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For the past few minutes I've been sitting frozen with my fingers on my keyboard trying to recall of a style to start a post where I'm basically going to say that I hated my fourth dimension living in Nihon. Whoops, spoiler, I estimate now y'all guys don't need to carp reading more (which might be a proficient thing, since this post islong).

Though before I start I as well want to say that while my time living in Japan was difficult, I remember it'southward a wonderful country to visit! If you're wondering where to showtime, you can read my one week Nippon itinerary hither.

My family unit moved to Japan for a year when I was vi and I LOVED it. Considering the country's obsession with all things cute – it'southward a identify where depository financial institution cards are covered in Moomin cartoons and grown women try to look like little girls – of course Japan would exist a dream globe for a six-year-quondam daughter.

When I ended up moving to Japan once again at 22, I quickly fell in love all over. Not just was I excited to live and piece of work in Japan, I had received perhaps the coolest placement on the JET Program: I was living on Tanegashima, a tiny island southward of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's primary islands.

Tanegashima is home to the about beautiful beaches I accept ever seen, and every bit most of the islanders have no interest in swimming, the just people I would ever see on them were the few surfers who had moved down to Tanegashima to chase what they told me were the all-time waves in the state.

Likewise, in that location is a space station on the isle, significant that every few months I got to see a rocket launch!

But the best part? I was teaching at three loftier schools, and one of them wasn't on Tanegashima. For a few days each month I would accept a ferry to the neighboring island of Yakushima, a UNESCO Globe Heritage Site that is abode to Princess Monoke and a 7,000-year-onetime cedar tree.

There my schoolhouse would put me up in a cozy mountain lodge and give me some actress money for the inconvenience. Because, y'all know, spending a few days a calendar month at a monkey-inhabited mount paradise was SUPER inconvenient.

Paradise.

Only the other teachers I was working with didn't agree. When I asked them if they enjoyed life on Tanegashima, they all responded by telling me how many years of "island duty" they had left. High school teachers in the prefecture had to alter schools every few years, and at least once in their careers they would have to spend 3-five years on one of Kagoshima's islands.

It was a shame, because Tanegashima deserved to exist loved.

Of course that'due south non to say life in that location was piece of cake. Being the only blonde adult female on the island and about a human foot taller than most locals, I didn't exactly fit in. People seemed to be constantly watching me (or I was constantly paranoid) and it became normal for me to see someone for the first time and accept them tell me that they had recently seen me in the supermarket. And then they would proceed to list everything that had been in my shopping handbasket, often commenting on my eating habits.

Tanegashima is also incredibly conservative compared to the rest of Japan. Very few of the teachers I worked with gave their students whatever room for creative thinking, ever stressing the importance of social harmony in a higher place all else. It was not bad for those who fit in, merely the students who didn't really struggled.

When gay comedians came on telly, people would laugh and say that evidently it was all an human action, and a Japanese friend on Yakushima told me that she had one time asked her doctor for birth control and, very begrudgingly, he prescribed her one week's worth of the pill (instead, abortions are very common).

When it came time to renew my contract in February I decided to stay, partly considering the job paid well and the cost of living in Japan (or at least on Tanegashima) was quite depression, just mostly considering I felt similar I needed more time to find my anxiety in Japan.

And so the tsunami hit.

Tanegashima was far south plenty that nosotros had several hours alert, and in the cease the wave had lost its force by the time it arrived. In southern Japan, the tsunami wasn't a big deal at all.

Except it was a huge bargain.

This was when I finally felt the full burden of being an outsider in Nihon. No one wanted to talk virtually the tsunami with me, and whenever I brought it up they would in one case over again ask me to tell everyone in America that I was fine and the nuclear problems were non as big of a bargain as Western media was making them out to be. I did admire how instead of falling into hysterics and making the disaster all near them, my colleagues simply worked harder.

This wasn't my first experience with a natural disaster in Japan.

My family had been living outside of Kobe during the Cracking Hanshin convulsion in 1995. I accept vague memories of some of our neighbors stumbling out of their homes covered in blood and my father going to help dig out bodies, but well-nigh of my memories of the convulsion were actually really pleasant. Anybody kept giving me candy and my teacher called to tell me that all of my classmates had survived, and in the shelter people kept piling my family'due south mats with extra blankets and snacks. Fun times!

But this time I could. Not. End. Crying. I kept having dreams most earthquakes, probably mixing babyhood memories with fantasy, and a one time beautiful drive along the ocean to one of my schools became hell.

Staring at the water that had merely taken so many lives, information technology took me a full month before I was able to get through the 40-minute drive without pulling over in tears.

I know, I'm such a baby.

Thinking about the tsunami somehow made me feel even more alone on the tiny isle, and instead of feeling closer to the other people at that place I felt shut out.

My 2d yr in Japan was better. I could communicate more hands in Japanese and made some real friends, particularly a new English teacher who was my age and also a dancer. Miyuki's female parent is from the Philippines, and so she always managed to laugh at Japanese life on Tanegashima, and at the cease of the yr we performed a belly dance routine at a local festival that I'chiliad sure scandalized one-half the island.

When people now ask me how I liked life in Japan, or if I would recommend didactics English in Japan, I'm never sure what to say. Thankfully I didn't quite see it at the time, simply after moving to Thailand I realized how depressed and but not myself I had been for a lot of my time in Nippon. Simply I too have friends who taught in Japan and admittedly loved it!

I think role of the problem was living on Tanegashima and working with teachers who didn't want to be at that place. I also tried also hard to fit in and act Japanese, which always left me frustrated when I failed.

The foreigners I knew who most loved Japan either had studied Japanese for years and could communicate fluently – they ordinarily came with the intent of staying in Japan forever – or they barely spoke whatsoever Japanese and were happy staying the fascinating foreigner, ignoring the locals' pained expressions when they broke one of Japan's endless rules of social etiquette.

I wish I had done the latter. I ended upwards understanding much more Japanese than I could speak, but many Japanese refuse to believe that foreigners can learn their linguistic communication (even their English textbooks placed a huge emphasis on the uniqueness of Japanese culture), then people always seemed comfortable talking about me in front end of me, assuming I couldn't empathize them (even when I would answer to what they were saying).

It fabricated for a lot of awkward situations, and continued confirmations that anybody thought I was basically a different species. It would take been much improve if I hadn't understood them.

Is anyone still reading this? Probably simply my female parent (cheers, Mamma, hope you have fun in Boston this weekend!).

I guess I could have summed up this unabridged postal service simply by proverb "my feelings about Japan are complicated." There's then much I do love about Japanese people, the beautiful islands, linguistic communication and intricate culture, and I always am super excited to meet Japanese people on my travels, but I also have so many negative emotions surrounding my time at that place and after didactics Japanese students I worry that many Japanese (at least in conservative areas) are too weighed down by the pressures of maintaining social harmony to accept a real chance at finding happiness.

On the brilliant side, my two years in Japan gave me the means to travel for the past two and a one-half years. I left Japan with a lot of savings, and because my time earning that coin was hard, I've focused on only spending that money on things that volition truly make me happy. If I hadn't gone to Nihon I would not be where I am today, living a life that I love immensely.

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Source: https://www.heartmybackpack.com/blog/life-teaching-living-japan/