Why I moved to Japan
Nearly 10 years ago I moved from the US to Japan and I still get asked every now and again why I did it. To be quite honest I don't have a simple answer to this question; I feel as though my move here was the result of many different events that took place during my upbringing. To give the full story we have to go pretty far back into the past...
When I was a little kid - maybe 3 or 4 years old - my brother had a Super Nintendo (SNES). I don't remember the specifics but at some point I played it and must have fallen in love with it rather quickly because I would often sneak into my brothers bedroom to play video games when he wasn't home. He always got mad and yelled at me when he realized I had touched it without his permission and my parents had grown tired of all the fighting so one day my father woke me up in the morning and told me that there was something for me in the living room. To my surprise, my dad bought me my own Super Nintendo, 2 controllers, and a stack of games (the 16bit generation had already concluded by this point in time so he must have gotten a great deal). This was the beginning of my life with video games.
I loved that console, and as I grew up I eventually moved on to other consoles and I continued playing video games throughout my whole life (even today). Naturally, I had a Game Boy during my childhood and like so many other kids at the time I was hooked on Pokemon. In fact, Pokemon was more of an obsession than a hobby for me and continued to be so up until the 3DS era.
But it wasn't just video games. I loved cartoons, and I watched the Pokemon anime whenever it was on TV. At the time I didn't know what anime was, but I would frequently discover new cartoons that vaguely resembled Pokemon and I quickly realized that all of the shows that had this style were all fantastic. Yugioh released in the US around that time, I adored the cartoon and I played the card game with my friends. Beyblade was another popular series that I enjoyed during that time in my life, and the toys were so much fun. Does anyone else remember Hamtaro??? Back in those days there was a scheduling block on Cartoon Network called Toonami which primarily aired anime as well as shows which vaguely resembled anime such as Code Lyoko or Teen Titans (both of which I also enjoyed).
Everything changed when Naruto began airing on Toonami. It was like nothing that I had ever seen before. In fact, I remember enjoying it so much that a half-hour episode always felt like it was only 5 minutes (which is insane as a kid because your concept of time is different at that age and everything feels way longer). EVERYBODY was into Naruto.
And there were various other Japanese things that I liked at that age such as Power Rangers or Tamagotchi. These were my elementary school years.
My life changed when I entered into junior high school. I lived in a bad town, and at that age it felt like everyone suddenly became very cruel. Maybe it's just a middle school thing? Anyway it was hard to make friends at that age. I had two best friends in my neighborhood during elementary school but one moved to Tennessee during the summer before middle school and then the other friend started hanging out with the kids up the street who bullied me for wearing glasses so suddenly I had no friends around my home. I had a few friends at school but we didn't always have classes together.
A few weeks into the school year I went to the library with my parents and it was there that I discovered manga. I had heard that the Naruto comics were backwards, and this was my first time seeing these mysterious backwards graphic novels that I had heard about. Intrigued, I borrowed a few. The series I borrowed was called FullMetal Alchemist, and it was like nothing I had ever read or seen up to that point in my life. I was hooked. From that point onward I went to the library often, and I always borrowed manga. I read them at night before I went to bed, and I would also bring them to school with me and read them during class. I was so fascinated by these little backward books.
Because I no longer had friends in the neighborhood I started using the internet frequently because I was bored and there was nothing else to do. Naturally I searched online about the comics I had been reading and I learned all about "manga". What's more, I also learned that all of my favorite cartoons are actually called "anime" and that both manga and anime are from Japan. Not just those, but everything else too. Pokemon, Yugioh, Beyblade, Nintendo, Tamagotchi, Power Rangers, Sony, Sega, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mega Man, Capcom, hell even that Ninja Turtles game I liked on the SNES.... Seemingly EVERYTHING I had ever liked or enjoyed in my life up to that point was from Japan.
How could all of these amazing things all be from one place? And if everything good came from this one place, how come I know nothing about that place?
To put it simply, Japan was now on my radar. I began to branch out and started watching more anime and reading more manga. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya was popular at that time, as was Lucky Star - both of which I enjoyed. Anime, manga, and video games continued to be my escape throughout middle and high school.
I think the 2008 financial crisis was what really set the gears in motion towards my eventual move to Japan. Things in my country were going downhill, my hometown was bad, and I was aware of it all. When I escaped into anime/manga/games it seemed as though none of the awful things of my day-to-day life were problems in Japan (and to be fair, that remains true to this day). I began to view Japan as a better place and I wished that I could live in Japan simply for that reason. The years went on and I dug further and further into Japanese media. Hell, I even listened to Japanese music. I was an otaku by all measure.
Then towards the end of high school I felt discouraged as all of my classmates received their acceptance letters from college. Everyone knew what they wanted to do in life, they all seemingly had a plan. Everyone but me. I discussed this with one of my teachers and she encouraged me to think hard about what I enjoy and to follow my passions. But the joke is on her because I was an otaku so I went home and watched anime and it made me think more and more about how I wished I could live in Japan. I fired up Google and searched how to move to Japan, and on that day I made a plan for what I was going to do in life. That plan would ultimately change, but on that day I made the decision that I would absolutely move to Japan. I went to school and told my teacher about my plan and she said it wasn't realistic. I told my parents, my sister and my friends and they all laughed or rolled their eyes because they thought it would never happen (kinda like when people say they'll move to Canada when they're preferred presidential candidate loses the election).
I spent the next 2 years working towards that goal, and then at the age of 19 my dream came true and I moved to Japan. Now as a 28 year old with Japanese citizenship I look back at these memories and laugh at how my teacher said it wasn't realistic. I'm proud of myself for achieving my goal, and I'm very happy with the life that I have built here. And when looking at the situation in the US, I know for a fact that I made the right decision.
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