Quote:
Originally Posted by samurai007
Let me add something else... why do most people want to go to or live in Japan? The reasons vary from "I want to travel around the country and experience the culture" to "I want to buy tons of manga", and everything in between. The thing is, most of those reasons have finite limits, or at least diminishing returns. After you've traveled from 1 end of the country to the other, and visited more castles, temples, and interesting sites than you could count, the desire to see yet another one is far less than it was to see your first 1, 2, or even 10 places. And buying manga can be fun, but what happens when you already have 1500 manga? Is there still as great a desire to buy number 1501? No.
"Experience Japanese life and culture" is a common reason for going, but how long do you really want to experience it? For many people, 2 or 3 years of living there is enough to satisfy that desire, and then other desires begin gaining in relative importance. "See my family again" or even something like "get good Mexican food or southern-style BBQ ribs", may become more important after several years away than "spend a 731st day experiencing Japanese culture". Desires like that, which are relatively easily fulfilled back home and have never been very important, can surpass "living in Japan" once living in Japan has become the everyday norm and seeing your family or eating a food you miss is an incredibly rare treat, something that you can only do once a year or less.
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I've enjoyed reading this whole thread (maybe I skipped one or two replies) and I'm sad it was all last year. but anyways, I wanted to address the above post, I myself have been interested in living in japan for some time and I'm actually in the process of planning a month long trip I wish it could be longer, but it's all I can afford now. I just want to point out that there are indeed other factors, it may come into the area of personal belief, because I myself feel a passion for it, and there is that possibility that I may end up as the original poster did, not living there but still very much involved, but that has always been one of many possible futures. I see your point and i'm sure it applies to many people but like i said before, i want to point out that there are people who won't get tired of it being there every day life, I can only long to immerse myself in the language and one day become fluent at this stage in my life, and i think with anyone there will be days where you could get home sick, but its natural.
And also, it just seemed like common sense to me that you should know, no country is perfect, every country has its pros and cons, and it could go either way, this thread has helped a lot, giving people in sight to every day life, and for some i'm sure it turned them off and others like me, only excited and intrigued them more. Culture shock happens, you should be expecting it. Love is love, for a person, or country, and of course there is also the silly little teenage crush that has no thought of reality. Again i'm glad i read this thread, and I hope other people keep reading it, it's really great.
Anyways that was horribly all over the place just because I had so many different thoughts and I wanted to get them all down. I've never been a very good writer
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