Why I Came to Live in Japan

Cherry blossoms in Kyoto

To start a post off with a huge generalization, when most American girls dream of living abroad, they think of Italy or France. If they feel like they want to be adventurous then maybe somewhere in Africa or India.

In the eyes of America, Japan is known not as a land of beauty and wonder but of incredibly strange TV shows and commercials. It's a place where absolutely nothing makes sense, and that absurdity is what makes Americans roll their eyes at any person (usually a geek and male) who wants to live in Japan.

Therefore, anytime I meet another person in Japan, I am always asked, "What made you decide to live here?" I'm always asked with genuine curiosity; as if I wasn't even aware that I'm in Japan rather than some trendy part of Paris.

So here is the shortened version of how this all came to be.

For starters, I am a geek. I grew up playing video games such as Chrono Trigger and Legend of Zelda. My brother and I played them religiously, or I would watch my brother play them religiously.

I also was a huge, huge fan of anime. Anime, for those of you who may not know, is Japanese animation. Not cartoons like what Disney can churn out for their TV shows, but shows with remarkable plotlines (in my eyes) and fantastic beauty in the simplicity of the drawings. Not to mention a lot of them are funny.

I stumbled across one such anime, Sailor Moon, on Cartoon Network one day. I hated that show, but I also couldn't stop watching it. Hate turned into worshipful fandom when I saw the last episode of the first season. The show made me want to watch more shows just like it.

Through the help of a local video store, I watched other anime, and there was a store in the local mall that sold anime goods and manga (comic books). I was soon reading manga and watching anime every day, and I had quickly realized that the original language all of this was in was Japanese.

The more I heard Japanese, the more I liked it. Japanese has a wonderful array of sound combinations and beats to it that English will never understand. I fell in love with the language.

By the time college hit I knew I wanted to actually learn Japanese. So I went to a university where I could study it as a minor.

My room-mate at university turned out to be the next step in my transition to Japan; a Japanese girl doing an exchange program with my university. She became one of my best friends, and she introduced me to food, culture, TV programs and everything else Japan had to offer.

Through the course of my three years studying at that university, my life slowly seemed blend into a Japanese life thanks to my room-mate. A sort of balance emerged where I would be saturated with just enough Japanese culture that I could absorb it, but not enough that I was terrified by it's unfamiliarity.

My last semester of college, I went to Kyoto for four months to study Japanese and to see if I wanted to live in Japan.

I have traveled a decent amount in my life, and I lived in England for a year. I love England, but by the end of the academic year I could feel the differences between American and British culture digging under my skin. In Japan, though, I haven't felt that. I feel like I can be more myself here than in America. That I'm more at home here than in America. That's the best way to describe how I feel about being here.

It was a fantastic, and fantastically short, four months in Kyoto, but I soon found a way back to Japan in 2009, and I've been here ever since.

All I know is that as soon as I tell people I've been here since 2009, the next thing I always say is, "And I want to be here for as long as possible."