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