summarize this video? intro
so if you clicked on this video you're probably thinking about moving to Japan
maybe studying in Japan and what I'd like to tell you is
that I'm leaving Japan I've been here for nearly 5
years and the amount of relief I
feel knowing that I'm getting out of here is unreal
so the reason why I'm making this video is because I want to reach people who
are even having an inkling of a thought of moving to
Japan and I want to reach them and be
honest and sort of go against most of the other content that you can find on
YouTube about Japan which is extremely positive and rarely ever talks about the
negative act aspects of living here
so I will preface this by saying that hopefully by the end of this video
you'll be truly having a second thought about
whether or not you'd like to live your life here and
as well I'd like to say that I'm not talking about coming to
Japan to be a student I'm not talking about coming here for tourism I'm
talking about coming here to build a life essentially to live and work here
okay if you want to come here to study Japanese if you want to come here to buy
all the manga and all the video games and all that stuff please come you will have the time of your life you will
really enjoy it and you will not want to leave but if you're coming here to live
and work for the foreseeable future girl or
guy think twice okay
um I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself my background um what led
to me coming to Japan and living here for the past nearly 5 years and What's
led me to want to leave so if you're interested in that uh please keep
about me
watching all right so a little bit about me my name is Courtney and I'm
originally from the US from the state of Virginia and I first um moved here in
2020 March 2020 so it was actually right before the pandemic so I came here for
graduate school which was 2 years for me and um I've pretty much been here ever
since and I have always wanted to move to Japan to live here to work here to
speak Japanese every day that was my dream that was the dream of my much
younger self because I've been interested in Japan and the language and
the culture and everything since I was like 8 or 9 years old like that young um
so I remember like as I grew up as I um moved
on to middle school that was the first time where I could actually study Japanese within a school setting because
up until that point I was just uh studying myself and then going on a random websites and like learning how to
write Kan and kanji and all of that stuff so ever since elementary school really I
have been studying some type of Japanese and it was always in my mind that like I
was going to go to Japan and I was going to live there and um I was just going to experience life there so I remember in
middle school I was looking up study abroad programs maybe I could do some sort of like um a high school Exchange
program and then when I made it into University um it became a lot more
doable or affordable so my third year of college I came to Japan for for the
first time for a semester of school and so I stayed for like fiveish 5 and a
halfish months and I loved it I had such a good
time and I regretted so much only doing the semester not a full year and I remember
thinking okay well I'm definitely coming back like this is not the last time that I'm going to be here so um anyway fast
forward I do eventually make it back to Japan through this master's program that I got into and like I said I've been
here ever since so I guess I'm going to start off by you
student/tourist vs. working full time
know sort of differentiating between again the student SL tourist and the
actual working person so life in Japan is so great if you are
a tourist or even a student um just
because what I think it's like this anywhere once you start working it's just like boom real life but the
contrast here is just so Stark because when you're in um school at least you
have your like Campus Community and your friends that you make in school when
you're a tourus duh you're only here for a short amount of time so you're going around you're hitting all the hot spots
and all the places that you've always wanted to go um and then you're out and you're like that was great can't wait to
do it again next year um and then again when you're a student it's like it's
even better than being a tourist because you get to be here long term um like my
program was 2 years so I got to stay in Japan for two whole years um as a
student yes the the work itself was freaking hard yes it was hard to do a
thesis during the pandemic but I got it done and even though at that time I'll get into
it maybe in another video at that time it was just so difficult getting through the program
when I look back on it compared to my life now as a working person in Japan I'm just like yo I did not even know
how easy I had it and like how I really was just chilling compared to now so um
that's why I say this video is not for people who are looking to to live here um live here short term or just be here
and experience Japan short term it's about um being being here permanently
pretty much um so where should I
start so I'm going to talk about a few points that led to my
reasons for basically falling out of love with my my life here uh because I
should also say that when I came here in 2020 I I had it in my mind that I would
just be here forever that's just what I knew to be true at the time um so let me start with
job market for foreigners
number one and number one is basically the job market here for foreigners
everything that I say in this video is going to be from the perspective of a foreigner living in Japan okay so the
job market here is actual it it's
horrible um and you really see that in
what types of jobs are most popular for foreigners here in Japan I think
everyone knows that the most common job that most foreigners have in Japan is
English teaching and there's a reason for that it's attached to the most
common Visa that's given to foreigners coming to Japan and you know most people
who want to come to Japan they think I'll you know I'll come here I'll get a Visa through an English teaching company
and then after I work there for a while I'm going to move on to a different company that's what most people do and to be able to get these English
teaching jobs um you've got to have a specific Visa status and for that Visa
status you have to have a 4-year bachelor's degree so as long as you have
um uh bachelor's degree you can get this Visa um and it doesn't have to be in any
specific major or anything any major as long as you have forear bachelor's degree you can get this Visa status and
you can come over here and you can teach English which is what most people do now aside from English teaching from
what I've seen the only other options and you know this is if you don't know
Japanese or if your Japanese is not so good the only other options I've seen are
Recruitment and working in the it sector so being an engineer or um something
like that um that's really all that I've seen here so that's pretty much it and
um the reason for that is even if you are a foreigner who is very fluent in
Japanese every single time the companies here are not going to want to hire a
foreigner over a Japanese person and you might think well duh super obvious I
mean Japan's going to want to hire Japanese people but actually
what they do is they'll these companies these so-called global companies will
post job postings asking for um you know a bilingual receptionist
bilingual um administrative assistant and stuff like that and I remember at the you know
while I was really deep in my job search I remember thinking like oh okay like I I can do this like this is this is great
like I know Japanese and English plus plus I have experience in administrative support be fine for me but what I
realized as I got deeper and deeper into my search is that most of these companies are not looking for foreign
Talent they're looking for Japanese bilingual Japanese and what bilingual
means to them is that obviously the person speaks their native language and then they speak a smidgen of English
that's it that's all they're expecting so that upon the odd chance that maybe they have to deal with
you know a foreign customer client they can have that person help out help out but you know um that's what they're
looking for they just don't say it they don't say we're looking for a Japanese person who can speak English and
Japanese but it's implied pretty much and that's what I came to understand um
and I've had I've talks with other friends here who are looking for the you know same types of positions and um just
for a bit of context like after I finished grad school I also went into language school for about a year and um
brushed up on my Japanese there and so some of my former classmates also looking for jobs um you know they were
having trouble and I'm just thinking like but why
um because like we have the skills why are we not getting opport at least
interview opportunities or anything and so I came to realize that like we are
just not on their radar at all except for English teaching or like like
I said working in the it sector because if you don't have Japanese skills you can easily work in the it sector because
the languages you need to know are um I won't even say them cuz I don't know them but you know all of those um Tech
type languages like cc+ or whatever as long as you have that you'll be fine and you'll maybe just need to know the most
minimal Japanese like hello and goodbye and whatever stuff like that
so it was really rough realizing the state of
things um as I started working full-time because in my case I had quite
an extensive job search and then I realized my Visa is going to be running
out so I've just got to get something so I ended up getting a job in English teaching and I'm so glad I took it
actually because it just again made me realize the state of things um and when
I say that I mean I can look I look from the inside um while I was there and I
realized oh my God like there are people teaching English here who have multiple
degrees myself included like what bachelor's Masters there were people there with phds who had been teaching
for like years on end and I'm just like this cannot be life like this cannot be
it like what how huh and then even within the English teaching industry
there is literally no room for um
advancement like none literally none uh
I realized like oh wow okay I've been here for 6 months uh cool like maybe I
can get some newer opportunities and then I realized that I'm working with people who had been here for like who
had been there for like seven eight years and they're still doing what I'm
doing and that just made me think really hard like this is not life like this I no I I
cannot so I ended up moving on to something else but I just
thought you could have multiple degrees but all that's here for you is
English teaching and you know turnover is crap as well um so
high and I busted my ass in this job but I never really felt
like I was appreciated or making a difference
or anything like that so to summarize if you're thinking of
moving here and building a life and you are not um passionate and
when I say passionate I mean passionate about teaching don't come here don't come here
if you uh are not interested in improving your Japanese to maybe um get
into some other jobs besides English teaching don't come here you will be miserable and this is coming from
someone who you know I taught English and then I ended up um working with a
temp agency so now I do like contract work and I moved on to like uh working
in administrative position but um you know even even in
moving out of English teaching I just I've thought like you know this this is
just the the way that Japanese Society
devalues the skills of foreign workers is just
like really appalling to me so it's just like I I
can't so one other point I want to make with that as well is that there's this
thing here that I've noticed that if someone who started you know teaching English in
Japan manages to move on to a job that's
outside of the education sector even if that job runs them into the
ground um makes them miserable they won't leave it just because it's not English
teaching that's the state of things so it's either
suffer in being devalued in English teaching or suffer and doing a quote
unquote regular job or better job here in Japan um and just be miserable so
that's the reality of that moving on I also wanted to talk
social isolation
about um Japanese Society in general
and what I've realized after living here for a long period of time that I would
never have been able to realize just being in Japan as a
student um one thing I've been thinking of a lot
in the past like two years and I'm just putting this into perspective for you I
spent the first 3 years of you know life here as a student in some capacity and
these past two years I've been a working adult um
so in the past two years I've realized that
Japanese culture compared to my own native culture compared to American
culture is the word that just kept coming into my mind
is cold it's just
cold like I know that the image of Japan
online a lot of people like to say oh yeah Japan is an introverts
Paradise no it's not and I say that as an introvert it's not an introvert's
Paradise it's a hermit's paradise because that's what people do
here um I have neighbors that I've lived by for years don't know them from Adam
couldn't tell you their name a lot of them I couldn't even tell you what they look like I just I know what they they
sound like cuz I can hear them through the walls but I don't know their face
and honestly like that's just how it is everywhere there's no sense of like
Community there's no sense of like oh my God if something were to happen to me I
can knock on so and so's door and they'd help me there's no sense of that yes I'm
generalizing because I live in the city that's the attitude in the city I'm sure if I go to the countryside somewhere it'
be so much different but that's the general Trend um ask ask friends as well
and that's the same you know they don't know their neighbors either people just keep to themselves here which when you
think of that from a you know perspective of like oh well I
kind I'm tired of people like I I don't want to talk to people and I I wouldn't mind just being up in my room all day
and playing games or scrolling through uh YouTube or whatever it sounds nice I
get it because like I said I I'm an introvert and there are times where I'm just like
man people like I I just want to stay inside all day
um but then there are also times where I'm just like I want to get out you know I want to walk the town I don't
necessarily need to meet anyone but I like having that experience of just
walking through town maybe you know accidentally making eye contact with people and sending them a smile like
people just don't do that here everyone's
just that's it um people are always in their own world or within their own unit
I should say okay cuz like if you know you're a family you're out and about or if you're with your friend you're out
and about like you know they're in that bubble
um but also just like passing so many individuals throughout the
day and in my head thinking like wow we're all you know here in this city
enjoying the day and then realizing like people are there's just this vibe
that people are just afraid to like connect with each other or talk to each other because there's such a culture
here of um not causing people trouble like in
Japanese it's Mayu so if you cause meaku to other people like you might as well
just like pack it up and like kill yourself pretty much like that's what it feels like here people feel like if they
encroach on you in any way whether that be like oh no oh I'm I'm in your space
let let me step to this side my bad or like oh no we made eye contact in the
elev let me people
just they just don't interact and then it's like to the point
where I miss that so much that I just when I when I first came here I did you
know read the room and be like Oh Japanese people don't do this Japanese people don't do that but when it came to
a point where it's like oh my God like this this girl's nails are really cute like am I not going to tell her that and
I did and then when I saw the look on her face as if like you know she hadn't gotten a compliment in years or that you
know she looked so like oh my God thank you so much and I just thought what's life without those like
little sweet interactions that you can have with strangers you know just add brightness to somebody's day and vice
versa it's just not a thing here and um I know that like it sounds really
cool for example you see on Tik Tok certain creators saying like look at this cool new restaurant in Japan you
don't even have to talk to anyone and you don't even have to see their face oh robots serve you there's no human contact isn't this so cool for
introverts y'all it gets old real fast really
fast like it's kind of scary at times to think about the fact that
like you know people just go through life just with no Community like no
sense of belonging here in Japan it's like everyone belongs to the community
of Japanese and japaneseness and once you step outside of that Community by doing something um that you shouldn't as
a part of the Japanese Community you become alienated so it's like
I don't know I don't know how to describe it anyway let me move on so I'm not rambling too much um my second point
housing discrimination
is you know you know about Japanese society that has made me really do double and triple takes
is discrimination here is so normalized and it pisses me off that
people do not talk about this um online like I just don't understand I know you
know some people talk about it on Reddit and other things but like why don't people just sit down be honest and make
a video about the fact that you will literally be denied housing based on the
fact that you're not Japanese it is so common and it is so baked
into you know the whole Foreigner life in Japan yeah you will have trouble finding an
apartment because yeah it is just straight up discrimination and you know
I've heard people say oh yeah it's it's racist and but I'm not going to use that word just because I feel like when
people hear the word racism they kind of tune out and they're like oh my God people saying everything is racist oh
the Americans saying everything is racist um so I am just going to use the word discrimination because that
literally is what it is um straight up just we are not going to give you this
housing because you're foreign and like based on my own
experience when I first went out to search for an apartment I remember I did hear about oh it's going to be hard as a
foreigner but that was my first time searching so I was very optimistic and long story short I saw some things that
were just like is this real life um like I told my agent these are the kinds of
houses I would like so he'd call up you know the land Lords or land lady and be like hi um
we like to know if this room is open um yeah I have someone who'd like to rent
um they're actually foreign yeah but but but but their
passport she's an American yeah and I as I was watching him I was just
like why does he seem so ashamed and apologetic and growling on the floor
about the fact that I'm not Japanese like it was I was in such
shock um so that's the first experience I had I didn't end up finding an apartment but the apartment The
Foreigner friendly apartment was old as hell um built in the 70s and
extremely small the rent was very cheap I'll give it that like um but
atrocious so my second experience in house searching was after I met my
husband um at the time he was my boyfriend and we were searching for
like we were searching for a place bigger than what we already had and we
thought that the search would be a lot easier because he's Japanese um but again I'll just
summarize it we were searching for houses and they you know when I would go
I'd say well I'm going to be renting with my husband and they'd be like oh
and I'd be like well he's Japanese and they go oh wow okay like you're going to get the house no problem and what ended
up happening is that they would see his name he's half Japanese so his name
doesn't look Japanese at all and they see his name they call our agent and be
like you said this person is Japanese and then my agent would scramble and call me and be like he is Japanese right
I'm like you saw his passport he is Japanese he's half Japanese but he's
Japanese like it shouldn't make any difference he literally has a Japanese passport Japanese blood
and what ended up happening in that case is that after the owner of the home the
landlord found out that um my husband was half Japanese he said
no so imagine that imagine literally being Japanese
having Japanese blood having a whole ass Japanese passport speaking Japanese fluently and you still don't get the
apartment because you're not Japanese enough so that was a whole mind and
that's going into my next Point um about Japanese Society just the way Japanese
discrimination against half-japanese
Society treats half Japanese people is actually disgusting
like and it's so normalized again it's so normalized
to on one hand objectify half Japanese people because they look so exotic and
ooh but you know you better be halfway you know so exotic but then on the other hand it's like they're
technically foreign is they're not really
Japanese it's just this whole song and dance every time of when a half Japanese person has to explain their background
and you know people scrutinize it and it's just crazy just hearing stories
from my husband of what he's had to deal with um here in Japan he's been living here for the
past s years and what he's had to deal with being half Japanese not being Japanese enough in
some instances but then in other instances he should act more like a
Japanese person because he is Japanese um and just
seeing everything he's had to go through because of that um
it just breaks my heart and it just made me start thinking about like if we were
to have children I I would never want to raise
them here ever because how can I raise a
child and tell them yes you have you know two parts of yourself you're black
and you're Japanese and then have them come home and tell me but so and so said I'm not Japanese cuz I'm half food I
would just I can't I cannot so nope can't do it
and I will not lie in in in saying that that is another huge
part of the reason why like I Can't Live Here Anymore
um lastly third point on Japanese Society
japanese views on English and "foreign-ness"
is the way that it views English and
um foreignness like I hope I can explain
this well because this might be something that is very difficult to understand if you don't live in Japan but
English in Japan is it is not really a tool for communic
communication as much as it is a party trick like English here is just cool
it's cool if you know English um English is compulsory in
Japanese schools but Japanese people rarely ever intera interact with it
outside of school so once they're done with school they're done with english most of the time except for you know
those who decide I really like English I want to keep studying it so it's weird that it's compulsory here literally the
government says you need to learn English but it's not treated in that way in the slightest it's
like it's to the point where like if you know English I've seen this happen um like within English classes that I've
taught if you have a particularly Advanced student and their English is really great other kids will make fun of
that kid for being like the teacher's pet and for knowing English so well so they won't want to participate or you
know outside of the school setting let's say like you're at a drinking party um with co-workers or something after
hours and you know someone somehow the topic gets on English and they find out
oh wow this coworker's English is really good suddenly that coworker's image in
the workplace goes so high because they like oh wow someone so knows English he's so
cool um but most Japanese people like could not give a about English and
the way that it's taught in schools is very very um it's very subpar it's it's
very lacking and it's no wonder why kids aren't interested in English because of the way that it's traditionally taught
which is like rope memorization or something um so this like English being
cool aspect is kind of linked to foreignness also being cool in certain
regards like when you when a Japanese person who
maybe has an interest in you know other cultures or foreigners or whatever it's kind of like at a very
superficial level they don't actually want to get to know your country and who you are as a person they want to get to
know about all the stereotypical stuff they know about who you are who you might be um like for example it's really
common here in Japan when you introduce yourself to like introduce the country that you're from um and say like oh yeah
I'm from America I'm From Italy so let's say someone were to say yeah um I'm From Italy then the person will be
like oh wow you're from Italy do you like pasta or like you know if someone were
to say um oh yeah like I I'm from Ghana Most Japanese people here the word
Ghana and they just think chocolate because there is a chocolate brand here in Japan that goes by the name of Ghana
so you can say oh I'm from Ghana oh like the chocolate or like Yeah I'm American and
oh wow you know where I can get a good burger just
like foreign people and foreignness are like here in Japan I feel like the
Japanese people are it's being foreign is such a spectacle and it's really like it's not
like they're seeing you as another human being just living their life it's like you're a caricature of what they think
the outside world looks like and that just really bothers me
so yeah um if you've made it this far I thank
wrap up
you for listening and I hope
that this video was able to give you some insight into why it might not be
the best decision for you to move here and try to build life here I will
reiterate that if you want to come to Japan for vacation if you want to come here for schooling I highly highly
recommended especially if you're coming here as a student because there's so many scholarships and um most of the
time your your school can be mostly or fully paid for so if you'd like
to have the experience of living in Japan long term um but don't necessarily want to
actually work here be a student it's the best thing that you can
do um I've just felt
like this huge shift in what I want out
of my life and obviously my husband has had a lot to do with that I came to
Japan I wasn't interested in dating I wasn't interested in
um yeah relationship really and after meeting him through him
I got to see even more of those those parts of Japan that that now now I'm
talking to you about and I wonder a lot like how long would it have taken me to see that if I
wouldn't have met my husband but a part of me thinks I would have realized maybe
in not as quickly of a time but I probably would have realized and I
I'm making this video because I want to I want to
prevent what I see here a lot which is foreigners coming to Japan expecting
to be able to build a life and live here comfortably and realizing
that it's not turned out the way that they
moving on
planned with all of that said um all my points being made I kind of want to move
on to um you know what's what's in our future we are planning to move back to
the States now um we're in the process of that and um like I said like just the
relief that I feel is just crazy because I never would have imagined when I first
left the states that I would miss so much about certain parts and aspects of
my culture um particularly from a social um standpoint
like I just miss miss that so much and just having a community to fall back on
so anyway we are very excited for that um and
uh I I really hope that someone even if it's just a single
person I hope someone can um benefit from this video um maybe just you know
again take the time to think about if this is something that you really want
um like I said before if you're going to come here as a student or a tourist you're going to really love it um and
for students who come here and maybe you know are thinking about hey maybe after
school I want to stay um the same advice still applies just really think about it and realize
that student life is very different from real life um but I think I've said pretty much
everything um I need to say and this has been kind of therapeutic for me so um
thank you for letting me ramble a bit I know it was kind of um all over the place but
uh I just want people to know that Japan is so much more than
Comin freaking sandwiches and vending machines
and stupid stuff that comes up on Tik Tok like it's not cupcakes and rainbows and you have
got to be honest with yourself about that and if you watch this video and you still think well I want to go and I want
to experience myself please do your experience might be quite different from
mine but I do feel it's a disservice to people people um who are wanting to come
here for people who are already living here to not be honest about the state of things so um again I hope it's been
helpful and hope you have a great day bye