- Hey guys, how's it going?
My name is Micaela.
- I'm Sharla.
I first came here as a very short term
exchange student type deal,
and I really loved it so I moved back here
and started teaching English for a few years
and then I moved back to Canada for a while
and then I transferred to a university here
and did that for another three years
and recently I've just been YouTube-ing and translating.
- So how long have you been in Japan?
- I think 11 years
- Yeah
- About.
I stopped counting.
But it's around 11.
- I came in 2005 so this is my 12th year in Japan
and I think it's safe to say
we've had quite a bit of experience.
Throughout those 10 plus years
we've experienced a lot of good things,
a lot of bad things,
but we always choose to stay,
and to keep pushing forward and persevering.
I know that a lot of you guys, before you come to Japan,
you are watching these videos
cause you're trying to get an idea
of what life is gonna be like
And I think that possibly
you're looking for a way to reassure yourself
that everything's gonna be okay.
And you probably have a lot of
you know, concerns and things you're worried about
and we're here to tell you that it's gonna be,
Everything's gonna be fine.
- We somehow managed to do it
- We have survived this long,
you can do it too.
There's nothing that makes us
more special than you guys
and if we can do it, you got this.
I wanna talk about the things
that were really hard for us
when we first came to Japan,
and how we're doing now.
And whether or not those difficulties
stood the test of time and are still difficult today,
or whether or not we overcame them.
And yeah, just have a little discussion about that.
(upbeat techno music)
- So when you first came to Japan, could you speak Japanese?
- The very first time, no.
I had been doing...
I think I had one year of Japanese studies
so I had like, hiragana and katakana, basic kanji down,
and I could say like "I wanna drink apple juice."
- When you came the first time you only studied for a year.
- Yeah
- So did you feel like a year was not enough?
- No.
Definitely not enough.
There's so much to learn in Japanese,
I feel like the first year of study,
if you're just in like, I studied in high school,
so I was just doing like a class in high school,
and we would focus on the alphabet
and very basic sentence structure.
So within the first year you don't really learn that much.
And while it does help you with like,
daily conversation with a friend,
it really doesn't help you do all the hard things
that are involved in living in another country.
So yeah, if you can prepare more before coming here,
I really do recommend it.
- Hmm. At the same time though,
I also have a similar experience
where I came as a high school student,
I was 17 years old when I came,
and I did Japanese high school.
I will say for all the stuff that I didn't know,
I picked it up really fast when I got here.
- I feel like it's a really easy language to pick up.
As confusing as it is, the pronunciation isn't hard,
so I feel like it's very easy
to hear what people are saying and copy it.
- Yeah and to look it up.
Even with kanji, I could not read kanji at all,
I think I knew like the kanji for 'watashi.'
- Right
- And maybe like 'getsuyobi.'
Yeah, exactly right, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
- That's what we learned.
- That is not helpful in real life.
I found that like, just through repeated exposure with kanji
just seeing labels on bottles or signs
- Forms
- You start to really pick up what those kanji mean,
even if you can't read them
or you don't know the stroke order particularly,
or like, the way to pronounce the words,
you start...
- Seeing it
- Yeah
- And knowing what it means
- Yeah, you pick it up really fast.
I feel like yeah, 10 years later,
I don't have a lot of trouble speaking Japanese.
I wouldn't say my Japanese is perfect.
- And it's definitely not you know like,
- Mhm, same
flaw-free,
and maybe I have a bit of an accent still,
but I don't feel like I have trouble communicating.
- Yeah, like we say weird things sometimes.
- I say weird stuff in English and in Japanese.
(Sharla laughs)
- You don't have to be perfect.
You gotta like,
you can't be shy about it.
- What's important is whether or not you have
the desire to understand.
- Yeah
- And like if you're trying to understand
what the person is saying
you're gonna figure it out.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I feel like we have to address kind of like
the elephant in the room kind of thing
that I think a lot of foreigners are curious about.
Do you ever feel like you are an outsider?
Did you feel like an outsider when you first came?
And did you ever have trouble
feeling like you were accepted?
- Hmmm, more so in the beginning.
I think I really noticed it more.
Like people looking at me,
and that could have been because I was in the countryside
and there weren't very many foreigners there.
- Yeah.
- But now that I'm mainly based in Tokyo,
like I'm outside of Tokyo for a living,
but I do come here often for work,
and there's so many foreigners here
you don't get the stares as much,
and you still do get it sometimes but
you get used to it.
Well, I got used to it.
I know there are some people that it bothers them
and they just can't handle it, they have to leave,
they never feel like they really fit in here.
You're always gonna be the outsider.
It's a mainly Japanese population.
You're never gonna just be seen
as a regular citizen here.
It just won't happen.
- It's very unrealistic to expect
that you can come here
and live the same life as everyone else,
even
just because
you've already experienced life somewhere else,
and that is already something that a lot of people here
do not have under their belt.
- Right.
- So you are special.
I'm not necessarily saying you're better than anyone else,
but your life is like, uniquely yours.
Try not to think of it as a defect.
- Right.
- Cause you're not defective.
There's nothing wrong with you.
I think that that's the thing that,
it's the type of thinking that
a lot of people get caught up in.
It's thinking that there's something wrong with them
because they're not the exact same as everyone else,
but I don't, I think you just need to really realize
that that's not true.
And there's nothing wrong with you.
You are different but that doesn't mean
that you're defective,
and it doesn't mean that like...
It shouldn't be a burden.
It should just be something that makes you unique.
And that sounds like such a Disney thing to say.
- It's true though, I know what you mean.
When you were in your original homestate,
what city where you in then?
Were you in Sakai to start with?
- No it was Miyazaki.
- Oh Miyazaki.
Oh okay, so you started off in a small town.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I started off in Miyazaki.
- So did I.
So I never had like, the getting handed an English menu,
getting talked to in English.
I think we both had a really like, good beginning
in that way.
- Mhm, yeah.
- Yeah, I think that really helped with our Japanese too,
cause we were just forced to use it.
- Yeah.
- And yeah I only really experienced all that
after coming to Tokyo,
after my Japanese got really good,
then I was being treated as a tourist.
But, I don't know, they just judge you
based on your appearance.
And you can't blame them for it,
because most of the foreigners in Tokyo are tourists.
- Yeah.
- And I'm sure that's what they're trained to do
in their job when they see a foreigner,
they give them an English menu.
- Yeah.
- You can't really take it negatively.
- Yeah.
You know, everybody's experience is different.
You are right to feel frustrated sometimes.
I'm not saying like, you're wrong
if you feel discouraged,
or you're wrong if you feel like,
a little disappointed from time to time.
But I think it's just like,
dealing with that is one of the things that I feel like
for the 10 years, over 10 years that I've been here,
it's something that's like a consistent theme.
- Something that you develop.
- Yeah.
- And you're just kind of like
"Okay, how am I going to respond to this this time?"
And each time, just try to take it a different way,
and respond a different way,
and see how you leave that conversation feeling.
- Mhm.
- Like if you feel like
"Okay, I think I handled that well,
"and everyone's happy."
Then maybe try to do more of that.
- Yeah.
- Instead of just getting upset.
Finally, you often talk about
planning to go back to Canada eventually.
- Yeah, yeah.
- So what makes you think that
you do not want to stay here forever?
- Having kids.
I don't wanna have a kid in Japan.
So really that's the only reason.
I think otherwise I wouldn't be planning
to go back to Canada,
at least at this point in my life.
But because I'm a foreigner,
and my partner is a foreigner,
I feel like having a completely foreign child in Japan
would make things difficult.
Because they would be born in Japan,
to them they would be Japanese,
this is all that they know,
they've lived here, they've grown up here,
but they would be treated as an outsider,
so I feel like in that case,
it's not fair to the child.
So not just that,
but the education system is way too intense here,
and I feel like it's not good.
- Yeah.
- I wouldn't wanna put my child through that.
I had a relatively enjoyable school life back in Canada,
I loved the free time to hang out with my friends,
and do my hobbies,
but here in Japan they're forced to study.
Because I have that choice, and I could move back to Canada,
I would rather give my child that opportunity.
- Yeah.
- To have the life that I did.
- It's a thing that we grew up with
that we never realized like, how good it was.
- Yeah, because we didn't have anything
to compare it to.
- Yeah, and I agree with you there.
Even if you wanted to put your kid in, say,
an international school in Japan,
it would be so much money.
- It would be a lot.
- For like that bilingual education.
- There is that option if you have the money.
- Yeah.
It's just a lot of work.
But you were blessed, you were fortunate enough
to come from a country that wasn't Japan,
so like, you have an option.
- Yeah.
- So yeah I feel like that makes sense.
- Once they grow up I would love to come back to Japan,
and maybe even live for a while,
just to give them that experience.
- Yeah, yeah.
Send them on their own exchange
- Yeah.
- And let them have that kind of experience
- Yeah.
But as for their childhood,
I feel like that would be better back in Canada.
- Okay to summarize,
would you say that your life is easier now,
10 years into Japan?
- Oh yeah.
I feel way more independent,
because I have those language skills
and the experience here,
nothing really comes as a big surprise to me.
Where at the time, if I got like
something I had to deal with,
I would have to find a Japanese friend to help me out.
- Yeah.
- Now I feel like I can handle
the majority of it myself,
without too much trouble.
- You're a lot more independent.
- Yeah.
- So I don't really stress about
things like that anymore.
If I get some random Japanese letter in the mail,
from like the city hall,
I'm not like freaking out like
"What is this?
"They're coming for me."
You know, so it has definitely gotten easier.
- Mhm.
- Yeah, I feel comfortable here.
- Yeah I feel like once you clear up
like the cloud of confusion in your head,
then things become a lot more straightforward and clear,
and you have more confidence in your day to day life.
I think like, even people who stay for one or two years,
they have a lot of difficulties,
and they wonder if it's ever gonna get better,
and usually by around the second, third, fourth year,
they make the decision whether they're going to stay,
or they're going to go home.
If you come to Japan and you're having a lot of troubles,
like believe me, we have had our fair share of troubles
over the past 10 years,
and not every year has been a good year.
One of the things that actually bugs me,
a lot about comments I get,
it's like if I talk about my experiences...
- Oh, right.
- They'll be like " Well I spent a year in Japan,
"and I never dealt with that."
- Right.
- But it's like I've gone through several years in Japan.
- Every year is different.
- And there have been years that are shitty,
and there's years that are great.
- Yeah.
- And I feel like we can't
judge other people's experiences based on
the limited experiences that we've had.
- Right.
- Because every, you know, anything could happen.
- It depends on so many different things.
- Oh my god.
- What kind of work you're doing...
- It's just like it's so stupid.
- What kind of people you know...
Everything's so different.
- Yeah.
If you've had a great one year in Japan,
that's great but I don't think that's like grounds
to throw away someone else's experience
because you didn't experience it, you know?
And you'll see that a lot
on like jvlogger videos, and like in the comments,
or like in commentary about the kind of experiences
that we share.
What we share is not necessarily 100%
how your life is gonna turn out.
- Of course not.
- But we are here to tell you that
through those 10 years,
10 plus years,
we've had ups, we've had downs,
we've had difficulties,
we've felt maybe like giving up a few times,
but we're still here.
- Yeah.
- You know, it's some things
that you might be having difficulty with at the time,
they do get easier.
- Mhm.
- And it would be a shame to give up on something
that you've worked really hard for
just because of a shitty year,
or a shitty experience.
Because if you work through it, it can get better.
Thank you guys so much for listening,
I know that this video was kinda long,
but hopefully it has some interesting
personal anecdotes and insights
and helps you feel a little bit better
about what you're dealing with
or what you're potentially going to deal with,
if you're feeling nervous about coming to Japan.
I don't think you need to feel nervous
cause life is hard, no matter where you are in the world.
- That's true.
We'd be having similar issues if we were in Canada.
- I don't even wanna think about the problems I'd be having
at my age, in Canada.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Ugh, yeah, life is going to be hard
wherever you go,
so if you're gonna struggle,
choose where you wanna struggle,
and I'm glad that we chose to struggle in Japan.
- Mhm.
- That's a weird thing to say.
If you haven't heard of Sharla,
which is probably impossible.
- No.
- Sharla exists.
- All over the YouTubes.
- Oh my god, she's all over Japan internet so...
(Sharla laughs)
If you like Japan, you know who Sharla is.
Yeah, so check out Sharla's channel,
check out the videos on her channels.
I'm gonna put all the links everywhere
so if you wanna find her,
you can probably just put 'Sharla' into the search bar
and find her.
But I'll put the links down below anyway.
- Thank you.
- Anyway have a great day.
Thank you for listening,
and we will talk to you again soon.
- Bye.
(mellow music)