Why Japan?

Whether it’s people at home, friends in Japan, or people I meet along the way, the questions I always get are:

Why do you want to move to Japan?

Why do you like Japan so much?

なんで日本語を勉強していますか？

It’s a question I get all the time, and if I’m honest, I’m never quite sure how to answer it.

My answer is usually something along the lines of:

I can’t really explain it. I just know in my gut that this is where I belong.

That probably sounds strange.

I’ve been fortunate enough to see a fair bit of the world. I’ve travelled around much of the UK, visited some beautiful places, and had some incredible holidays. But nowhere has ever given me that feeling of “this is where I want to be.”

Everywhere I’ve ever lived has been the result of circumstance. My family moved there, work took me there, or it simply happened to be where life led me.

Although I started life in London, the South West of England will always be home. It’s where I grew up, where my closest friends are, and where a lot of my memories were made.

But Japan is the first place that ever called to me.

I can’t point to a single moment or a single reason. It wasn’t one trip, one person, one meal or one experience. It was something that slowly grew over time until one day I realised I wasn’t just planning holidays anymore. I was imagining a future.

In the spring of 2024, I spent six weeks in Japan as a bit of an experiment. I wanted to know whether the feeling would fade once the holiday excitement wore off. It’s easy to love somewhere when you’re sightseeing every day and everything feels new. Living somewhere is different.

So I tried to do normal life instead.

I worked during the week. I commuted. I went shopping. I did laundry. I spent time at "home". I tried to experience Japan not as a tourist, but as somebody imagining what daily life there might actually be like.

If anything, it had the opposite effect.

The more normal life became, the more comfortable I felt. Since then, I’ve spent even more extended periods in Japan and each trip has reinforced the same feeling. The rose-tinted glasses never really came off. Instead, I found myself becoming more convinced that I could genuinely build a life there.

So when people ask me why Japan, I still struggle to answer. But if I had to try, there are a few things that stand out.

The People and the Culture

One of the first things I noticed about Japan was how welcoming people were.

Of course, no country is perfect and Japan has its own problems just like everywhere else. But I’ve consistently found people to be kind, patient and willing to help, even when my Japanese wasn’t very good.

As someone who is naturally quite introverted, I also find a lot of Japanese culture appealing.

I like that public spaces are generally quieter. I like that people are considerate of those around them. I like that there are places where you can simply exist without feeling like you constantly need to be interacting with everyone.

There’s a respect for other people’s space that resonates with me.

Not every aspect of Japanese culture is better, and I don’t want to romanticise it. But there are many parts of it that fit my personality in a way that feels natural.

The Language

I’ve always loved the sound of Japanese.

Even before I started learning it, there was something about the language that I found fascinating. It sounds completely different from English, yet somehow feels familiar the more time you spend with it.

Since 2023, I’ve dedicated a huge amount of my time to learning Japanese, and the deeper I’ve gone, the more I’ve fallen in love with it.

Learning Japanese has also changed the way I think.

There are ideas that feel easier to express in Japanese and ideas that feel easier to express in English. Sometimes Japanese feels wonderfully precise. Other times it feels frustratingly vague. It’s a language that often relies on context, implication and understanding rather than simply stating everything directly.

It can be difficult.

It can be confusing.

Sometimes I understand every word in a sentence and still have no idea what someone meant.

But that’s part of what makes it so interesting.

The Food

Let’s start with the important one.... Soup curry.

Honestly, say no more. I could happily live on soup curry.

Most people assume that because I love Japan, I must love sushi. Much to my girlfriends disappointment, the truth is that I’m not actually a huge sushi fan.

Fortunately, Japan has far more to offer than sushi.

Okonomiyaki. Katsu. Ramen. Yakiniku. Curry.

And the people who know me would probably disown me if I wrote this post without mentioning my love for Coco Ichibanya. Seriously, its great. Try it!

One of the things I love most about food in Japan is that there always seems to be something new to discover. Every trip introduces me to another local speciality, another restaurant, or another dish that makes me wonder how I lived without it.

It’s also one of the few countries where I’ve regularly found myself planning parts of a trip around what I want to eat.

So… Why Japan?

That’s the problem.

Even after writing all of this, I still don’t think I’ve properly answered the question.

The people.

The culture.

The language.

The food.

They’re all part of it.

But none of them really explain why Japan feels different.

Maybe some things don’t have a neat answer.

All I know is that whenever I leave Japan, I start thinking about when I can come back.

And whenever somebody asks me why I want to move there, the most honest answer I can give is still the same one:

I don’t know exactly why. I just know it feels like where I’m supposed to be.