12 Reasons NOT to Move to Japan

tell us the bad things about Japan, if there is something bad, everything on this channel always seems too positive about the country, too positive, that's not true. Okay, there may be some element of truth to that, in many ways, over the last nine years of this channel. It's become a big selling point for living in Japan, you know, look at the stunning scenery, try the delicious food, see Mount Fuji, the bullet trains and a guy in a bathtub. The truth is that the channel has been very positive about Japan because I have had an overwhelmingly good experience living here and the videos reflect that, as a result, I have been biased and have never really talked about the not so good things that come with living here and, Honestly, this country certainly.

It's not perfect, I mean, no place is right, except maybe Norway and Narnia, so I thought about it a lot and came up with 12

reasons

not to

move

to Japan. Some

reasons

are obvious, others may seem a bit complicated. Surprise, I'm aware that this might seem like I'm betraying some viewers who have watched Japan through these videos over the years and dreamed of living here one day, like I'm crushing some dreams, but honestly, despite some of the bad things in this video. My goal is not to discourage you from moving here, far from it, I want to prepare you for any situations and cultural obstacles you may face or encounter in everyday life and no, it will not be one of those click bait videos as reasons not to do it. live in Japan number one the food is so delicious you will die from overeating don't go out so let's dig in and hopefully by the end of this video and the 12 reasons why your dreams of living in Japan will be firmly intact Yes, there you have it.

Like new, do you like to watch movies at night without headphones or have a space in your kitchen to cook? Maybe you just enjoy sitting in your chair without hearing your neighbors through the wall. Yes, get ready to say goodbye to all those things and more. you

move

into your small apartment with walls made of paper, that's real wall noise, yes it's obvious, the accommodation is usually small, expensive and poorly soundproofed. Yesterday I heard my neighbors through one of the walls arguing for about an hour and it was so clear I could hear every word they said like it sounded like she was mad at him because he wasn't a foreign subscriber in Japan, that was a Low blow even by my standards, sorry now, I never cared. about living in a small apartment like I have the whole time I've been living here, it's fun to fit your life into a small space, it gives you a kind of minimalist mentality where you have to be very careful with the things you buy. and what do you fill your apartment with and in my case I choose to fill the apartment with cheap hats from a 100 yen store covered in strange English in this case jumping hitting the rock is my new favorite addition to my prestigious hat collection shiny spending a thousand dollars a month in a small studio, it's just the reality of living in a city like Tokyo and when you're in your 20s or 30s it probably won't be a big deal, although the problem for me has always been the lack of privacy. uh when I first moved to Sendai I lived in what looked like a nice modern studio apartment, it was well lit, the bathroom was nice and the bed smelled like daffodils, but then I moved out and started sleeping in the bed and I discovered that I could hear my neighbor snoring through the cardboard wall so clearly at night that I would actually wake up in the night and think there was someone in the room, it all felt a bit like a silent hill, another I once ended up with a neighbor who turned out to be the worst neighbor in the history of Japan with a daily experience that brought me to the edge of sanity every morning at 7:00 a.m.

I was in bed fast asleep and my neighbor, this guy, was going to work and someone was knocking on the door. and you would hear his footsteps fade away and then, just as he fell asleep and went back to sleep, you would hear the ominous sound of footsteps coming back, the door would open and then, this is completely true and I can't believe it. It happened that he opened and closed the door 25 times every morning, I counted them one, two, three in my desperation, I brought these super mega wonderful noise canceling headphones, you could be in front of a burning fireworks factory, divide these bad boys. and I didn't hear anything perfect, just peace and quiet, well, not quite because every time I closed the door, the whole damn building you could feel the paper wall move, you could feel the bed noise, honestly, in the end I felt like hitting his head on the door 25 times. every morning, but realizing that this was probably a deep-seated psychological trauma, I ran away for six weeks and cycled across Japan and the trip across Japan was born, so if you've ever enjoyed Watching the trip through Japan, it's all thanks to my noisy neighbor. but I miss the days when I watch a movie at 11 p.m. and not have to worry about my neighbors.

I miss the days when friends come over and not having to worry about someone laughing or talking too loudly and that's before you even get your apartment, which is such an incredibly unpleasant process that it will make you want to jump up and down hitting the rock, so of the hundreds of foreigners I've met living in Japan over the years, I've never met one who seemed dead to me. I met my eyes and said yes, I love looking for apartments in Japan like it's not fun and that's because of one simple factor and that is that as a foreigner living in Japan, many apartments don't allow you to live there to rent them, now I should To To start, say that if you come here with a job, most of the time your company will get you an apartment and certainly in my first three years I was very lucky that my apartment was ready to go, however, after that I I moved to Sendai. and I was looking for apartments, I found one that I really liked and I put in an offer and they rejected me because I was a foreign resident because I was not Japanese and that is something that happens sometimes and it is not a pleasant feeling. being discriminated against just because you are not Japanese the only way to overcome the feeling of irritation and anger about it was to try to be understanding and try to see it from the landlord's perspective, a good friend of mine who is a foreign resident rented one of his apartments ago a few years and the property management company warned him not to allow foreigners to stay there.

There is a small box you can check that says there are no foreigners in your apartment and you were presented with some numbers and Statistics suggest that foreign residents are at risk of fleeing the country in their last month and not paying rent, which unfortunately happens , which causes a lot of stress and problems for the owner, not only that, but also the chances of having a Foreign residents are very low in their apartment by virtue of the fact that 98 of Japan's population is ethnically Japanese, it is Whichever way you look at it, that doesn't stop the whole process from being unpleasant, since I can't put a positive spin on it.

It's just not fun, except for the fact that when you finally get your apartment you feel like you've completed the hardest video game in the world, even if it's an expensive video game that you didn't enjoy playing and that was riddled with relentless discrimination, certainly not. pac-man there is no discrimination there, although there is a guy there being strangely attacked by many, yes, anyway, a few years ago there was a news story about a Japanese train that had done something really unthinkable, a railway company issued a public apology after that a train was scheduled. leave at 9 4 am I left the station at 9 44 am oh my god I can't believe wait oh yeah, that's right a train had left the station 20 seconds before it was supposed to leave at 9 minutes 44 and 40 seconds but left at 9 minutes, 44 and 20 seconds, oh my goodness, while westermedia had been stunned by the concept of a train apologizing for leaving more or less on time, it also makes sense in Japan, the country where things are formidably punctual, they arrive on time and they always work and work like clockwork as a consumer Japan is practically perfect, I mean we have seen it before, but of course all this has a price, there is a reason why everything works so well in Japan and it has a human cost, it is built on the foundation of a workforce that sacrificed so much for the good of society working for a Japanese company can be brutal, especially for medium and large organizations, the hours are long, the lack of control about your own life is minimal, taking vacation for a Japanese worker is almost as difficult.

Just like getting an apartment as a foreign resident, studies have shown that only half of workers in Japan take their paid vacation, they get 20 days of annual leave and they only take 10 of them, which seems unthinkable coming from the UK where everyone is so into it. go on vacation and the reason is to leave your workplace and go on vacation to Japan, it looks bad, your colleagues will ostracize you for it, your superiors maybe not to your face, but behind closed doors they certainly won't be. seen as a team player, if you are someone who is not in the office much, it is a very strange thing, since you don't actually have to be doing anything productive in the workplace in Japan, you just have to be present, which see them at work or be present.

Working in the office is considered more favorable than being productive or doing something really good. Even I tried this as an English teacher, I could go home at 4:30 p.m. m. every day, but if I stayed until 6 p.m. m. and I sat at my desk. working on something or studying some Japanese or just playing with my pencil buddies they would come and just congratulate me for my excellent and hard work. Now you might be thinking that if I work overtime at least I get paid for it, but normally in Japan you don't get paid for working overtime, so not only are you being unproductive, not only are you spending a lot of time unnecessarily at work, but you're also not getting paid for it. they pay for it.

Unfortunately, studies have shown that job satisfaction is much lower in Japan than in Japan. is in the UK and the US, and while I've seen more foreign workers have their dreams of living and working in Japan crushed at this point, perhaps more than anyone else on this list, you know that this is a real dream crushing point, the good news is I know many foreign people who live working in Japan in jobs they normally enjoy in smaller, more entrepreneurial and forward-thinking companies, or in foreign companies that have a base in Japan, so there is still hope, but the country has an overwork problem and hopefully at some point they will realize that and start to deal with it.

One of the hardest things about moving here my first year and something I really wasn't prepared for was losing my independence. You know, I won a new car or a phone contract. I want to set up a bank account, hell maybe after a long day at work you just want to use your microwave, well good luck with that because when you first move here you're going to need someone to do it all for you. a lot of help, you may be thinking, don't move to Japan, then if you don't know any Japanese and you would have the same problems in any country, don't speak your native language, but honestly, as time went on, it often became less a language issue and more a cultural issue.

The paperwork is endless and daunting. You use outdated technology every day. Fax machines. you need advanced knowledge of Japanese kanji characters, you will need someone to help you, there is no doubt that you will need to depend on other people much more than you would at home and you will feel like a burden to others and if you are someone like me, I'm fiercely independent, so it's really not that fun, so imagine you're having a bad day, you've just been denied the chance to get another apartment, and someone told you that your YouTube channel should be called boring in Japan.

I'm not boring. but I'm not boring at all and you go to an intersection, cross the street with a few dozen cars waiting, and while you're there waiting for the light to change, you suddenly realize that everyone is looking at you like you're an anomaly. like you shouldn't be there, you start to feel quite anxious and self conscious, people are watching your every move, you feel like something terrible is about to happen and then it doesn't happen and you keep walking towards McDonald's, now this sounds like a bit. like a horror movie or sounds a bit like the Matrix to be fair but the good news is it's mostly in your head unless the Matrix is ​​real but like I said before 98 of Japan's population is ethnically Japanese and it's one of the most homogeneous societies. on earth and you will inevitably stand out if you don't look Japanese.

Now you will notice that people do not sit next to you on the train or bus, even if there are a lot of people, whichthat really makes you feel like you're standing out. like you're different from everyone, you'll notice people in the supermarket staring at you and kids screaming and recoiling in terror from your face, you know, especially if, like me, you've lived somewhere other than Tokyo, you live in an area rural. areas where seeing a non-Japanese person is incredibly rare, I mean hell, if I see a white person it also surprises and disturbs me, but I noticed that in my first and second year here it affected me quite a bit.

I felt anxious about it and I felt self-conscious in a way that I didn't really want to admit, I got stressed, it can be uncomfortable, but in the end I realized that most of the problem was up here, in my own place. Sure people stared at me, but nothing bad ever happened.Actually, nothing bad ever happened, but if you're someone with anxiety issues and you end up particularly in the Japanese countryside, I think it could be a problem and all I can say is that the best way to solve it is to rationalize the situation by realizing that even you are surprised if you see someone who is not Japanese around, you know that you will stand out, but it is not necessarily a bad thing, however, this is an issue that we'll cover again later in the video because in the long term In the long term, it can become a bigger problem after many years of feeling this way.

Now the Tokyo Olympics have had a bumpy ride this past year and just when things couldn't get any worse, the head of Japan's Tokyo Olympic Committee, Yoshido Morty, was forced to resign. After making some pretty bold comments in response to the idea that more women should participate in board meetings, he said that if we increase the number of female board members, we have to make sure that their speaking time is restricted, as women have a hard time finishing, which is annoying, oh god, now there was only one problem with this comment: it's not 1936 anymore and the reaction was swift: Tokyo's first female mayor, Yuriko Koike, refused to go to meetings with him in protest. 150,000 signatures calling for the dismissal of her and the world's media. about him before he retired and they all lived happily ever after until a month later, when it happened again, this time the creative director of the Tokyo Olympic opening ceremony, Hiroshi Sasaki, had jokingly suggested that one of Japan's top comedians , naomi watanabe, should dress up for the opening ceremony as a pig, oh, to quote hiroshi sazaki, naomi watanabe could appear as an olympic olympic, what is it that, unsurprisingly, also got the chop and no, We're not talking about pork chops, unfortunately, although these types of stories happen quite frequently in the Media Japan is currently ranked 120th when it comes to gender equality and if you look at photos of Japanese politicians, CEOs and leaders, It's almost like a Where's Wally or a Where's Waldo for American viewers to try to find someone other than a 200 year old. old in the workplace here, as a woman you are much more likely to be paid less, be looked at for promotions and feel a bit like a subordinate, for example at work parties women are expected to serve drinks and almost I take on a hostess role at enkai work parties at the same time.

I know quite a few successful business women, both foreign and Japanese. I've done a lot of work in Japan and the current mayor of Tokyo, Koike, is of course female, right now it seems more likely that Japan will one day have an empress, while it is technically forbidden for women to be emperors. There is an open debate with 80 of the Japanese population open to the idea of ​​having an empress, so the change is one foot. But if you come to Japan as a woman, it might be a little more difficult and will pose a few more obstacles along the way, certainly more than at home.

I think there has always been this perception if you come to Japan as a foreigner. You instantly gain some kind of foreign rock star status, but the sad reality is that you're Dave Smith in London and you'll still be the same uncomplicated Dave Smith when you're in Tokyo. For starters, most Japanese don't care. dating a foreigner most people here are already under enough stress when they are in their 20s and 30s when it comes to their work life and their families, the idea of ​​marrying someone who will take their son or daughter to a foreign country is not always good.

Well, with Japanese parents, or they expect their children to take care of them in later years. Now I've only dated two Japanese people and neither of them worked out, it got serious very quickly and I remember scary words like marriage, they came up much earlier. much quicker than they would in the UK just because there is pressure here to try and get married before you turn 28. Romance as a whole is quite different from the West, where we have a strong emphasis on public displays of affection through kissing. hugging, holding hands, Japan is very opposite to that, where all those things are seen as uncomfortable, the idea of ​​marriage is also very different, the emphasis is on creating a strong and stable family environment with a good outward appearance for relatives and friends. it's more about checking boxes than having a connection with personalities and all that.

When I look at many Japanese friends' relationships and marriages, it often seems more like a business partnership than one based on love and affection, which is not necessarily a bad thing though, on top of that, infidelity is much higher than what you might think. There are inconclusive studies that talk about this, but one factor is that cheating is viewed quite differently, for example, there is a whole industry here that caters to nighttime activities. We're talking about how hostess bars love such planned hotels and many people wouldn't consider going to those places as cheating, but they would certainly go home and no, a land of soap is not a place that sells exquisite Japanese soap and fancy, google it I don't want this video to be demonetized, but I spent many long nights drinking with friends who were dating a Japanese guy here who was bewildered by the cultural differences between them and stressed by the pressures of having to get married quickly and have children much faster than they would want at the same time, although I know many couples who have made it work and it worked fantastically, but dating here is not as easy as you might think and it will take more patience.

More commitment and more language learning for me to be successful than I ever would have been in my country, in my experience, going to see a doctor in Japan for health problems, both physical and mental. It can leave a lot to be desired. Doctors here tend to want to treat. very quickly they will ask you what's wrong they will throw some pills at you and send you on your way you know these are not pills by the way they are tic tacs dr. chris is in town it's my prescription but some of the clinics seem to be downright dodgy.

I once saw a doctor when he had something wrong with his stomach, perhaps not surprising given my fried chicken addiction. He caught me, but they told me I needed an endoscopy where they would put a tube down my throat. and in your stomach I thought it would be like a small thin piece of rope, it turned out to be the width of a flashlight, like it was really big and it remains to this day the worst experience of my life so far, second only to watching In last season of Game of Thrones for the most invasive surgery of my life, I was taken to what can only be described as a broom closet.

They put me on my side and gave me some liquid that was placed down my throat. It didn't work and I felt the whole procedure with incredibly painful clarity, but the reason they left it there was to take some photos and print them and after taking them, they pulled out the cable and started printing them, where it quickly turned out that there wasn't enough paper in the printer and half of the crucial photos that showed whether he was going to die or not were lost forever. There was an awkward pause in which the doctor looked at the printer, looked at the photos, and then looked at me as if to say.

Oh, I may have to do it again and I look back as if to immediately say I'd rather die right now, but the bigger part of the story is choosing your doctor very carefully and not living on a diet of fried chicken in At the same time, the main Japanese hospitals are very well run, they are very clean and spotless, the staff are fantastic and the health service is good here, but then of course there is mental health and that, unfortunately, is an issue a little taboo. An acquaintance of mine who once had severe depression went to see a doctor here and was told in no uncertain terms that you should be happier.

Brilliant, fantastic, depression has been cured and I have since taken that advice and turned it into an innovative audio self-help guide. There are a lot of posts from people who have anxiety or depression and want to move to Japan and I can't really give any expert advice, but what I will say is that honestly, moving to Japan could go both ways if you have chronic mental health issues. y You are taking medication and moving away from your friends and family to a country where you cannot speak the language or easily consult a specialist, the situation will most likely get worse, so before taking that leap, be sure to weigh the pros and cons and talk to a medical professional about it because when you are here it will be difficult to get the support you may need, perhaps unsurprisingly one of the questions I get asked the most is what kind of jobs are there for foreigners in Japan , what kind of opportunities there are and the answer is, honestly, it depends on whether you are a skilled worker and how good your Japanese is.

The general rule in Japanese companies is that they will prefer to hire a native Japanese person unless it is a skill or a sector where they need some type of external talent, for example, over the years I have met many foreigners who live and They work here in sectors like this, video game design, engineering, translation and interpretation, but the vast majority of people end up as English teachers because, while technically you don't have skills as a native English speaker. You still have a big advantage over Japanese English teachers outside of those sectors or specialized skills. It's harder because you're not going to win against a native Japanese speaker with advanced knowledge. kanji and business etiquette and the way of doing things and it's very important to note that a lot of those skilled jobs that I mentioned a minute ago are all in Tokyo, like most of my friends live in Tokyo and if you want to live somewhere that it looks like this and you pretend you're in a hayao miyazaki movie well your dream is about to get ten times harder even as an english teacher most programs have a three to five year limit and there is this kind of expectation that you are going home afterwards or getting a job somewhere else when I look at all the people I worked with in Yamagata Prefecture in my year when I was an English teacher, I would say 90 of them end up returning home and the other 10 ended up in Tokyo, except maybe one or two people, so yes, the jobs are there, but you have to be skilled at something or end up as an English teacher and gradually transition to another career, and if none of those avenues is Attractive or Possible, then it is definitely going to be much more difficult to find a job opportunity in Japan that fits you.

I think, unfortunately, when I step back and look at my three closest Japanese friends, they are all misfits in their own way. So there's Natsuki, the aspiring rock star whose obsession with British punk rock put him at odds with Japan's collectivist mentality. He does things his way and says what he thinks. It's good to see Natsuki, how's he doing? There is Ryotaro, who lived in the United Kingdom, United States. and australia and adopted a western way of thinking, he is stubborn and stubborn and, in your face, come on, then there is my friend yuki, a successful businessman who has never lived abroad but is obsessed with western culture, star wars, Silicon Valley, and does it all while drinking a little bit of the smallest beer in the world no no no I'm not that big everyone is from different backgrounds and social classes but they are all rebellious and open-minded individuals who often go against the typical way of living Japanese thought and when I look at all the Japanese, they could have been good friends of acquaintances, I realized that we never go beyond a certain point.

They always treated me like a stranger, some kind of exotic foreign character, and I was constantly reminded of that in our conversations. At first I felt a little conflicted putting this point on the list, but I asked other foreign friends who live here and they felt the same: it can be difficult to make friends in Japan, most of my foreign friends honestly stick with it . Other foreigners have a kind of foreign bubble network and never go further. I know a lot of people who live here who don't have a single close Japanese friend, sowhich is very strange, but it's the truth and I think you'll find it.

It's harder to make friends in Japan than at home. However, when you make friends here, those relationships will be rock solid and there will be friendships that last a lifetime. I'm not so sure about Ryotaro, although I don't know why. on the list in retrospect, so a few years ago I made a video called 12 Things Not to Do in Japan. It's the most successful video on Japan's overseas channel and in many ways I hate it, I hate that video, but it's popular because of Japanese etiquette and All the rules, which are mostly unwritten, are intimidating and difficult to follow. understand, but every time I go back and watch that video, one of the things that stands out to me in the comments section is how many people say "ah, the rules." I'm going to do whatever I want, fuck this up, but then again, what do you expect from brett maverick?

A walking court case waiting to happen and if you're that kind of person, which is fine, I don't think you'd probably want to live here right now while I can be a sarcastic, cynical, stubborn monster when I'm sitting here on camera off camera. , I stick to the rules and follow the etiquette because as a foreigner living in Japan, you already stand out, you already become the scapegoat for a lot of the bad things that happen here and you don't want that to happen. There are 125 million people in Japan, 38 million of whom live in the Tokyo area alone, and yet far from the chaos there is an impressive sense of order where everything has its place.

You know, if you watch a video of a station platform with thousands of people there are perfectly formed signals the trains themselves are quieter than libraries the whole society is designed so that you are not disturbing other people, which is a fantastic strategy to have given the ridiculous population density, but it is a very different atmosphere to the type of scrutiny. I do what I want, feeling at home. I've had many friends come here. He enjoyed Japan. He loved it. two weeks, but I felt a little overwhelmed by all the rules and having to be quiet on trains and not having to do things and you constantly have to wonder if I'm in someone's way, am I being too loud, am I standing in line at the right place.

Am I getting goosebumps all over the train suit? You know there's a constant internal monologue that you can't turn off and that can make you paranoid about whether you're breaking the rules or not, so if you're a pretty calm and relaxed person. I think it could lead to unnecessary stress and anxiety and for me personally it's part of one of the main reasons I don't live in Tokyo, because I feel a little overwhelmed after two weeks, unfortunately I'm no Brett Maverick and never It will always be good to end with a fun and controversial point. Imagine being in a country for a decade or more, building your entire life there, and still being treated every day as if it were your first day, as if you had just arrived.

I've been here nine. It's been years and every day I still get praised for my ability to use chopsticks and I'm fine with that, that's fine, but there's an uncomfortable feeling you get here that people always wonder: Why are you here? What are you doing? In Japan, when you leave, you know what is happening, of course, it is good to be understanding and realize that Japan is a homogeneous society, 98 ethnically Japanese, it is not multicultural, it will not change anytime soon, but perhaps the darkest aspect of This is when you are a foreigner. residents are scapegoated for bad things, certainly during the undercover period, it's been a harder year than I can remember, like there was a ramen shop early last year that just banned foreigners from entering and last week There was a public announcement warning farmers in Ibaraki Prefecture just north of Tokyo to avoid dining with foreigners all together because they could have covered well.

My favorite example was last year when a Japanese TV program claimed that English speakers spread more coven because we enunciate the sound p this is a pen and pen, this is a pen, seriously, I have never seen something that has made me very angry at the same time, I laugh out loud at the same time God help us all, but to finish things on a positive note, recently I asked a good friend, a foreigner who has lived here, about now he has built two decades, his whole life here, he has a Japanese wife, he has children, has this ever been a problem For him, he once felt like he didn't really fit in and he told me that he never expected to be Japanese, right, he was always expected to just be a foreigner living in Japan and there is nothing wrong with that and that has never stopped him from living a rich life. and full here and it has never gotten in my way either in the last nine years and I think that's what's really important.

It all comes down to you personally, for a lot of people who live here. I think it could be stressful, it could be anxiety provoking, it could be a bit of a nightmare, but for me personally it's been an incredibly rewarding experience and one I've never experienced before. I once regretted it, which is quite reassuring. I'll be keeping an eye on the comments on this video to see if you have any specific points that I made in this video that you'd like me to elaborate on or talk more about. detail or dedicate a video, so do it right away, leave your thoughts.

I imagine there will also be people who will be angry with this video and might react and say some bad things about my experience if you ever criticize Japan you always get comments like you don't like it why are you there? So if you don't like it, just leave, but I think this video is worth it and I stand by the points I've made as far as I'm concerned. I'm going to buy more hats from my hat collection, what else would you expect from a boring in Japan boring in Japan ridiculous bastard?