Shinjuku, Tokyo
Photo by ajpscs

iving in Japan isn’t easy for a lot of foreigners. But it isn’t that hard, either.

For Mike Green, Anthony Palmer, and Jay Matvichuk, three people who have more in common than they realize, life here has been a mixed bag. Although they’re from different places and different backgrounds, all found their way to Japan -- for a plethora of reasons -- as missionaries. However, these missionaries weren’t spreading the word of God. They were teaching English. And they weren’t just teachers -- they were students too.

 Fresh off the boat

When Anthony Palmer arrived in Osaka, his first impression could be summed up in one word, “awesome.” The vibrant nightlife, buzzing neon signs and Osakan demeanor was fascinating and new. It was a complete shift from the American south where he had grown up.

“I was the typical greenhorn,” he admitted. “The city seemed so full of life and everything was fresh and exotic.”

Like most fresh off the boat foreigners, he was enthralled to be in a position to see the trends and behaviour that he had read and heard about, while learning a little something about himself in the process.

“I got to see the side of Japan that we never see back in the U.S.,” Palmer said. “I got to see drunken salarymen puking and passed out in front of the station. I got to see grown guys peeing on the side of the road as women and children walked by. I got to see pushy obasans and teeny-boppers break dancing in front of one of the main stations in Osaka. I’ve seen twenty-somethings with afros and cornrows, and I’ve seen girls with bleached blonde hair and bronze skin that makes them look like dolls instead of people.”

Mike Green arrived to something different -- a one room apartment with a balcony view … of a concrete wall. He was looking forward to a different Japan than the one he first met with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET).

“I was so bored because there was no excitement down there,” he said of Gotemba, Shizuoka, a town of 85,050 people. “It was a 45 minute train ride into town to see my friends. For three months, my typical day consisted of playing games and watching movies.”

Gotemba wasn’t exactly a thriving metropolis. Nor was it the famed Japanese countryside. Like the classmate who was not quite cool but not quite a loser, Gotemba was somewhere in between; it was not quite a city, yet not quite rural. For Green, this made living there all the more vexing.

“I was bored out of my mind,” he said. “I spent all day looking for jobs in the city.”

And so as one man had discovered a kind of paradise, another had been flung into a personal purgatory. But for Jay Matvichuk, Japan was not a paradise, purgatory, or hell. For him, it was an opportunity.

 The best of both worlds

Husky and sporting what the Japanese call a “skinhead,” or shaved head, Jay Matvichuk is an imposing figure. But the moment he starts talking, any fear you had evaporates at the sound of his voice.

The years of experience he has had in Japan can be easily heard in his words. So, too, can his satisfaction with living here in the land of experiences and possibilities. Aside from a month when he first came to Japan, he lived the life of an English teacher in Fuji City, Shizuoka Prefecture below the mountain of the same name.

 “In Canada, we had a Dairy Queen, I think,” he said jokingly of his hometown, Kamploops, British Columbia. “Fuji felt like a city. Kamloops feels like a city in nature. Kamloops had way more of an outdoorsy feel. All through it there are parks and trees.”

Fuji, on the other hand, was a gray urban area that’s atmosphere reflected its main industry, the immutable paper mills. All 84 of them. While Matvichuk didn’t mind the gray skies and lack of nature in Fuji City, the move from Fuji to the thriving metropolis of Yokohama for a new job clearly energized him and breathed new life into his Japan experience.

“It felt cool,” he said. “I was really stoked to be living in a big city with lots to do and a whole new place to explore.”

 Life in the concrete jungle

Though their experiences differed, both Matvichuk and Green made the leap from their rural and semi-urban outposts. They headed for something completely different -- the gargantuan known as the Tokyo metropolitan area. For a twenty-something Green looking for new friends and experiences, Tokyo signified a chance at redemption for himself and for the Japan he had come to know.

“I was so glad to be out of there and doing something with myself instead of wasting time in front of the computer,” he said. “I should have never lived in that small town in Osaka. I should have come straight to Tokyo.”

Unfortunately, Green has yet to find his niche. He is still struggling with the sometimes perplexing time of working for a Japanese company.

“As much as I hate working at a Japanese bank, I am still here,” he lamented. “The ‘real’ Japan sucks. You never feel like part of the team and you are thought as more of a person to be tolerated than a true member of the group.”

Like many who come to Japan, Green appears to have become stuck in Japan for no concrete reason.

“My reason for staying is actually inertia,” he said. “One day I will leave. But it will not be to home, I hope it will be to Europe.”

Contrarily, Matvichuk’s shift in home and heart had more positive and immediate results.

“All of sudden I had access to foreign stuff,” he said jokingly about his move to Yokohama. “From Costco to Pizza Hut, more often than not, you can get things here.”

But it was his experiences in Fuji that had readied him for the move. He had acquired a knack for the Japanese language and more importantly, he had made a number of close friends.

“When I moved to Fuji, I was raw, a total newbie still,” he said. “I didn’t really speak much Japanese or anything. But when I came to Yokohama, I was more of a member of the society I was moving into. And that makes all the difference in the things you can do.”

 “Get out and do stuff!” The secret to a good time in Japan

The merits of life in both the countryside and the city abound -- as do the bad points. But if you are looking to maximize your experience in Japan, sometimes the negative aspects need to be disregarded. For Palmer, overlooking some of these things was difficult at first.

“The stress began to settle in a few days (after I arrived) because of my weak language skills,” he said.

Palmer believes that many foreigners living in Japan have high stress levels because of the “very different lifestyles.” Add in a famously difficult-to-learn language, and many a foreigner have complained of a seemingly insurmountable challenge, which often ends in failure.

“The Japanese language is very, very difficult,” Palmer said. “And if you can’t read and speak it, you will be very, very isolated, thus further contributing to your stress.”

Matvichuk agrees, but tries to see things from a different perspective -- that of the average Japanese; the man on the street.

“It’s almost rude to not speak Japanese,” he said. “Imagine going into some store and you can’t communicate with the man behind the register. Put yourself in his shoes. He’s just going to work and some guy forces this language on him.”

Matvichuk also thinks that besides learning the language, there are a number of other ways to get the most out of your life in Japan. However, he stresses one above all.

“Get out and do stuff, he said. “You can’t wait for stuff to come to you. Take the initiative.”

 Unconventional mindset

Finding the enigmatic Japan you have imagined isn’t a fool’s errand. Countryside, big city, or wherever you are, it is waiting for you. You just have to be willing to look for it in an unconventional way.

“I think that it’s all in a person’s mindset,” Matvichuk said. “We are all here experiencing pretty much the same outer stimuli, Japan and Japanese culture. There are some people who absolutely hate it here. There are some people who absolutely love it. And there is the majority who are somewhere in between.

"But if the outer stimuli are all the same, then the only difference is in the way we are looking at it.”