Queuing

This week Dunkin’ Donuts opened in Frankfurt. My wonderful colleague queued up before work and brought us a big box of brightly coloured doughnuts. This whole concept brought me a bit of Japan-nostalgia since the city I lived in, Ise, had special mochi sweets on sale on the first day of every month. People would go down to the old district at 4am and queue up for some of these rare sweets.

My friends always went and I scoffed at them, but towards the end of my time in Japan I realised I’d regret it if I didn’t start going to buy these mochi. I went about 3 or 4 times in the end and it was really amazing because I could zip through a completely empty city on my moped at 4am, and then when we got to the line we always met really great people which made the (often) 2 hour wait completely worth it. Then after buying the mochi we’d queue again (above) for the special breakfast that was available at the restaurant next door. That breakfast was one of the best I’ve ever had. Hmm… I wonder if I have a photo of that too…

Look what I found!

But thinking about queuing up for stuff in Japan and in Frankfurt got me thinking about queuing up in general. You may think this is not so much a topic interesting enough to blog about but actually, as a British person, I think about queuing a lot. These crazy 3 hour long queues are not a thing for me. In Japan they will queue for anything, and they have NO limit to their patience. If it says in a magazine that such-and-such a place has good cakes, they will wait for 3 hours to try one – even if they know the article is sponsored and probably a lie. At any given time on Japanese tv there will be crazy tv shows where minor celebrities go to some restaurant in some town and try some food, announce that it’s the softest, juiciest  tastiest thing they have ever eaten and afterwards that restaurant won’t be able to move for customers – they will be spending the whole day queuing outside to taste this soft juicy tasty thing. (Please click on the “crazy tv shows” link to watch the video… it’s SUCH a typical Japanese tv show…)

For me, I think my limit would be 40 minutes. When Krispy Kremes opened in Osaka I did wait for 40 minutes to get some (and boy were they worth it…) but when it opened in Nagoya I saw people waiting for 4 hours and said to my friend that they could go to the airport, fly to Korea (where they have had Krispy Kremes for years), walk into a shop and buy doughnuts, fly back and they would still beat the people in the queue.

As an expat, queue methods can also be pretty confusing. In Japan they have pretty much the same queuing system as in Britain, but with one added rule – old women can break all the rules and it’s ok. I remember this one time when I was in Japan I went to an illuminations event. When it was over, the route back to the exit was ridiculously crowded and so we had to wait in a long crowd-queue to get out. I was waiting patiently with everyone else until these old ladies started jabbing me in the stomach to get past me. They really had no shame. They will also push in front of you when you’re waiting for a bus or train as well. I’d gladly let elderly people through but I get annoyed when they are rude about it.

Here in Germany there is a slightly different queue style. Where in the UK we form one line that feeds multiple cashiers in a shop, in Germany they form one like per cashier. This means that you can easily be served first if you just join the right queue. German people are a lot less angry at people who push in, as well. In Britain, we are REALLY angry when people push in. But most of the time we just tut and glare and do no more. A few times I have had people ignore the line and wait at the side of the counter to push in but where German queuers are ok with this, German shop staff are thankfully strict.

Where German people are TERRIBLE, though isn’t technically a queue but it’s a related form of waiting; when the train is coming into a station and people need to get out. Instead of waiting to see who else is getting out, each person assumes automatically that they will be the only person and as soon as the platform is in sight, they will push to get to the front of the door so that they can be the person to press the button and exit the train first. And then people rarely let you off the train before they cram on it. I guess German people just get stuff done.

I find peoples’ queuing styles say a lot about their culture and way of life. British people get angry a lot but don’t say anything out right. German people are harsh and abrupt but get what they want in the end.

How does queuing happen where you’re from?

Thoughts about Bravery

Me, as a 20 year old girl ready to take on Japan without fear. 

I’ve been having problems with my confidence recently. People who know me will see me as outgoing and someone who is everywhere at once, doing all the meetups and friends with everyone. But I used to be so much more. I think there’s a better word for it, but I used to be brave when I was younger. I used to do a lot of drama, I loved to be on stage and when I went to Japan to study I didn’t care if my Japanese was good or not, I just used it.

But I have found that I’m not that person anymore, I seem to have lost that side of me. My German friends constantly ask me to speak in German with them… I guess I could and it would be ok but there’s an element of “losing face” involved that’s just too risky… or scary for me. Every German I know speaks amazing English. It would just be embarrassing to let them see just how little German I speak. And also when we speak in English we can have amazing conversations but if we spoke in German we’d be reduced to boring, simple stuff. But I can’t ever remember feeling this way with Japanese. Maybe it’s because I was a cocky little shit, but this time round I just can’t get the German out, even though I know my friends won’t judge me and I know it’ll only make my German better.

I finished the advanced improv course a few weeks ago and I noticed in that area too I’d become a lot more withdrawn. I love improv – I love being on stage. When I was younger I used to do SO much theatre; regular stuff, improv contests, I was a dame in the village panto (meaning I was 16 year old girl pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman…) and I even entered a solo theatre contest in a division 2 years older than my age (and still won). I was this girl, but now I am not, and I think it’s holding me back.

When you’re an expat or just a regular language learner, I think you need to be super outgoing to be able to get the most out of your life in your adoptive country. Langauge-wise it’s pretty straight forward – you need to be brave enough to just go for it and you’ll get the hang of the language. As an expat it’s best if you just throw yourself into various situations and go to random meetups because you never know what will happen. Of course, it’s also ok to not be outgoing and an expat, but you won’t have as many crazy stories to tell your grandchildren

I guess this lack of bravery has been bugging me for a while. I guess various things happened and I lost the drive I used to have to be like this, but I’m taking steps to get it back. Improv helps me a lot, but I’m *thinking* of maybe dabbling in stand-up comedy. A comedian friend of mine who I admire very much came over the other week so I could road test my routine on him but I just clammed up. I’d like to work myself to the stage where I’m able to do this – even if I’m not funny I think the experience will be good for me.

During the first week of April I’m going to do a German homestay. It’ll be in Frankfurt so I’m not going far at all, but I’m actually really nervous about it. I have no idea where the 16 year old who went off to Japan to do homestays is, but she’s not here right now. I feel nervous about speaking German to someone other than the few people I share my terrible skills with and I feel nervous that it’ll be a whole week of me and the teacher – her teaching me in intensive lessons during the day and cooking and hanging out together in the evenings. This all seems very daunting to me.

But I think once I’ve taken these steps I’ll feel a lot better about myself, so I need to take them. Do you take steps to put yourself in different and daunting situations?

Getting Naked Abroad

Most British people are ridiculous prudes. While we are happy to have topless 19 year olds in our daily newspapers, we would go through hell and back to prevent having to expose our own bodies in public.

When my family came to visit Japan for the first time, the first hotel they stayed at was this traditional hotel, with tatami mats and gender-segregated communal washrooms. My mum and sisters weren’t happy with this, and while one was in the wash/shower room, the others would stand guard by the door, and then switch when they were finished, so they could ensure only one person would be in there at a time – they wouldn’t even get naked in front of each other.

One thing you need to do in Japan if you ever go is to an onsen, or public bath. Onsens are usually outside, and then there are public baths which are indoors and are often equally as awesome.

I was always afraid of going to one of these public naked parties, because the thought of me being naked and white and fleshy in front of loads of skinny perky Japanese ladies scared me so very much. But my friend Ashley managed to persuade me (I can’t remember how…) and I entered the world of nakedness.

The thing with these baths is that the only thing to hide your modesty are these tiny hand towels, and when your modesty is quite sizable as mine is, these towels don’t often cut it. So I couldn’t exactly do the very British way of getting undressed and walking about using the towel to hide behind. Eventually, after a few trips to our local (and awesome) public baths, I got used to it. People didn’t stare at our naked bodies (to our knowledge), and the only awkward moment we had there was when this grandma was taking her 5 year old grandson to the baths and told him to go talk to us in English… because forcing your 5 year old grandson to speak English to two naked foreigners isn’t going to scar him for life.

And then I came to Germany.

I’d known about how German people like to get naked public before coming here… a friend of mine used to speak fondly about the public baths, and also on holiday you always find that group of German tourists who are on the beach playing catch with nothing but a thong on (though that’s mainly the men). But joining a gym here brought nakedness onto a while new level. Again, in gyms in England it’s fairly normal for people to be fairly cautious when they are getting changed and so on. You should look into your locker and focus on getting changed and even when talking to someone you should not look at them. In my German gym, naked is king. These women are not ashamed of their bodies at all, and stand fully starkers right there while talking to each other. The Japanese people from work who are also at my gym are fairly into this too, and don’t try to cover up much… so I have open nakedness AND nakedness of colleagues to deal with.

Is it normal to be naked in public where you are from? How do you feel about public nakedness? Let me know in the comments!

OCS Japanese Store Frankfurt – Closing

I have the day off today because we get an extra day when we move house. Apparently this is just a Nintendo thing and isn’t universal in Germany.

As I was biking round town trying to get official things done for my move (like registering my change of address, taking my name off of the bills for my old apartment..) I went past the Japanese store OCS. The has been a hit with the Japanese speaking population in Frankfurt since it sells Japanese books, magazines, snacks and other cool things.

But apparently it wasn’t popular enough since it’ll be closing at the end of March. The online shop will still remain, so there’s not much of a sale (right now it’s 30% off). Just like when I was in Paris, I didn’t feel the need to splash out on a 20 euro Japanese book, so I left empty handed in the hope that that 30% will grow a little in the next few weeks.

Anyway, if you are in Frankfurt then check this place out before it closes down! Find it at Große Gallusstraße 1-7.

Glad to be Born in the UK?

Last week I came across a wonderful link listing reasons why Japanese people felt glad to be born in Japan. The number one answer was that there are 4 seasons in Japan, which is a common joke within people who have lived in Japan. When Japanese people say this, they mean that there are 4 distinct seasons and that they enjoy each one to the fullest. I must admit, I have never experienced such amazing Autumns as I did in Japan, but that doesn’t mean that other countries don’t have the same (last Autumn was also pretty awesome, for example). Other answers are also typically “Japanese”, like “drinkable tap water” at number 2. A lot of Japanese people believe that their stomachs are different to those of non-Japanese people and refuse to drink tap-water outside of Japan,  as I did in India. On a side note, when I was at uni in Liverpool I noticed that the tap water there tasted horrible, but it’s pretty nice in my hometown of Bury St Edmunds. In Frankfurt, too, the water is pretty good, but has a lot of stuff in it that isn’t so good for your hair.

The list got me thinking about what makes me feel glad to have been born in the UK, and even what makes me glad to be in Germany. When I came back from studying in Japan, my mum told me that I’d become racist against my own people as I was just tired of how tired and unhealthy British people look, but really I was just missing Japan. Here in Germany I shock people by saying that I would much prefer to be here right now than in the UK, but rather than me being “racist” against the UK, Germany just offers a lot more for me than I could get back home.

ANYWAY I think I’d like to make two short lists – one for the UK and one in another post for Germany. If you’d like to make your own lists then please let me know in the comments section!

Reasons to be glad to be born in the UK -

1. The NHS.

When I was in Japan every time I got sick I felt that I was being forced to have extras even though I didn’t need them, just to bump up the price. While it’s the opposite in the UK and you may have hospitals being stingy with you, I have never had this experience personally and neither has anyone I know. I had extensive braces (think along these lines…) and it was all free. There’s no worrying about being able to afford these kinds of things, and it’s all available to everyone.

2. The food.

Yes, I can hear you laughing. Seriously, British food is really great. I mean, we’re not the fattest people in Europe for nothing, right? Cornish pasties are pretty much the yummiest things in the world. I miss Sunday roasts so much, but they take so much effort to cook for just one person. On the healthier end of the spectrum, there are shops like Eat which sell amazing healthy options at lunchtime. Supermarkets are full of healthier options and inspiration for better eating with locally sourced (not to be confused with locally horsed… fnar fnar…) items. This is something I’ve not experienced in either Japan or Germany. And if you have a bit of a sweet tooth, an American friend recently begged me to bring him back “some of those sugar coated gummies you guys have… fruit pasTILLES?” So apparently our sweets are pretty awesome, too!

3. Education.

There is a lot wrong with the British education system, least of all that your experience depends greatly on where you live. You can be in the catchment area for the best school around but someone a mile down the road is in the catchment area for an under-achieving school. We may not get the best scores on tests, or create the brightest children but what our education system does is teach children how to THINK. Again, I wasn’t really aware of this until I went to Japan and saw that everything is multiple choice in tests there. I explained to the teachers that in the UK even maths and science questions come in essay format – why won’t this experiment work? How would you improve on it next time? – there are so many ways in which we are asked to think and not regurgitate. So many times I asked my Japanese students to give their opinions, and every time it failed. When I was back home last, my youngest sister who is in year 10 right now was writing a complex essay in French on her thoughts about smoking. Britain creates independent thinkers, young people who go out and get what they want, people who think of ways to make things better. And with the bleak job prospects right now, we need these kinds of people.

4. It’s easier to “settle down” there.

I look back at people I went to school with and I see them buying houses and securing a good life for themselves. I look back at myself, living in a flatshare drowning rent money each month that won’t go towards anything. I would *love* to buy myself a house right now. To put money on a mortgage and work on a home, not a place to stay. But Germany (or Frankfurt at least) is a “rent for life” kind of place. And don’t even let me get started on Japan, where it’s impossible to even rent if you’re not a Japanese male. They will often turn away people for not being Japanese, from being a solo female and for other ridiculous reasons. When I left Japan I said I’d love to go back when I’m retired and live in a lovely old wooden Japanese house. I’d still like to do this if I could. But I doubt they’d let me.

5. British people are awesome.

Recently I’ve been feeling really sad about British people in general, mainly because I keep on making the mistake of listening to the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 every day, which is the audio version of The Daily Mail. There is SO MUCH racism on there that I decided to not put the BBC in this list. But I was speaking with some people who had studied in the UK and they reminded me how friendly people are there. If you are on your own, you can just go to a pub and you’ll have friends in minutes. People will strike up conversations with you on the London Underground. People will be concerned for your safety even though they are complete strangers. Sure there is a cesspool of people who don’t want any foreigners “coming in and stealing our jobs” but the majority of British people love Britain being so multicultural and welcome visitors and long-term stayers alike. We will even complain along with you when you moan about the UK. The friendliness of British people is something that surprises me every time I go home – and I am not the only one who has this as we talk about this regularly here.

So please let me know what reasons you have to be proud to be from where you are from! I’m really looking forward to comparing answers!

Speed Dating Abroad (ramble-tasic)

This may turn out to be a rambly post. But let’s just stick with it. It may lead to somewhere nice.

About a month ago, I got a Facebook invite to a speed dating event in Frankfurt. I signed up thinking it would be a laugh but nothing more serious than that. The day came up and I picked out an outfit that was a little sexier (… or so I hope…) than I’d normally wear and went off to the event, which was held in a cookie shop.

When I arrived, I noticed the people there were a lot older. And not really my type. But I thought it would be a good way to meet new people. I took the welcome drink, sat down and started talking.

In through the door came a couple. Hmm… that’s weird. Why would a couple come to speed dating? Then another couple came in. The hostess also commented on how weird it was that there were couples. Was this like a swingers’ party or something?

So time went on and there was very little speed dating happening. I settled down into a conversation with a lovely American girl and her somewhat grumpy German boyfriend and asked them “but.. don’t you think it’s weird you two coming to a speed dating thing together?” To which they freaked out, not thinking it was speed dating. I checked my Facebook event list and sure enough, the event said nothing about speed dating. But… I could have sworn it was… Am I going crazy?

After about 40 minutes more, I realised that even without being a speed dating thing, the people weren’t really the kind of people I’d click with, though they were all really lovely and interesting. I went off down the road for a pint with my friends who were sat waiting for me.

I’ve been to a (real) speed dating before, in Japan. Back in the days when I thought a boyfriend would cure my loneliness, I went to an event at a snack bar. Snack bars are Japanese inventions, where men pay way too much money to visit, in order to be flirted at by the supposedly beautiful bar staff there. The one in my town was frequented a lot by the Americans I was friends with, and so I went along with them a few times and got to know the staff a bit. They liked having us around because it made their bar look more stylish. I just liked speaking in Japanese and potentially making new friends.

The speed dating event they had there was pretty fun, actually. An hour before, we had a “girls party” where the mama would do our makeup and hair. Then the boys would arrive and we would go through the “speed dating” part of the night, then group off and play a few party games.

The two American lads were pretty popular, I think, and one may have even gotten lucky that night. I was not so popular. At the time, a new bar had opened up in the town and one of the barmen was a serious crush of mine. He remains to be quite possibly the most beautiful human being to walk the planet, in my eyes at least. To Japanese girls, he is pretty plain, but this is normal since Western ideas of beauty and Japanese ideas of the same are pretty much polar opposite. That’s why you can have a bi-racial couple where Western onlookers will comment on how ugly the Western person is and how the Asian person is out of their league, where Asian onlookers will be saying the exact same thing about the Asian of the couple.

But he was there at the event (not in any of the photos so stop looking!!) and so I was really excited.

By the end of the night, some of the people were pretty drunk. Mama tiptoed up to me and said “psst! That guy over there! He picked you as his favourite!” So I went over to said guy. He was drunk as a fart. Slowly melting into his drink. We spoke for a while, he was pretty cute, but red as a tomato (as Japanese people are when they’re drunk) and talking jibberish. We swapped numbers because I didn’t have the heart to tell him no when he asked.

A few months later, after him being super sweet to me non-stop, we started dating. Me having a boyfriend didn’t cure my loneliness. The end.

What happened to the barman? Well everyone under the sun knew I had a crush on him since I went all red whenever he was about… and also there was that one time I drunkenly serenaded him with a pretty sweet song at their bar. Oh youth.

Have you ever done speed dating? Let’s get some comments rolling!

Expat Blogs

I LOVE the blogging community and how I can enjoy pockets of awesome people who are expats, travellers, German-livers and many more.

And that’s why I’m so happy that Expats Blog have chosen to feature me in an interview this week! I just love sharing my experiences and helping others who want to follow my footsteps, so I’m so happy to be on their site!

They have a super awesome website with so much information for people who live – or are thinking of living – abroad, so go and check it out if that’s up your alley!

Making Friends Abroad – Germany

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about finding a partner in Japan, but today I’d like to write a little about how to make friends – focussing on doing so whilst in Germany.

Making friends abroad is probably one of the hardest things I have done. In Japan, I felt very lonely; it took me a long time to find people I really connected with and then once I found these people I couldn’t see them until the weekend – often every other weekend. Now in Germany, once I started to see the pangs of loneliness in myself, I knew exactly how to get myself a social circle.

I’d like to point out now that all these methods require effort, patience and a lot of guts. When looking for new friends you will find yourself being forced out of your comfort zone, into a group of people you don’t know, maybe in a language you don’t speak, with people you don’t know you’ll even like and repeating the same conversations over and over and over. “How long have you been here?” “Did you come here for work?” “Do you like it here?” If you go to a meeting and come away with one phone number of one person with whom you meet up with occasionally, you’ve been successful. If you don’t, then don’t worry. If you don’t find someone who meets your friendship requirements to a tee, then that’s ok.

In a certain sense, you need to drop your friendship standards somewhat when you’re abroad. Most of the people I’m closest to here are people I have very very little in common with. But at the end of the day, they are amazing people and I love them very much. You need to let go of the idea that you’ll find your BFF at these meetings and focus instead on finding someone who will go to the cinema with you at the drop of a hat, someone who will try out that new restaurant with you, someone who will sit and listen when your boyfriend has been a wombat yet again. This is what’s important. So, let’s jump right in to finding friends….

Once I knew I was going to be in Germany, I soon found the online forum Toytown Germany. Being a forum, it is of course full of grumpy people, people who only want to argue, people who are mean and unhelpful. However, there are also lots of really good points and pieces of information for living in Germany. (Pro tip, unless you are looking to get shouted at by the long-timers there, you should always do a search of what information you are looking for before you start a new topic of conversation).

Within this forum, you can find people new to the area who want to meet up, and also long standing groups of people who meet more regularly. I joined one women’s dinner group once and met one girl who I became very good friends with, so it was a good success for me. I also go to a few of the meetups when I have time.

A step up from this would be Couchsurfing.org. I joined it after a good friend of mine mentioned how he has made a lot of friends from that site. On the surface it’s a place where you can find somewhere to stay for free when you are traveling. But it is so much more than this – from weekly meetings to random messages from people wanting to meet up, it is a hotbed of people wanting friendship. Within a week of joining, I saw a message from a lovely French couple who wanted to invite people to their house to play boardgames. It sounded right up my street so I went along and managed to befriend not only the lovely couple but also a person I consider to be a close friend. Aside from that time, I have also been to a massive brunch meetup and a handful of Christmas market spontaneous meetups. The thing that makes Couchsurfing different is that all the members are explorers. They are people who have been places and know what it’s like to be on your own in a place away from home. The website has changed for the worst in recent weeks in an effort to make money from the site and now the helpful forums are replaced with Facebook style pages, where one has to almost call out in order to connect with people. I’ve lost the details of the people I was to meet up with in Paris, as well as those in Goa and have to repeatedly write on the pages of these places, asking if anyone will be in those areas at the same time as me. Bewelcome.com seems to be the next Couchsurfing so be sure to check that one out as well.

Though mainly a dating site, Okcupid.com is also a good place to make friends. I like to call it a social network rather than a dating site. I have made one guy friend and one girl friend from this site. It might be a little scary for some people to venture into but I do say it’s well worth at least making a profile and seeing what kind of messages come.

Speaking of social networks, Facebook is the king as usual. Try to see if there are groups for your area – for Frankfurt I am a member of the English Speaking, Neu im Frankfurt, Photography, Friday Night Drinks Club, Drinkstag, International groups and many, many more. With these groups, I can go to a meeting pretty much every single day, meeting new people. The hardest one of these is the German Stammtisch events I go to with Neu im Frankfurt.

Other websites worth a mention are My Language Exchange and Shared Talk which are primarily language exchange partner websites, but I have actually made friends through them as well.

If you have any more links to great friend making websites, please link them in the comments!

Thoughts on being an Expat

I love being an expat. I can’t imagine not living abroad for the foreseeable future. I absolutely love living in Germany. It’s safe, clean, things get done and the food is awesome. I couldn’t really ask for more (well maybe 24 hour supermarkets or a few hours’ shopping on a Sunday…) I would recommend expat life to pretty much anyone, and here is why -

1. You make your cv awesome. If you’ve lived for a few years in a different country, this makes you very tasty to employers back home. It shows that you can step outside your comfort zone, overcome difficulties, be your own boss etc etc.

2. You can pick up another language. There are lots of people I knew in Japan, and people here in Germany who do not bother to learn the local language. I think in Japan it’s a lot harder because Japanese people aren’t so forthcoming with their language skills, so learning Japanese is best. Here in Frankfurt everyone speaks English and even when you speak German to people, they reply in English. So it’s a lot more of a struggle because you feel like there’s no use in learning it. But I think it’s polite to the host country to learn it – and I’ve found my life a lot more fun now I’m really putting effort into learning German.

3. You get a deep understanding of another culture. You can acquire a smug sense of knowingness when people talk about “those crazy Japanese and their panty vending machines” when you have been there for a long time, and know that they don’t exist but you can list 10 things you’ve seen that are way crazier than a panty vending machine. You can learn to see beyond the “German people are boring and like to hog the beds beside the swimming pool” stereotype and you know what German culture is really like.

4. You can meet people from all over the world. When I was studying in Japan, there weren’t any other people from English speaking countries and my closest friends were Korean, Chinese and Thai. Our common language was Japanese so we all spoke together and me wanting to get to know them better was my motivation to speak more. I remember there was a day when I looked around the table at all the girls from other countries, sharing stories and teaching each other our languages and cultures (the poor Thai girl spent a whole day trying to get us to speak Thai once…) I just thought, you know, this is my idea of heaven. Being around all kinds of people and sharing stories and learning more about each other. On JET I got the same – even though we were from English speaking countries, I learnt what a Tootsie Roll is from my American friends, I learnt more about Canada, Singapore, The Philipines… and each person was so passionate about their home country or home state that I have a ridiculously long list of places I want to visit because they’ve sold it to me.

5. You can take advantage of exchange rates and gaps in the market. I was ridiculously lucky because when I studied in Japan, the pound was pretty strong against the yen so my student loan went quite far, and then when I worked there the yen was the strong one so when I went to send money back home to pay off those loans a little money turned into a lot of money. Another thing is the gaps in employment markets – this doesn’t affect me here nor did it in Japan, but for example, Australia needs certain professionals and you can get a job as, say, a hairdresser over there much easier than you could in the UK. If I worked as a Japanese translator in London I probably wouldn’t get such a good job over there as I do here in Frankfurt.

But it’s not an easy thing to do. There are huge sacrifices that one must make in order to live abroad. When I lived in Japan I was unable to go home for Christmas and this was really hard to do. My first Christmas in Japan was a very difficult day for me, and I got so frustrated and angry because I was not able see my own family, but the local Nagoya people were – and yet they were still suited up and going to work on Christmas day. I missed the funerals of two family members, and was not told about my budgie dying for a few weeks after the event. When you’re not there in person, it’s easy to miss out on important news.

Friends from back home also move on. Because I’m only in my hometown once or twice a year, my best friends and I grow apart faster than we would do normally. I wasn’t there when a best friend needed me, and I’m not around to share things with her as much as I’d like. This may be true of people who aren’t even expats, but it’s still an uncomfortable feeling to know you can’t be with your closest friends.

Culture shock is a nasty thing, and can turn you into a very bitter and closed minded person. I spent the better part of a year and a half being so bitter about everything to the point that I was almost racist. When things don’t go as you expect them, when people don’t act like they do back home, when you can’t get the same comforts you enjoy at home then it all piles on top of you and eats away at your soul.

It takes a lot of guts to go out of your comfort zone and live abroad. But despite all the negative sides to being an expat, like I said, I wouldn’t swap it in the world, especially now I am in Germany. Look at the world – there are so many opportunities for people. The world is your lobster!

If you have any expat pros or cons that I haven’t mentioned, be sure to leave a comment!

Notes on Dating in Japan

Dating as an expat is hard. You’ll probably have some kind of language barrier, and even if you speak the local language, you need to find someone who is willing to date outside their culture (assuming you are dating a local). In Japan, the focus is on dating the locals. I don’t even need to touch on the type of people who say they “only date Japanese” – these people are lame and also loads of other blogs who talk for pages about it. I just thought I’d have a nice frank post about dating as a foreigner, in Japan.

Of course, the first thing when talking about dating in Japan is that people think it’s easy for western guys to get girls and impossible for western girls to get guys. When I lived in Japan, I knew many really amazing western guys who were pretty unlucky in love. They were handsome and gentlemanly but it just wasn’t happening. I also know a fair few women out in Japan with Japanese boyfriends and husbands, and all are pretty happy. I myself have dated 2 J-guys on the long term and a handful of awkward mini relationships with guys that it just didn’t work out with.

So, how do you get a boy/girlfriend in Japan? The key, as with any situation is that you concentrate on having fun – not on finding the one. It took me a long time to realise this. I’d go to events and things and focus on which guys I thought I had a chance with. But you need to just do your thing, meet people, make friends, and then everything will fall into place.

It’s hard when you’re an expat because you feel homesick sometimes, and there are things you don’t understand, and you feel lonely, too. You start to think that getting a boy/girlfriend will solve everything for you. You’d have someone to be with all the time, and if they are a local, they can explain the culture and the language to you, too! I thought that in Japan, so went on a wild hunt to get a guy. I did – a wonderful guy who was kind and sweet and good looking. But it wasn’t right. I wasn’t dating him for the right reasons – just for the sake of it. I broke it off with him far too late, and broke his heart too. I’m really ashamed of that.

BUT if you did really want a boy/girlfriend in Japan, here are a few ways to find one -

1. Get out! Someone once told me that when you live in Japan, just get out the house. Even if it’s to buy an apple. Those were his words. And I think it’s true. You’re not going to learn the language or make friends by sitting at home at your kotatsu. Go to events, go to that lame looking international festival those sweet old ladies wanted you to go to. Go talk to the guy at the counter at the combini. GO!

2. Find a bar – not a gaijin bar, a local bar – and keep going there until you become a local. I did this with a bar in Ise, and made loads of friends there. I made the mistake of telling other foreigners about this amazing bar I found and soon enough EVERYONE was there. But if you go to a mainly Japanese bar, you can practise your Japanese and you’ll be rare in your gaijin-ness so it’s easy to make friends (and potentially pick up a date).

3. Mixi.jp is a Japanese social network… but you need a Japanese mobile phone, and an invite, to join. If you have an account, you can join the community of wherever you live in Japan and start interacting with the people there. A word of warning, especially for the girls out there – when I used this, and got speaking with a guy, the next stage of the relationship seemed to be “let’s go for a drive”. No one seemed to understand that I will not get into a car with a stranger. Japanese guys found it highly annoying that I wouldn’t just lighten up and get in a car with them. But be careful – you never know what might happen. Play it safe, people!

4. Go to a gokon! Gokon are Japanese dating parties. Usually you’ll have a set number of boys and girls, and you will go to a Japanese restaurant like an izakaya together. You’d usually swap phone numbers with the person you like and then take it from there. I went to a few of these. I found them really funny. I never was successful from them, though.

I want to do a German post similar to this, but with more of an emphasis on meeting people as opposed to boy/girlfriends. But if you have any tips for the boys and girls out there on how to find love in Japan, let me know!