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tell us the bad stuff about japan if there's anything bad everything on this channel
always seems so overly positive about the country overly positive that's not true this
all right there might be some element of truth in that in many ways over the last nine years
this channel has become one great big sales pitch for living in japan uh you know look
at the stunning scenery taste the mouth-watering food look it's mount fuji and bullet trains and a
guy in a bathtub the truth is the channel has been so positive about japan because i've had
an overwhelmingly good experience living here and the videos kind of reflect that as a result
i have been biased and i've never really talked about the not so good stuff that comes with
we're living here and honestly this country certainly isn't perfect i mean nowhere is right
except maybe norway and narnia so i've thought long and hard about it and i've come up with 12
reasons not to move to japan some reasons are obvious others might come as a bit of
a surprise now i'm aware this might feel like i'm betraying some viewers who've seen japan
through these videos over the years and dreamed of living here someday like i'm crushing some dreams
but honestly despite some of the bad things in this video my aim isn't to dissuade you from
moving here far from it i want to prepare you for any situations and cultural hurdles you may
face or encounter in everyday life and no it's not going to be one of those clickbait videos
like reasons not to live in japan number one the food is so delicious you'll die from overeating
no get out so let's dive in and hopefully by the end of
this video and the 12 reasons your dreams of living in japan will firmly be intact
there you go good as new
do you like watching films in the evening without
headphones or having a space in your kitchen to cook food
maybe you just enjoy sitting in your chair without hearing your neighbors through the wall
get ready to say goodbye to all those things and more as you move into your tiny apartment
with walls made of paper that's actual noise from the wall yes it's the obvious one accommodation
is often small expensive and poorly soundproof just yesterday i heard my neighbours through
one of the walls have an argument for about an hour and it was so clear that i could pretty
much hear every word they were saying like it sounded like she was angry at him because
he wasn't subscribed to abroad in japan no that was a cheap shot even by my standards
sorry now i'm never really minded about living in a small apartment as i have done the entire
time i've been living here it's kind of fun fitting your life into a small space it gives
you a sort of minimalistic mindset where you have to be very careful about the things you
buy and what you fill your apartment with and in my case i choose to fill the apartment with
cheap hats from 100 yen store covered in weird english in this case jumping pounding the rock
it's my new favorite addition to my prestigious hat collection brilliant spending a thousand
dollars a month on a tiny studio apartment it's just the reality of living in a city like tokyo
and in your 20s or even in your 30s it probably won't be too much of an issue the problem though
for me has always been the lack of privacy uh when i first moved to sendai i lived in what
looked like a nice modern studio apartment it was well lit the bathroom was nice and the bed smelled
like daffodils but then i moved in and started sleeping in the bed and i discovered i could
hear my neighbor snoring through the cardboard wall so clearly at night i used to genuinely
wake up at night and think someone was in the room it all felt a little bit like silent hill
another time i ended up with a neighbour who happened to be the worst neighbour in the history
of japan with a daily experience that pushed me to the brink of my sanity every morning at 7 00 am
i'd be in bed fast asleep and my neighbor this guy would leave for work and there'd be a bang in the
door and you'd hear his footsteps trail off and then just as he drifted off and fell back to sleep
you'd hear the ominous sound of the footsteps returning the door would unlock and then and this
is completely true and i can't believe it happened he would open and close the door 25 [ __ ] times
every single morning i would count it one two three [ __ ] in my desperation i bought these
super mega noise cancelling wonder headphones you could be in front of a [ __ ] fireworks
factory going up in flames split these bad boys on and hear nothing perfect just peace and quiet
well not quite because every time he shut the door the whole bloody building moved you could
feel the paper wall moving you could feel the bed rattle honestly by the end i felt like slamming
his head in the door 25 times every morning but realizing it was probably some deeply ingrained
psychological trauma instead i ran away for six weeks and rode a bike across japan and journey
across japan was born so if you've ever enjoyed watching journey across japan it's all thanks
to my noisy neighbor genuinely but i miss the days of watching a film at 11 p.m and not having
to worry about my neighbors i miss the days of having friends come over and not having to worry
that someone's laughing or talking too loudly and that's before you've even got your apartment which
is a process so incredibly unpleasant it'll make you want to jump up and down pounding on the rock
so the hundreds of foreigners i've met living in japan over the years i've never met a single one
who's looked me dead in the eye and said yeah i love looking for apartments in japan like it's not
fun and that's down to a simple factor and that is as a foreigner living in japan many apartments
don't allow you to live there to rent it out now i should preface this by saying if you come
here with a job a lot of the time your company will sort you out an apartment and certainly
in my first three years i was very lucky that my apartment was all ready to go however after that
i moved to sendai and i was looking for apartments i found one that i really liked and i put in a bid
and they turned me down because i was a foreign resident because i wasn't japanese and that's
something that happened a few times and it's not a nice feeling to be discriminated against just
because you're not japanese the only way i could get over feeling irritated and kind of angry about
it was to try and be sympathetic and try and look at it from the perspective of the landlord
a good friend of mine who's a foreign resident rented out one of his apartments a few years ago
and the property management company actually warned him not to allow foreigners to stay
there there's a little box you can tick that says no foreigners in your apartment and they
presented him with some numbers and statistics to sort of suggest that foreign residents are a
flight risk that they would skip the country on their last month and not pay the rent which does
unfortunately happen causing a lot of stress and problems for the landlord not only that but the
odds of having a foreign resident are very low in your apartment by virtue of the fact that 98
of japan's population are ethnically japanese whatever way you look at it it doesn't stop
the whole process from being unpleasant like i can't put a positive spin on it it's just not fun
except for the fact that when you do get your apartment finally you do feel like
you've completed the world's hardest video game albeit a costly video game that you
didn't enjoy playing and one that was riddled with relentless discrimination certainly no pac-man no
discrimination there although there is a guy there being weirdly attacked by lots of yeah anyway
a few years ago there was a news story of a japanese train that had done something truly
unthinkable a railway company issued a public apology after a train scheduled to leave at 9
44 am left the station at 9 4 am oh my god i can't believe wait what yes that's right a train had
left the station 20 seconds early it was supposed to leave at 9 minutes 44 and 40 seconds but it
left at 9 minutes 44 and 20 seconds oh my god while western media had gobsmacked at the concept
of a train apologizing for leaving more or less on time it also makes sense in japan the country
where things are formidably punctual things are on time and things always run and work like clockwork
as a consumer japan is pretty much perfect i mean we've already seen that but of course all of this
comes at a price there's a reason everything works so well in japan and it comes at human cost it's
built on the back of a workforce who sacrificed so much for the greater good of society working for a
japanese company can be brutal particularly medium to large organization the hours are long the lack
of control over your own life is minimal taking holiday leave for a japanese worker is almost
as difficult as getting an apartment as a foreign resident like studies have shown that only half of
workers in japan take their paid vacation they get 20 days of annual leave and they only take
10 of them which seems unthinkable coming from the uk where everyone is very much keen to go on
their holiday and the reason for that is leaving your workplace and going on holiday in japan
it looks bad you will get ostracized for it by your colleagues by your superiors maybe not to
your face but certainly behind closed doors you won't be seen as a team player if you're
somebody who's not in the office much it's a very strange thing like you don't actually have to be
doing anything productive at the workplace in japan you just have to be present being seen
at work or present in the office is viewed upon more favorably than being productive or doing
anything actually good even i got a taste of this as an english teacher i could go home at 4 30 p.m
every day but if i stayed until 6 p.m and just sat at my desk working on something or studying some
japanese or just playing with my pencil colleagues would sort of come over and just commend me for my
excellent hard work now you might be thinking well if i do overtime at least i get paid for it but
typically in japan you don't get paid for overtime work uh so not only are you being unproductive not
only are you spending lots of time unnecessarily at work but you're not getting paid for it either
sadly studies have shown that job satisfaction is far lower in japan than it is in the uk and the us
and while i have seen more foreign workers have their dreams crushed of living and working in
japan by this point perhaps more than any other on this list you know this is a proper dream crushing
point the good news is i do know a lot of foreign people living and working in japan in jobs they
enjoy typically for smaller more entrepreneurial forward-thinking companies or foreign companies
that have a base in japan so there is still hope but the country does have an overwork problem
and hopefully at some point they'll they'll realize that and start confronting it
one of the hardest things about moving here in my first year and something that i really wasn't
prepared for was losing my independence you know won a new car or a phone contract want to set up
a bank account hell maybe after a long day at work you just want to use your microwave well good luck
with that because when you first move here you're going to need someone to do it all for you you're
going to need a lot of help you might be thinking well don't move to japan then if you don't know
any japanese and you'd have the same problems in any country it doesn't speak your native language
but honestly as time progressed it often became less of a language issue
and more of a cultural issue the paperwork is endless and daunting you use outdated technology
every day fax machines personal seals aka stamps not actual seals that'll be far more exciting and
of course to fill out all the paperwork you need advanced knowledge of japanese kanji characters
you are gonna need someone to help you there's no doubt about that you are gonna need to rely on
other people a lot more than you would back home and feel like a burden to others and if you're
someone like me who's fiercely independent then it's really not that fun so imagine you're having
a bad day you've just been rejected from getting another apartment and someone's told you that
your youtube channel should be called a boring in japan i'm not boring i'm not boring at all
and you go to an intersection you get across the street with a few dozen cars waiting and
while you stand there waiting for the lights to change you suddenly notice that everyone
is staring at you like you're an anomaly like you shouldn't be there you start to become
quite anxious and self-aware people are watching your every move you feel like something terrible
is about to happen and then it doesn't and you carry on walking to mcdonald's now this
sounds a bit like a horror movie or sounds a bit like the matrix to be fair but the good news is
it's mostly in your head unless the matrix is real but as i said earlier 98 of japan's
population are ethnically japanese and it is one of the most homogenous societies on earth
and inevitably you will stand out if you don't look japanese now you'll notice people don't sit
next to you on the train or the bus even if it's crowded which makes you really feel like you're
standing out feels like you're different from everyone you'll notice people at the supermarket
stare at you and children scream and recoil in terror at your face you know especially if like me
you've lived somewhere that isn't tokyo you live out in the rural areas where seeing a non-japanese
person is incredibly rare i mean hell if i see a white person i'm shocked and disturbed as well
but i noticed in my first and second year here it did get to me a fair bit i did get quite anxious
about it and i got self-conscious in a way that i didn't really want