tell us the bad stuff about japan if there's anything bad everything on this channel
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 to care to admit it may be
stressed it may be uncomfortable but in the end i realized that most of the problem just it was up
here in my own head for sure people stared at me but nothing bad ever really came from it nothing
bad actually ever happened but if you're someone with anxiety issues and you end up particularly
in the japanese countryside i do think it could be an issue and all i can say is the best way to get
around it is by rationalizing the situation and realizing that even you get surprised if you see
someone who's not japanese out there you know you will stand out but it's not necessarily a
bad thing however this is a topic we'll kind of cover again later on in the video because
in the long term it can become a bigger issue after many years of kind of feeling like that
now the tokyo olympics has had a bumpy ride this last year and just as things couldn't
get worse the head of japan's tokyo olympic committee yoshido morty was forced to resign
after making some rather bold remarks responding to the idea that more women should be featured in
board meetings he came out with the remark if we increase the number of female board members
we have to make sure their speaking time is restricted as women have difficulty finishing
which is annoying oh god now there was just one problem with this comment it's not 1936
anymore and the backlash was swift with unicor koike tokyo's first female mayor refusing to go
to meetings with him in protest 150 000 signatures asking for his removal and the world's media
rounding on him before he bowed out and everyone lived happily ever after until a month later
when it happened again this time the creative director of the tokyo olympic opening ceremony
hiroshi sasaki had jokingly suggested that one of japan's top comedians naomi watanabe should
be dressed up in the opening ceremony as a pig oh to quote hiroshi sazaki nami watanabe could appear
as an olympic olympic what the [ __ ] is that unsurprisingly he got the chop too and no we're
not talking pork chops unfortunately though these sort of stories are quite a regular occurrence in
the media japan is ranked 120th currently when it comes to gender equality and if you look at photos
of japanese politicians or ceos and leaders it's almost like a where's wally or a where's waldo
for american viewers to try and find someone that isn't a 200 year old man in the workplace here as
a woman you're much more likely to get paid less you're going to be looked over for promotions and
kind of feel a bit like a subordinate for example at work parties women are kind of expected to pour
drinks and almost take on a bit of a hostess role kind of enkai's work parties at the same time i do
know quite a few successful business women both foreign and japanese i've done a really great
job in japan and tokyo's current mayor koike is of course female right now it's looking more likely
that japan will one day have an empress while it's technically forbidden for women to be emperors
there is a debate raging with 80 of the japanese population open to the idea as having a female
empress so change is a foot but if you come to japan as a woman it could be a bit more difficult
and it will throw up a few more obstacles along the way certainly more than it would back home
i think there's always been this perception if you come to japan as a foreigner you instantly
get some kind of foreigner rock star status but the sad reality is you're dave smith in london
and you'll still be the same unremarkable dave smith when you're in tokyo first off most japanese
people aren't actually interested in dating a foreigner most people here already under enough
stress in their 20s or 30s when it comes to their work life and their families the idea of marrying
someone who'll whisk their son or daughter away to a foreign land doesn't always go down well
with japanese parents either they're expecting their children to look after them in later years
now i've only ever dated two japanese people and neither really worked out it got serious very
quickly and i remember scary words like marriage came up a lot sooner a lot faster than they would
in the uk just because there is that pressure here to try and get married before you turn 28 years
old romance as a whole is pretty different to the west where we have a strong emphasis
on public displays of affection on kissing on hugging on holding hands japan is very
much the opposite to that where all of those things are kind of seen as awkward the idea of
marriage is also very different the emphasis is on creating a strong stable family environment
with a good outward appearance to family and friends it's more about ticking off boxes than
is about having a connection with personalities and whatnot when i look at a lot of japanese
friends relationships and marriages it often comes across as more like a business partnership
than one based on love and affection which isn't necessarily a bad thing however on top
of that infidelity is a lot higher than you might think there are inconclusive studies that kind of
talk about this but one factor is cheating is viewed rather differently for example there's
a whole industry here that caters for late night activities we're talking hostess bars love hotels
so planned and many people wouldn't view going to those places as cheating here but they certainly
would back home and no a soap land isn't a place that sells luxury exquisite japanese soap
go look it up on google i don't want to get this video demonetised but i've spent
many a long night drinking with friends who were dating a japanese person here
who are baffled about the cultural differences in between and stressed from the pressures
of having to marry quickly and have kids a lot quicker than they'd want at the same time though
i do know plenty of couples who've made it work and it worked out fantastically but it's not as
easy to date here as you might think and it will take more patience more compromise
and more language learning certainly to make it succeed than it ever would back home
from my experience going to see a doctor in japan for health issues both physical or mental
uh can leave a lot to be desired doctors here tend to want to deal with you very quickly
they will ask you what's wrong they'll throw some pills at you and they'll send you on your way you
know these aren't pills by the way these are tic tacs dr chris is in town it's my prescription but
some clinics just seem to be downright dodgy i once saw a doctor when i had something wrong with
my stomach perhaps unsurprising given my fried chicken addiction it caught up with me but i was
told that i'd need an endoscopy where they put a tube down your throat and into your stomach i
thought it'd be like a thin little piece of string it turned out to be the width of a flashlight like
it was really big and it remains to this day the worst experience of my life so far second only
to watching the final season of game of thrones for the most invasive surgery of my life i was
taken into what can only be described as a broom cupboard uh put on my side and given some liquid
which was posted on my throat it didn't work and i felt the entire procedure with incredibly
painful clarity but the reason they put it down there was to take some photos and print them out
and after they took the photos they pulled out the cable and started printing them off where it
quickly transpired that there wasn't enough paper in the [ __ ] printer and half of the crucial
photos showing if i was gonna die or not were just lost forever there was an awkward pause where the
doctor looked at the printer looked at the photos and then sort of looked at me as if to say oh i
might have to do it again and i look back as if to say [ __ ] right off i'd rather die at this point
but the more of the story is choose your doctor very carefully and don't live off a diet of fried
chicken at the same time major japanese hospitals are very well run they're very clean and spotless
the staff are fantastic and the health service is good here but then of course there's mental health
and that unfortunately is a bit of a taboo subject an acquaintance of mine who once had severe
depression went to see a doctor here and was told in no uncertain terms you should be more happy
brilliant fantastic depression has been cured and i've since taken that advice and turned it into
a groundbreaking audio self-help guide now i get a lot of messages from folks who have anxiety or
depression and want to move to japan and i can't really give any expert advice but what i will say
is moving to japan could honestly go both ways if you have chronic mental health issues and you're
taking medication moving far away from friends and family to a country where you can't speak
the language or easily see a specialist is in all likelihood going to make the situation worse so
before taking that leap make sure you weigh up the pros and cons and speak to a professional doctor
about it because when you're here it is going to be difficult to get the support that you may need
perhaps unsurprisingly one of the questions i get asked the most is what kind of jobs are there for
foreigners in japan what kind of opportunities are there and the answer is honestly it depends
on if you're a skilled worker and how good your japanese is the general rule in japanese
companies is they will prefer to hire a native japanese person unless it's a skill or a sector
where they need some kind of outside talent for example over the years i've met plenty
of foreigners living and working here in sectors like it video game design engineering translation
and interpretation the vast majority of folks though do end up as english teachers because while
it's technically not skilled as a native speaker of english you've still got a major advantage
over japanese english teachers outside of those sectors or specialized skills it is more difficult
because you're not gonna win against a native japanese speaker with advanced knowledge of kanji
and the business etiquette and the way of doing things and it's really important to point out
that many of those skill jobs that i listed off a minute ago are all in tokyo like most of
my friends do live in tokyo and if you want to live somewhere that looks like this and pretend
you're in a hayao miyazaki movie well your dream is about to get ten times more difficult even as
an english teacher most programs are capped at three to five years and there's this kind of
expectation that you're going to leave or go home afterwards or get a job somewhere else when i look
at all the people i worked with in yamagata prefecture in my year when i was an english
teacher i'd say 90 of them do end up going back home and the other 10 they all ended up in tokyo
except maybe one or two people so yes the jobs are there but you've got to be skilled in something
or end up as an english teacher and gradually transition into another career and if neither
of those pathways are appealing or possible then it's definitely going to be much more difficult
to find a work opportunity in japan that fits around you i think unfortunately
when i take a step back and look at my three closest japanese friends they're all kind of
misfits in their own way there's natsuki the wannabe rock star whose obsession with
british punk rock put him at odds with japan's collectivist mindset he does things his own way
and he speaks his mind good to see you natsuki how are you rocking it there's ryotaro who's lived
in the uk the us and australia and picked up a kind of western way of thinking he's
brash opinionated and in your face let's go then there's my friend yuki a successful entrepreneur
who's never lived overseas but has an obsession with western culture star wars silicon valley and
he does it all while drinking a tiny beer the world's smallest beer no no no no i'm so big
they're all from different backgrounds and social classes but they're all kind of rebellious
open-minded individuals who are often opposed to the sort of typical way of japanese thinking
and when i look at all the japanese people i could have been good friends with acquaintances
i realized we never went past a certain point i was always treated like an outsider some kind of
exotic foreign character and constantly reminded of that in our conversations i was initially a
bit conflicted to put this point on the list but i asked around i asked a few other foreign
friends living here and they felt the same way that it can be difficult to make friends in japan
most of my foreign friends honestly they stick to other foreigners they have a kind of a foreign
bubble network and they never go beyond that i know plenty of people living here that don't
have a single close japanese friend which is very bizarre but it's the truth and i do think you'll
find it harder to make friends in japan than he would back home however when you do make friends
here those relationships will be rock solid and there'll be kind of friendships that will last
a lifetime not so sure about ryotaro though don't know why he's on the list in hindsight
so a few years ago i made a video called 12 things not to do in japan it's the most successful video
on the abroad japan channel and in many ways i hate it i hate that video but it's popular because
japanese etiquette and all the rules which are mostly unwritten are intimidating and difficult
to wrap your head around but whenever i go back and look at that video one of the things that
strikes me in the comments section is the sheer number of people who sort of say oh [ __ ] the
rules i'm gonna do whatever i want screw this but then again what do you expect from brett maverick
a walking [ __ ] court case waiting to happen and if you are that sort of person which is fine uh i
don't think you're probably gonna want to live here now while i might be a sarcastic cynical
over-opinionated monster when i'm sitting here in front of the camera off the camera i do pretty
much stick to the rules and i follow the etiquette because as a foreigner living in japan you already
kind of stand out you already become scapegoated for a lot of the bad things that happen here and
you don't want that to happen there's 125 million people in japan 38 million of which live in the
tokyo area alone and yet far from chaotic there is an impressive sense of order where everything
has its place you know if you look at a video of a station platform with thousands
of people there's perfectly formed queues the trains themselves are quieter than libraries
the whole of society is designed so you're not inconveniencing other people which is a fantastic
strategy to have given the ludicrous population density but it's a very different atmosphere to
the kind of screw it i do what i want feeling back home i've had plenty of friends come here
he'd enjoyed japan loved it for two weeks but felt a bit overwhelmed by all the rules and having to
be quiet on trains and not have to do things and you have to constantly be asking yourself am i in
someone's way am i being too noisy am i lining up in the right place am i getting chicken all
over the train suit you know there's a constant internal monologue that you can't switch off and
it can make you paranoid about whether or not you're breaking rules so if you're a pretty
chilled laid-back person i do think it could lead to some unnecessary stress and anxiety
and for me personally it's part of a big reason why i don't live in tokyo because i get a bit
overwhelmed after two weeks unfortunately i'm certainly no brett maverick and i never will be
always good to end on a controversial fun point imagine being in a country for a decade or longer
building your entire life there and still being treated every day as though it's day one as though
you've just arrived i've been here nine years now and on a daily basis i still get commended for my
ability to use chopsticks and i'm cool with that that's fine but there's this uncomfortable kind
of feeling you have here that people are always wondering oh why are you here what are you doing
in japan when are you leaving like what's going on of course it's good to be sympathetic and realize
that japan is a homogenous society 98 ethnically japanese it's not multicultural and it won't be
changing anytime soon but perhaps the darker aspect to that is when foreign residents are
scapegoated for bad things certainly during covid it's been a more difficult year than i can ever
remember like there was a ramen shop early on last year that just banned foreigners outright from
coming in and just last week there was a public announcement warning farmers in ibaraki prefecture
just north of tokyo to avoid having dinner with foreigners all together because they might have
covered well my personal favorite example was last year when a japanese tv show claimed that
english speakers spread coven more because we enunciate the p sound this is a pen a pen
this is a pen seriously i've never watched something that's made me simultaneously
very angry i laugh out loud at the same time god help us all but to end things on a positive note
i recently asked a good friend a foreigner who's lived here about two decades now built
his entire life here he's got a japanese wife he's got kids has this ever been a problem for
him has he ever felt like he doesn't truly fit in and he told me that he never expected to be
japanese right he always expected to just be a foreigner living in japan and there's nothing
wrong with that and it's never stopped him living a rich and fulfilling life here and it's never
really got in my way either in the last nine years and i think that's the really important thing
it all comes down to you personally right for a lot of people living here i think it could be
stressful it could be anxiety inducing it could be a bit of a nightmare but for me personally
it's been an incredibly rewarding experience and one that i've never ever regretted which is pretty
reassuring i'll be keeping an eye on the comments in this video to see if you guys have a specific
point that i've raised in this video that you'd like me to build on or talk about in more detail
or dedicate a video to so do right away do kind of leave your thoughts i imagine there'll also be
people who are angry at this video and might react to it and say some bad things from my
experience if you're ever critical of japan you always get comments like if you don't like it
what do you do then if you don't like it just leave but i think this video is worth it and i
i stand by the points that i've made as for me i'm off to buy some more hats for my hat collection
what else would you expect from a boring in japan boring in japan ridiculous bastard