[Music]
deciding to move to Japan to work as an
English teacher five years ago was
easily the biggest decision I've made in
my entire life I never lived abroad I'd
never learned a foreign language and I'd
never taught English either and quite
honestly the thought of standing in
front of 40 school kids for 20 hours a
week
scared the absolute gala happening
naturally a lot of people ask me why I
came here there was no one reason but
ultimately it revolved around the
combination of ambition romanticism and
fear or their knowing the order
[Music]
the first two decades of your life
you're kind of on an academic conveyor
belt going through school doing tests
and exams every year without really
thinking that far ahead and then for
many people when they reach the age of
18 and they come off the academic
conveyor belt and they graduate from
school all of a sudden they have no plan
and no sense of direction and that was
me when I graduated from school back in
2008 I knew I wanted to go to university
but I didn't really know what course I
wanted to take so I took film studies
because it was the only thing I was good
at the only courses I've done well in
were media and film I got an A in an A
and in business I got a B and in English
and I got a C so it wasn't that great
and I thought I'd go off to university
and become the next Martin Scorsese and
it was gonna be magical
but then suddenly around September which
is when you start University in the UK I
realized becoming Martin Scorsese is not
that easy
and all of a sudden I realized I was
probably making a big mistake and after
speaking to some film studies graduates
and my local supermarket I realized that
studying film at University probably
wasn't the best thing to do so I
postponed my degree and took a gap year
to get a sense of direction and get some
clarity on who I was and what I was
doing so in September 2008 with all my
closest friends going off to university
I went off in the other direction and
started planning my gap year now some
people spend their gap here traveling
the world swimming with dolphins and
building villages in Africa and to me
that's what I wanted to do I wanted a
year of unbridled adventure and
discovery it was gonna was gonna be
amazing and then I got a full-time
office job staring at Excel spreadsheets
for 40 hours a week and it was the worst
year of my life ever
[Music]
having finished school and delayed my
degree for a year I now found myself in
an office job in an energy company just
moving numbers around a spreadsheet five
days a week my adventurous plans to
travel around the world were destroyed
by my lack of money and even though I
had two jobs the relatively small amount
of money I made just about covered my
monthly expenses but certainly wasn't
enough for any real overseas travel and
after a few months I just became
depressed as I realized my gap here
wasn't going anywhere
it was just nothing rubbish for someone
like me he likes to be creative he likes
to make things being trapped in an
office job with absolutely no creativity
was just a horrific fate to be consigned
to but it was while I was working this
mind-numbing office job that my
imagination started to take over sitting
at that desk for hours on end doing
nothing of any real value I became
obsessed with the idea of
entrepreneurship and I got addicted to
reading autobiographies and biographies
and self-made millionaires people who
had come from nothing and go on to do
great things and whilst I was sitting at
this desk doing nothing and I became
consumed by this idea of starting my own
business one day in the future and it
became a bit of a running joke with my
colleagues as I started sitting there on
my lunch break reading books as opposed
to sitting with the usual crowd I didn't
mind at first I found it quite funny but
when I started talking about my dreams
and my ambitions about starting a
business I kind of was met with lots of
pessimism and laughter and everyone was
kind of very dismissive in the UK you'll
find people who are ambitious to kind of
shot down and ridicule more often than
not you tell someone about your plans
your plans to do something great you'll
usually just be dismissed and yeah
you'll just kind of put you down it's
quite the opposite to America in that
regard where everyone believes they can
do something great and there's a real
sense of entrepreneurship embedded in
the culture but after six months of
reading all these stories of
entrepreneurs and becoming completely
consumed by the idea of starting a
business I came to the worrying
realization that I lacked the self
confidence in the sort of self belief to
ever become an entrepreneur
I knew I would never succeed so I came
to the conclusion the only way I was
going to ever level up was to do
something really bold and out of
character for me at the time and I
decided I would give myself the ultimate
challenge of living and working abroad
and learning a new language in a
completely different country and throw
myself into the thick of it after
university quite honestly this idea of
living and working abroad really scared
me really was outside my comfort zone
and the area of the world I knew I
wanted to try living in with Asia
because I wanted to see the world from a
completely different perspective I
figured if I could live in the country
in Asia and try and acquire a new
language and adapt to a different
culture than I could probably feel like
I could do anything and I knew as it was
outside my comfort zone there was a
chance that it might work after doing
some research online I discovered the
easiest job to get overseas was an
English teaching job so in early 2009 I
switched my degree from film to business
and English linguistics the final piece
of the puzzle fell into place in April
2009 when I went to visit my
then-girlfriend he was on a ski season
in the French Alps having the time of
her life which I definitely wasn't
envious about it was on the trip to
France that fate kind of jumped in and
steered the direction my life would take
on the flyover I found myself sitting
next to a friendly middle-aged couple
and we chatted for the duration of the
two-hour flight we go on to the
inevitable subject of what I wanted to
do after university and I told them that
I wanted to go and travel the world and
become an English teacher and live and
work overseas as luck or fate or destiny
or coincidence would have it their
daughter was working as an English
teacher in Japan on the Japan exchange
teaching program the jet program and
they told me their daughter's amazing
experiences in Japan and apparently she
was having the time of her life and for
the route the duration of the flight
they sold this idea to me this idea of
living and working in Japan
after I got off the plane there was a
four-hour coach journey from the airport
to the ski resort and for the entire
four hour journey I just kept thinking
of this crazy and exciting idea of
living and working in Japan whilst
listening to Phil Collins because for
some reason it was the only artist I had
on my phone at the time but I didn't
know a great deal about Japanese culture
I've never really been into anime or
manga I watched quite a few Japanese
films and lots of film set in Japan and
I had lots of images and misconceptions
about the country but it was I was
excited by what I didn't know about the
country and what I could learn rather
than what I already knew I just pictured
myself walking through these beautiful
rice fields and temples singing karaoke
and drinking beer with strangers and
salary men and having romantic
encounters like lost in translation I'd
always wanted to visit the country but
two weeks just didn't seem like enough
and it was so far away that I never
thought I'd ever be able to go and I
realized by living and working there I'd
really be able to absorb the culture and
truly appreciate the country and the
language and the people and so by the
time the coach pulled up at the ski
resort I remember getting off with this
idea that I was going to live and work
in Japan in fact I remember saying to my
girlfriend when I got off the bus I've
decided to move to Japan and I don't
think she took me too seriously and to
be honest not even I to myself that
seriously but my mind was made up there
and then and it was from then on that I
started to read and learn about the
culture for the next few years through
my awful boring job through a degree
that I didn't really enjoy in the
university studies that bored me Japan
was my guiding star this idea of living
and working in Japan gave me a sense of
direction and purpose and it made me
realize the importance of having a dream
and a sense of direction and then a
because after that I became really
motivated and from the first time ever I
actually put some serious effort into my
academic studies in three-and-a-half
years later after that decision on that
fast lo and behold I found myself
sitting in a chair in my tiny apartment
whinging about a noisy Hall having stood
in front of hundreds of people and
spoken in Japanese managed classrooms
with forty teenagers in I've just
learned how to read and communicate in a
completely alien language all my
confidence issues and lack of self
belief have completely disappeared faded
away and I feel I can truly do anything
I want now if there's one thing I want
you to take away from this video though
it is have a dream be bold make it scary
make it challenging and then go off and
do it push yourself out of your comfort
zone and you will feel amazing when you
go off and triumph
[Music]
you