As usual I am late to my own Japanaversary and my 8th year in Japan has already begun, but that doesn't mean we can't celebrate it right!?
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Duncan in background "done" *laughs*
♫ Mimei Land ♫
That's what I wanted this video to be about, but the more I thought about it,
the harder it seemed to put my experiences into little boxes and tie them up neatly with a ribbon.
I've shared so many experiences here in japan with you guys, whether through video or pictures on twitter or instagram.
and back when I used facebook. And the thing is I don't like boxes, I don't like labels and experiences can easily become generalizations.
Or even play up to stereotypes. So I turned to Google to check in on what exactly Japan is..
What "is" Japan?
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Okay, so that didn't really help. So I tried Japanese as well, and what struck me was that many of the searches led to pages about how Japan is perceived overseas.
and through the eyes of non-Japanese.
Eureka here it is! Everybody is interested in everybody else and generalizations are the framework that helps
us to understand things that would otherwise be strange, or weird and foreign to us.
Maybe it's not such a bad thing to put things in boxes once in a while, even if I am really bad at it.
I turned to twitter and I asked you guys to ask me questions, specifically about my life in Japan,
and you guys turned out!
So I am going to do my best to answer these questions and there might be a few Q&A's to come out after this video because it's alot to cover.
So the first 6 months here were super duper hard and apparently that was due to working a really horrible job and the company just was 'ugh', so bad, so bad...
Food was really hard to figure out at first. I had to learn so many Kanji. I found a lot of culture shock just walking through the market and not knowing what the best
brand for this or that was and not being familiar with anything. Having to read this things really carefully. I didn't have like Google translate app on an iphone.
I didn't even have an iPhone, so I couldn't just take a picture and like translate stuff. I had to learn a lot of Kanji and I would just avoid stuff if I didn't understand it.
It was a huge, steep learning curve and it was a very tough time for me.
You know my Japanese wasn't great and I was super shy, just horribly shy so it was really hard for me to even use the Japanese that I had
So the situation I was in was very bad and just a bunch of things added together to make for a very toxic situation where I was quite depressed and I would
ring my mom every night, and I would basically just cry every single day and yeah but I got through that. :)
It wasn't like I was hating Japan, it was just a really rough situation for me. Thanks to that terrible situation I learned so much! I overcame so much, and I moved on and up.
Like that really helped me to never get in a bad bad job situation again.
and to not be afraid to quit if it gets really bad. I have always been a stickler for rules and contracts and stuff but like, at the end of the day
if you're in a really crappy work situation or housing situation and you can see a way out, take it. You won't regret it.
I got out of that situation and honestly it's the best thing I could have done for myself. I moved onward and upwards! Yayy!!
So yeah the first since months was super hard though.
I was asked what are the differences between japan and New Zealand, but that's gonna be a separate video because it got long.
What do I miss about New Zealand? Mostly I miss the beaches, I miss my family, and I miss my friends.
and I feel like I have lost a lot of my friends because I have lost touch with them.
People can just watch my videos and know what's going on with me but I can't do that to any of my friends, so I really dont know what's going on with most of them.
It's you know, it's really sad, because I still love them but I feel like I've lost them.
I've been here a long time.
So first of all I stick out, I have blue hair, I have tattoos, I have... i'm white, so I stick out. So people do look at me, and they do look at me curiously and sometimes the stare.
When it comes to feeling like an outsider, being able to understand Japanese culture and language helps a lot. Being able to speak Japanese will break down a lot of those walls.
And I find that Generally people are very kind and very, very curious and sometimes people will be frustrated by the kinds of questions people ask.
and they will ask the same questions over and over and make certain assumptions, but I actually just think of that as like small talk.
And especially after spending Seven Years here, it's you know, it's just small talk, getting to know you and they're just showing an interest most of the time.
What has helped me a lot is making videos in Japanese on youtube. People who watch my videos will often come up to me and just talk to me in Japanese very naturally.
Maybe I am not the best representation on what a foreigner in japan is, but I feel like we need to break down some of those stereotypes.
Especially the TV really loves to portray a certain image of what a foreigner in japan is and what they like and kind of sometimes plays to stereotypes.
Whereas I think on youtube we have this opportunity, to kind of break that down a little bit. Making videos in japanese has like a really great side to it and a really dark side to it.
Some of the stuff that people have said to me has been absolutely horrible and really out there and not nice and has made me feel like I really hope that the people when I walk down the street aren't thinking this about me.
At the end of the day mean people exist everyhwere, like I don't think I have experienced any level of negativity higher than what I would have experienced in New Zealand except online.
And that's just a whole nother thing.
Okay, if I had lipstick on my teeth for any of those questions, I am really sorry.
I think yes if you live in Tokyo I still think it's quite limited and that it helps alot if you can read Japanese
One question I really like was "If you could put all those 7 Years into one Kanji what would it be?"
and the Kanji I would choose is Ai (愛) or Love.
When it comes to taking on a new adventure, you really have to go into it with Love, and you will find Love.
"Funniest Experience with a foreigner" thats got a lot of favorites.
Okay, I've got two. So there used to be this indian restaurant me and Duncan would go to a lot cause it was like ♪Amazing♪ we love Indian food,
and I would take a lot of friends, and family members there. One time I took my friend from New Zealand there, the waiter came up to me
and pointed at my friend and was like "Mama?" Oh my god it was so embarrasing we are like the same age, I felt so bad but it was hilarious!
There was this guy I knew when I first came to Japan and he had come to Japan because he really wanted to see in real life, scenes from the movie, Life of a Geisha.
and that was the reason, that was it.
I like the assumption that like I don't need a job because I do YouTube, but I have never been asked to show anyone my JLPT score.
I don't think anyone in like the fashion and makeup industries really think to ask "Hey you have JLPT level 1?" Where as if you're doing something very like
professional where language is very very important. Where a slip up can cause big trouble for instance, Law. I am pretty sure someone would ask, "hey
show me your JLPT score!" but yeah.
When we got Latte and when we got Cinnamon those were super happy moments.
The Birthday party that my friends threw for me this year was very special to me!
Meeting Duncan obviously, because, I mean, you guys know what he means to me!
Doing free hugs, I think the feeling I get after I do free hugs is the most special feeling in the world and I really need to do it again soon.
Being able to show my Friends around Tokyo, that has been a really happy thing!
You know that happy feeling you get when you discover a nice cafe?
I get this feeling, it might not be happiness, but such love when I look down on Tokyo from a high place!
The feeling I get after I release a video. That's usually a happy feeling. When someone on the internet says "I love you Mimei!" it's pretty happy!
The world is not an easy place. It's tough, it's tough to deal with it. But there is so many happy moments, and I am so grateful for all of them, and remembering them it's giving me warm fuzzies.
Oh and um, the moment I decided to move to Tokyo, and I made the leap and moved to Tokyo.
A lot of you guys might not even know this, but I have actually lived in several different places in japan and it took me a while to work myself up to living in Tokyo.
Like I kind of worked my way up to Tokyo. And I am so glad I did, because this city is just like, endless, gorgeous, crazy, beautiful, wonderful, lovely....
Short answer: Yes I did have a difficult time making friends when I moved to Japan, and doing youtube has brought me together with a lot of people.
Oh, I still get anxious forget basic stuff. Even in English, if you guys could see this video without jump cuts it would sound like a mess. A very.. big.. mess.. see I just did it there.
So basically you just need to keep doing it, that anxiety isn't necessarily going to go away, I know it's not fun but it might not go away
you just have to keep doing the thing. So no matter how scared you are keep doing the thing and laugh at your own mistakes.
and don't take it too personally if people laugh at your mistakes just let go of that, let go of that. Be a little bit Shameless and just laugh at yourself,
because mistakes are funny.
So I wanted to talk about this, because when I was thinking about this video one of the major events that has happened in my life in japan,
was the 3/11 earthquake here, which was huge. It was when I just moved from Gifu to Tokyo and I was in my apartment alone, and it was very scary!
Let's face it, if a big quake hits the Kanto area, I could die. I mean it's a possibility and everytime there is even a small quake here I get a bit scared.
Um my little Fur Babies could be in danger and I worry about Duncan's safety and I worry about being separated in a disaster.
And I worry about what would happen to the cats. I also got asked do I feel like Japan is a foreign country?
I mean Japan is different from New Zealand but it is my home right now and everything I have here I have built up over the last 7 years and that's a big
deal, like if I went back to New Zealand I would be starting from zilch. I don't imagine myself like running back to New Zealand the moment there is a quake
I don't like to speculate about the future because anything could happen, I don't know what that situation might be.
You know, what if I was badly injured in a quake. Maybe I would decide to go back to a place where I have family, because I don't have any family aside from
Duncan in Japan, like his family wont have anything to do with us, so you know. There's so many factors and a lot of them are very specific to
my situation I think, and what would happen in that situation. Which we can't really speculate about, let's just hope that we live long happy safe lives!
That was friggin depressing, okay i'm not answering anymore earthquake questions because they don't put me in a very good state of mind.
What is your favorite place in Tokyo, or what is your favorite place in Japan? I have answered the Japan question before and Tokyo
I show you guys everything in my videos, literally, if you want to know all my favorite places in Japan they are all here
I show them to you guys and also on my Mimei channel my day in the life videos, I make sure that I pack as much good stuff into them as possible.
So I put all these questions together. So one of the things that I did see and think was a bit weird when I saw it was this tourist walking down the
street dressed as like a bunny Lolita and I was like 'ooh weird' but then I was like hey you go girl! Like why not?
I studied Japanese culture, Literature, and History Academically before I came to Japan, and I also read a lot of Blogs about japan and all that kind
of good stuff. I consumed a lot of Media and books and Manga and Dramas and you know so much stuff, there's so much stuff.
So I don't think of Japan as inherently weird and I don't think i've ever really looked at japan and thought, "hey weird, it's so it's so weird"
I look at myself and think weird sometimes, but I don't really look at Japan and think "look at this this community its so weird."
I don't think I saw it as weird, but I probably did exoticfy it, I probably did see it as 'Exotic' when I first started to become interested in Japanese things.
And I do think I saw it as different. Like Culturally different, and very interesting because it was different from my culture.
I will adress this with another video, but check with your nearest Japanese Embassy and Google a lot.
I'm not really a person who likes the idea of regrets. I wish I had a Working Holiday Visa in Japan. That's definitely something that I regret
even though I live my life with no regrets. I do wish I had done it instead of just jumping into working here. But I don't imagine my life not coming to Japan.
I always thought that maybe I would go and live in Korea for a year because I was super into Korean culture and I studied Korean at University for a while.
At the end of the day I came to Japan and ended up 7 years later I am still here, and I don't have any real regrets about that you know
i've made mistakes, i've made so many mistakes, but it's all led to me becoming the person that I am now and I am pretty proud of myself for overcoming so much and doing a lot of it alone.
I mean now I have Duncan, we have our cats, we have our own little family, but before that I was pretty alone and I had friends but they would come and go.
And i'm really proud of myself for doing this by myself and I am really grateful to my mum for always answering my phone calls and dealing with my histrionics.
Thumbs up for Mums!
If I hadn't come to Japan and managed to overcome some of my crippling shyness and become more confident within myself and started to put myself out there on the internet
even with my bad Japanese and just muscle through some of the bad things that happened and dealt with a lot of bullying in the workplace and learnt how to deal with that stuff better.
and learnt how to be a better person and really, I think I have really grown as a person
In part it's really thanks to YouTube and having this amazing experience, and being able to interact with you guys! Having this really great Audience, I am so grateful for that and
it's one of the best things that I feel like Japan, this experience of being in Japan has given me. YouTube, I know it's weird.
If you enjoyed this video please Thumb it up, I am not just saying this, it makes me Happy, and it helps me out!
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I am drenched in sweat and I am going to go now!
If anyone has been following me for 6 years, you might remember this.... you don't remember it do you? (duncan laughs in background) Duncans behind the camera and even he doesn't remember.
So if you remember a certain video where this might've happened, you're my OG!