Quote:
Originally Posted by RealJames
I imagine a lot of people don't feel like they fit in much more wherever they come from than they do in Japan.
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I think RealJames really hit on something with this comment...
And this is probably one of the driving reasons that a lot of people decide to up and run off to Japan. It`s one of the big things I try to get people who want to live in Japan because they hate life at home to realize - that you don`t have to go so incredibly far away to escape a life you`re not happy with. You can move to the next town over, start anew, and have a much better chance of fitting in than you do in Japan. This is particularly true when people have an image of Japan that draws a lot from popular media and stories/photos of people dressing up in Tokyo.
It is a weirdly difficult subject for me to instantly bash anyone for, as I was in a situation where moving to Japan would without any doubt be much better than any future that awaited me at the time...
However, my image of Japan was a much different one than the modern media supports. I made my life altering decisions back before anime was mainstream, there were probably only a few series (Ranma?) out dubbed or subbed, and back either before or just after Sailor Moon started on tv. (Didn`t watch it, so am not sure - but people did ask me for stuff when I was heading back to the US the first time.) There wasn`t the media overflow of "cool Japan" - and the popular image was just starting to inch out of the "Japan Inc." days.
My main drive in choosing Japan over anywhere else was that a) through some amazing fluke I found the language incredibly easy to pick up... b) No one else seemed to find it easy. c)There was real future job potential with high level Japanese as no one spoke it or was learning it at the time. (When I was looking into universities, there were only a handful
in the country that offered beyond 102! How things have changed...) I saw it as a chance to gain a very valuable skill to give me the chance to go somewhere in life. Plus, the universities offering degrees in East Asian Languages allowed you to test out based on skill. I figured that I could cut the length of my university education in half - great when the university charges on a time scale and not credit scale.
I came to Japan, "fit in", was incredibly happy, didn`t have trouble with language or homesickness, etc... So stayed pretty much straight from then on.
It`s hard to say don`t go, but very easy to tell someone to try things out before making a huge leap.