A Decade in Japan - The Transition From Japan Back Home.

The end of September marks a very bittersweet moment for me this year. It's been exactly a year since I left Japan in 2023. I had lived in Japan for almost close to a decade at that point and spent most of my 20s in a foreign country. I closed a chapter in my life that was long overdue.

There's a lot of things I haven't shared about my reasons for leaving Japan, which I do hope to eventually as I settle in a bit more. But I was busy traveling, studying, and ultimately transitioning back to my hometown in Canada. It had been a rough transition this past year, and I want to share with you some of the things I went through and reflected on in hopes that some of you who are thinking of moving back to your home country can maybe prepare yourself for.

Different Stages in Life

Some of you may have had more opportunities to return home much more often, if at all. I never quite did. I wasn't poor by any means, but I justified just using the money I made to travel Asia and all of Japan instead. I loved my friends and missed them, but I just couldn't justify the costs involved and having to deal with my difficult family back home.

So when I did finally return home, and met my friends again in Canada (most of them came to visit me in Japan at some point), I think they were some of my biggest "reverse culture shocks". I mean, I knew sort of what was going on in their lives, but not in detail. It shook me that some of my friends whom I haven't seen since University were now driving cars, owning homes and clearly in a completely parallel universe as I was where I had no car, no home and honestly... "poor". I was poor. I wasn't poor by Japan standards (heck, I was making more than the average salary in Japan), but knowing I had nothing to show for it back home now made me feel so small.

I was in my 30s with no assets to my name.

I wasn't embarrassed, but for awhile, I just felt so out of place. When my friends talk about renting new apartment and buying new condos that I can't even afford, and talks of renovation, purchasing furniture, etc. Everything felt so out of reach for me.

How could I have accomplished so much in Japan and worked all the way up to become an elementary school teacher, but really have nothing to show for it?

This was one of the hardest pills to swallow but I do truly feel happy for my friends. I just hope one day I will get there myself. Or maybe not at all. We'll see. But if this is you as well - just know you aren't alone at all.

Naively Believing People

It sucks to be in a position to start over. There are probably going to be a lot of times where desperation kicks in and when the first opportunity strikes, you blindly believe in what they say.

I'm not talking about MLMs and things that are clearly scams (eg, a job that promises $100k for sales or interviews that are done via chats/messages), but REAL opportunities that seem good at first but you start to see how much people are buffing.

That's not to say this cannot happen to you in Japan, but as someone who isn't completely 100% fluent, I feel like I am protected in Japan in a sense that if I don't really understand what's being told, I ignore it anyway. Whereas back home, everything is in English - there's no layer of protection that language barriers provide.

I got a job recently where the boss tooted his horn to the max. Went on and on about so many opportunities and how she could help me. I naively believed her because I needed a job, and she promised full times hours, paid regularly and how she can get me help and reimburse me for some non-medical wellness treatments. I jumped on it. Turns out she's really not that well connected as she says, and I really wasn't able to objectively judge since I was so charmed by everything that was offered to me when in need.

That's not to say there aren't genuine people out there. I've actually met tons of people along the way that truly wanted to help me and has shown through actions not just words that they were able to help. But as with most things, and especially coming from Japan where we really don't have much reason to not believe a service would be carried out as promised, it's good to be extra cautious coming back home.

But speaking of services...

Delayed or Poor Services

I feel like I've been quite spoiled by people in Japan and their general punctuality. Or at least they'd be able to give you some kind of a time range of when they will arrive at your apartment to service your broken internet router or your leaky pipes. Or even just delivery services telling you they're come by between this and this time even if they're not right on the dot. They'd still show up eventually, and people will communicate if they're running late - generally speaking.

Back home, SOME services will be punctual. Or at least have a time frame of when things will happen. But they'd most likely not communicate to you that they're running late. I had a doctor with a virtual appointment scheduled, and he told me the appointment is between 4pm to 5pm. Fine. I wait. He never called. This rinses and repeats multiple times before I was finally able to find time to visit him in person and told him he's missed our virtual appointments several times and it was the reason I was here today.

Fashionably late seems to be the norm, which I had underestimated the extent of. People are mostly completely unfazed if you're 5 or 10 minutes late to something, and seem a bit taken aback (but thankful) that you would call to say you're running just 5 or 10 minutes late.

Now that I'm back for awhile, I feel obligated too to be a bit late to things so I'm not early (read: on time) and just twirling my thumbs waiting for everyone...

I really hope I don't come off as whiny, as I always say. But more of a "lesson learned, here's what might help you" kind of post.

For those who are also making the transition back home from Japan, or wherever you may be, I wish you the best! Do share YOUR own experiences in the comments with me. Can you relate to my experiences? What's something you experienced that hit you hardest when you returned home?