious night where I couldn’t predict the future trajectory of my life:

I will end up where I am meant to be. It will be okay. This will be figured out.

But with the COVID panic exploding, and aware of how isolated I was, I was not feeling truth in these mantras at all. I had to take matters into my own hands! Or else! And react right now!

The internet eliminated the space between me and my virtual contacts. America was steeped in panic and fear. And it spread like wildfire, not only to each other through Facebook and other means, but also to me.

Finding a Way through the Fear

Dear reader, just in case you think I am a lucky girl who has never been through any real life challenges...

No. I’ve lost parents, been through childhood abuse, felt the pinch of financial insecurity…Yet, for whatever reason, I can usually find hope and optimism.

Despite all the bad things, I’ve seen beautiful things line up. Life has shown me that good things do happen.

Two days later on Sunday, I felt calmer. I’d spent 36 hours dismantling and discarding many of my possessions and paid someone to truck all my bigger items to the dump. Freed up of that, I was ready to jump on a plane if I had to.

That’s when I really talked to my boyfriend, who reminded me of certain realities. This ended up being the ray of goodness that I didn’t know that I needed. These were the facts:

Firstly, being instantly banned from entering the US from a country like Japan was unlikely to happen (and never did) so I didn’t have to rush to leave for that reason. That was the main thing my friends and family were worried about, and they just didn’t know.

Second, staying in Japan was safer than going back to the USA. There had been some cases in Japan but the numbers were low. Meanwhile, cases in the USA were rapidly blowing up. I could also be exposed to COVID on the flight.

Third, if I went to the USA now, I’d probably immediately have to be locked in my dad’s house for a lock-down.

Finally, my boyfriend was there to support whatever decision I made and he offered to host me at his place indefinitely.

That is when I realized I should take a breath and make this decision in a different way.

It can be helpful in scary situations to find logical, reasonable, smart ideas to avert risks… but over the course of my life I’ve learned my mind can be smart sometimes but it’s not the only guide. For my best decisions, I also need call on my heart and my gut.

I called off work that Monday and spent it moving things to my boyfriend’s apartment. I had to move out in a week anyway, and, whatever else happened, at least that would be done.

While he was at work, I had an hour or two to weigh my options on the train back to my place. It was time to go back to making life decisions my way. To approach things with an open mind, to consider all the angles with more detachment, to take time to come to the right answer with steadiness and grace.

In general, I like writing, meditation, movement, and time in nature to get the clarity I need. Once I go through my process, I’ll eventually sense a clear nudge in the right direction, and then I’ll pursue it with absolute conviction.

By the end of the day, I’d had some space to calmly run things through my system, and through my process. I gazed at the mountains and heard something inside of me say:

Stay. Japan still has more things to teach you.

Moves:

5. To an apartment with boyfriend in Osaka

The end? Or is it?

My boyfriend and I had only been together romantically for a few months. We had known each other for longer as friends for about six months. Still I never would have thought I would move in with anyone so quickly. But these were unusual times.

I ended up really regretting throwing away so much of my stuff a few days earlier. I especially missed my mattress pad, and later I’d desire my office chair and desk. But, oh well, at least now I was safe and had a place to stay.

Cohabitating went surprisingly well and I didn’t want to leave. But my boyfriend ended up having to switch jobs. Like me, his apartment was tied to his employer so he had to move shortly after I joined him.

Moves:

6. To a new apartment with my boyfriend north of Osaka

Happy Time

I helped him move into a new apartment in a suburb that had rice patties and farms. We really enjoyed the new space together and went on bike rides in the late spring, while the weather was super nice.

By the time my visa expired in July, we had been together romantically for a total of six months. He had a job so he stayed.

We had always assumed that we would split whenever I ended up leaving Japan. The time zone change is just too awful to make anything work, I’d assumed. But things change.

In the end I was the one that decided that we shouldn’t break up. By the time I walked into that plane to America, I knew we had fallen deeply in love and our relationship was something worth fighting for.

Moves:

7. To an apartment in Maryland with my friend

The Really Hard Part

Because of COVID, we started this international, long-distance relationship not knowing when we would see each other again.

Japan’s travel ban made our love forbidden and impossible. For ages during this time, I lived in agony. I was gripping my phone to check the news every day, wondering where on earth I would end up.

But I kept a hold on my mantra that I would end up where I belonged, and I hoped that included my boyfriend, too.

How would it work out? Would I find a way to go to Japan so we could be together? But that probably wouldn’t happen quickly, it took me two years last time. Or what if he found a new job in America where I was? But then he would have to move.

I just kept reading the mantra on my phone, hoping something would happen. It was a promise of reaching the place where I was meant to be, as I followed each curve on the arduous journey to see the man I was deeply in love with once again. It was a place in my mind to which I escaped, “I will end up where I am meant to be.”

I hadn’t known what else to do but follow the rules and leave Japan when my visa expired. In America, I moved into my friend’s house. I bought furniture, painted walls and set up my new living situation.

There was no knowing when Japan would end their travel ban, but I figured they had to eventually and then my boyfriend and I could visit each other.

We talked at 6 am and 10 pm. The time change sucked. We were tired, grumpy, and every aspect of the pandemic’s influence on the world was making me really anxious. We checked the news daily to see if Japan’s travel policy had changed. We scoured the immigration websites daily, looking for a way to visit each other.

Six months passed this way and we were still struggling through the endless long distance. Why hadn’t Japan opened their travel ban like every other country had? Were they ever going to change? Not knowing when I’d see my boyfriend again was killing me. I began to worry that if something didn’t change soon we might have to break up.

Finally, in November of 2020, they made a microscopic change to the law to allow travelers from South Korea.

As we read the rules, we noticed there was a slight grey area, or so it seemed to us. Maybe I could go through South Korea. I would have to quarantine for two weeks there alone, but then I could try to reenter Japan so we had a chance to be together.

To prepare to reach him, I had to assume that I wouldn’t be coming back to my apartment in America so I ended up getting rid of almost all of my stuff (again). I go into detail about this journey to enter Japan without a visa here.

After all the hoping and praying, I was finally able to see my fiance again in Japan on Christmas Eve 2020.

Moves:

8. To the apartment with husband north of Osaka

One last plot twist

When I was reunited with my then fiancé I was so so happy. Finally, we could be together! We had a plan for us to get married and apply for residency in Japan so we could stay there.

But then no less than a week later, his job in Japan ended with no renewal. Considering how great my husband is at his job, this was unexpected. Unfortunately, his visa was connected to that job and we had planned to use it as the foundation for me to establish residency in Japan, as well.

Our ability to stay in the country and live at his apartment was now in question. This time it wasn’t just me wondering where I would live, but both of us: What now? Do we stay where we are? Can he get a new job in Japan? Or should we move to another country and hope we can get a job there? Where are we going to end up?

I knew life was crazy and fragile well before the pandemic, but trying to navigate huge life decisions in the midst of that era was especially fraught.

Knowing exactly where I will end up would have given me some sense of calm. I want to say I believe in infinite possibilities, but life has limits: needs like food, shelter, and money. It matters to have something, anything, to cling onto.

But comfort and calm was something I had repeatedly lived by this point. Swinging on my monkey bars, location to location.

Maybe this time, it gave me an edge. Perhaps the previous years of tolerating this anxiety of not knowing where I would live had prepared me for this moment.

Because while this was a new, unforeseen and catastrophic situation for my husband, I was able to help him see the bigger picture. He’d done this for me not even a year before, and now it was my turn.

I told him the facts as I saw it. Japan’s hiring practices were discriminatory and the pay he was offered for other jobs was getting lower instead of higher. They didn’t want to hire him as a foreigner who had already had two jobs before, which is like being damaged goods in their culture. He was applying for worse and worse jobs and getting rejected. It wasn’t fair to him because he was a talented programmer who spoke fluent Japanese.

I’d fought to get to him in Japan and I said, “You better figure out what you really want, and want it.” He wanted to be a video game programmer which felt so pie in the sky but he had worked years to acquire all the skills to do it. I told him he had to try. “Let yourself want it as badly as I wanted to be here with you.” Stop compromising and looking to get crumbs. Risk disappointment. Risk looking stupid if you fail. Go for the job you really want; you deserve better than this. And let’s see what that gets you.

We worked together to revise his resume and portfolio and do what we had to do to get out of this. Ever since the pandemic happened, I had not been getting much business, but I used every credit card I had to help us string along.

We had to move out of his apartment before he’d officially gotten another job offer. But we were hopeful he’d get a job in America, which is where we headed next.

America. Final Destination?

Our entire journey has been something I didn’t expect, that defied reason and logic, and required huge doses of luck.

Going to America was not our original plan but we took the opportunity in stride.

We went back to see our families around D.C., but it was just a visit. In the end, neither of us was inclined to restart life where we grew up. Our spirits still sought adventure. Our hometowns felt like a default option, not our real desire.

We finally got word that he did it. He ended up finding his dream job in America. It was remote so we could choose our location within the U.S. but he thought it would be smart to live by the headquarters of the company. So we set off to a new town in a mid-western state we had never been to before.

Moves:

9. To several hotels, mostly an extended Stay Hotel in Midwest USA (6 weeks)

10. Apartment in Midwest with my husband (1 year)

The End?

We love where we live now but the future is still open to us. Once a traveler, always a traveler. Despite the expense of starting over, I suspect that we will probably move again in our lifetime. It is just who we are: people who are a little itchy, with spirits that wander.

I don’t regret moving to Japan for a year, so I can’t regret any of the 10 moves it involved. The journey changed my life for the better, but it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy to start over and over and over. To move and move and move.

But inside of me now is peace about one thing: I found what I was truly looking for.

All this time, I thought I was trying to reach a place. A place where I belonged. The right place for me.

And in a way, I did. I found somewhere that I could rest my anchor, and that’s with my husband, the man that I found in Japan. He is the reason I had to go there and his arms are my new home.

Total Moves:

1. To a friends house, renting a room (1 year)
2. To my dads house in Maryland awaiting placement in Japan (3 months)
3. To a room in a share house in Japan awaiting work placement in a school (2 months)
4. To an apartment in Wakayama for my work placement (6 months)
5. To an apartment with husband in Osaka (2 months)
6. To a new apartment with husband north of Osaka (2 months)
7. To an apartment in Maryland with my friend (5 months)
8. To the apartment with husband north of Osaka (3 months)
9. To several hotels, mostly an extended Stay Hotel in Midwest USA (6 weeks)
10. Apartment in Midwest with my husband (1 year)

Thanks for reading. More articles by Sofia Wren about Japan: