After the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of 2011, my family and I sat huddled under blankets during rolling blackouts, worrying whether a cloud of radioactive waste from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was heading our way. Our family in the United States were also worried and urged us to come home.
What our overseas family didn’t understand is that we were home. We worked hard to establish lives and careers in Japan. We cherish the bonds we’ve formed with our expat and Japanese friends and colleagues as much as those in our native countries. Our lives are firmly planted in our Japanese home, and the idea of uprooting everything we had built was inconceivable.
This summer, the inconceivable became reality. My husband and I decided to leave Japan after 23 years. During our time here, we’d said goodbye to many friends. Some had lived here for just a few years and were returning for work. As one friend said after working as an ALT, “I didn’t see a satisfying career path as a language teacher for kids.”
Several friends who were long-term residents left to spend their retirement years in their own cultures where they felt fully understood and integrated. My husband and I expected to be like the vast majority of my expat friends, though: living our lives in Japan with yearly visits to our native home.
Ah, the best laid plans. COVID-19 changed everything.
Foreign and feeling it
We had been dealing with our parents’ health issues for years — attending midnight phone calls to strategize about options and rushing back for extended visits during hospital stays. We expected that would continue. During the pandemic, though, people said goodbye to their dying parents via video chats, missed funerals and were unable to grieve with family members. When we finally were able to travel abroad to see our parents, it was clear that isolation from the pandemic had contributed to a more rapid-than-expected decline in their health.
The Japanese tradition of caring for elderly parents certainly influenced my husband’s decision to quit his tenured position only a few years before retirement to return Stateside. We had lived in our adopted home during our parents’ active years; now, it was time for us to return to our U.S. home during their more difficult years.
I expected my friends to be shocked. Instead, I was shocked by the number of friends who admitted they, too, were considering leaving, an unexpected consequence of the pandemic.
A survey of Americans in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, revealed that 40% of respondents moved to be closer to family and that the pandemic was a wake-up call showing them the vulnerability of their family relationships. Within my own network of friends, that was doubly true. Nearly all of them — Japanese and non-Japanese — acknowledged that the pandemic forced them to confront with increased sensitivity their parents’ mortality and rethink the implications of living so far from them.
Another reason my friends cited as influencing their decision on whether or not to leave was a Japanese government policy introduced in April 2020 that prevented foreign nationals with a legal residence status in Japan from entering the country, a restriction that did not extend to Japanese citizens. These were people who had made Japan their home, who work and pay taxes, have families and jobs, and own businesses and properties in Japan. At one point, The Japan Times reported 100,000 legal residents were stranded abroad.
The idea that expats often consider Japan home but Japan doesn’t consider us members of its family continues to be a point of contention even for expats still living here. As my friend Gigi put it, “I realized for the first time that we don’t have full rights here. It was just so easy for us to be singled out. We are encouraged to assimilate, expected to assimilate, but actions like that show us that we are not really ever going to be assimilated. Why stay, then?” She asked we not use her last name since her family is considering moving next year.
Assimilation comes in many forms, though. Expat life by definition involves differences between cultures, lack of acceptance by some natives, and unintended slights, like comments about the length of our noses, size of our faces or hairiness of our bodies. The micro-assimilation formed from our communities and friendships, and sometimes cross-cultural families, more directly affects the quality of our lives than government policies. These are why expats adopt foreign lands as their homes. But the pandemic caused a few of my friends to reconsider these factors, too, mainly concerning the education system.
A matter of schooling
When my daughter reached high school age, I considered sending her abroad. My son had gone through the Japanese education system with flying colors. My daughter, however, had test anxiety. The pressure of juken (the exams you need to take to get into university) made her physically ill. Perhaps policies vary among cities and prefectures, but for my daughter, there was no accommodation for her difficulties. Her homeroom teacher told us during the high school advisory meeting that she would only be able to attend an agricultural school. (Nothing against agricultural schools, but it was clearly not for my daughter.) Instead, we invested in an American curriculum and home-schooled her.
The trials and travails of Japan’s one-size-fits-all education system, which basically determines a child’s career path at the age of 15, are nothing new. Neither is the issue of bullying, something children with one or both foreign parents are more likely to experience. But the pandemic (and the Russian invasion of Ukraine) reminded us how uncertain the future is. Several friends I spoke to wanted their children to live in an environment that encouraged their individuality.
That decision came for my friend, Mary, when her child asked, “Would you be angry if I said I was gay?” Mary, who asked not to have her family name shared for privacy reasons, was aware from her experience as a junior high school teacher that children of any background who were different — even if they hadn’t identified as gay or non-binary — were likely to be bullied, ostracized or passive-aggressively encouraged to conform. Her non-Japanese child had already encountered problems at school. My friend wanted her child to explore their quirkiness, to develop naturally wherever that may lead.
That family left Japan this year and already Mary says she has seen the benefits of being back home and closer to her relatives. Her child’s school places emphasis on critical thinking over memorizing content, and, as a result, her child’s test scores have improved. Additionally, being in an accepting environment has increased her child’s self-esteem.
It’s never easy to leave home, and the reasons for making that choice are complicated, varied and have unforeseen consequences. The difficulty for expats with Japanese spouses is doubled. What we all understand, though, is that home is more than residency. Whether you’ve been in Japan for only a few years or decades, leaving is complicated, stressful and emotionally painful.
This is the first of two articles on leaving Japan. The next, focused on the practicalities of leaving, will appear Dec. 19.
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