Moving to Japan was the Hardest Time in my Life

How I overcame my addiction to stress through love, Zazen, and a city called Hachinohe

The cherry blossoms in Japan. Photo by author.

In July, my job as an Assistant Language Teacher will reach its end and real Japanese society will swallow me up. This is not how I wrote up the plan three years ago.

I came to Japan in October 2021 through the JET Program. With the pandemic still going on and so many things unknown, I spent a stress filled summer clinging to the news and Reddit. JET had promised that our departure would be sometime between September and December.

However, with the pandemic, our arrival in Japan was anything but certain. The prior year’s cohort still hadn’t left and Japan was closed to almost anyone without special permission.

I quit my job working in Admissions at a small liberal arts college at the end of May. I wanted to prepare and spend time with my family before leaving. Trying to fill my time, I studied a lot of Japanese during those months and worked on my novel. It is still the novel I am writing to this day. I even broke my fear of speaking Japanese and signed up for lessons on iTalki.

What I didn’t know was that the summer would be the start of a long journey dealing with stress. It was, unlike anything I had experienced before, more than just slight culture shock or adjusting to a new place.

Moving to a new country was a stressful experience.

I don’t think there’s any way to avoid stress in a situation like that, and it may even be a good thing. However, in my case, I suffered more in my head than in reality. Truth be told, I have only recently found a bit of peace and learned to stop creating catastrophe.

I’m still working on it to this day, and it does, in fact, require work. My mind was wired to need stress, to crave it. In order to rewire those pathways in my brain, I needed to take active measures. This anxiousness wasn’t going to just go away. It was here to stay unless I tackled it myself.

Once I arrived in Japan, it progressed. I still watched the news. I internalized everything. Things I didn’t agree with became personal attacks on me. I hated governments and public figures. Enraged and seeking comfort, I consumed YouTube videos and social media posts and read studies like a madman.

It only made it worse because the algorithms loved my stress, too. I became addicted to knowing, and through that knowing, I was suffering.

Besides that, I continued to get sick or have weird symptoms: hair loss, the flu, strep throat, stomach problems, and the world’s worst case of pink eye (seriously, it lasted for a month). Whether it was stress, living in a new environment, or a mix of both, I continuously stressed about why I was getting sick, even when I never really felt that bad to begin with.

I realized again and again that I wasn’t changing anything. I was only hurting myself mentally, and my stress even manifested physically. Even still, I couldn’t stop.

It took a while, but about three years later, I finally feel like I’ve started to come out on the other side. After a lot of introspection and trying to create myself again in this mess, I realized that the world was not under my control, only my mind was. This realization sent me on the path to healing. All it took was love, Zen meditation, and a city by the sea.

Love

Traditional-style Japanese wedding vows. Photo by author.

“We aren’t meant to be alone.”

The message was from my dad. I don’t even remember what I was worrying about that night, but I remember that message. I remember feeling lonely. My family was in America, and my wife was two hours away in a different town. I had a few more months left on my current job contract before we could be together.

The light was at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel had been long, and I was tired. Through all this, I had to learn a tough lesson for me. We weren’t meant to be alone. I always thought that if you couldn’t handle problems on your own, you wouldn’t be fit to be around other people.

You know, you can’t pour from an empty cup and all that.

I strove for this fictional perfection that I created. A mind and constitution strong enough to face anything, protect those I loved, and be okay no matter the circumstances.

My family taught me the lesson that we aren’t meant to be alone. They let me come to Japan. They support me in everything that I do. I am so fortunate to have that, and I learned that it was selfish to try and reject that for some fabricated strength.

So I smile more when my mom sends me a note in my care package. I can’t wait to see them again every time a new opportunity shows itself. I know I am loved by them, and that is one of the world’s most powerful forces.

My wife taught me this too. On a cool, early night in June we were walking around a small park in her hometown. I was going to catch the shinkansen in an hour and head back to my city.

These were always bittersweet goodbyes. So thankful for the time we spent together, but a little pissed that circumstances didn’t let us be together yet. On top of all my other worries, I am looking for a job. This adds it own layer of complexity and stress.

So on that night as we walked through the park, she said that she could always get a part-time job if we needed the money. Now, mind you, she already works a full-time job at a day service. It’s hard work. So, my immediate reaction was absolutely not. I don’t want you to do that.

“But Marco, it wouldn’t be forever. I would do anything if it’s for the sake of us.”

To her working two jobs for our sake, for my sake, was the simplest thing. It was something she wouldn’t think twice about. Just like I wouldn’t have thought twice about it if the situation was reversed.

This point isn’t really about Japan, but it was about realizing that love can be found everywhere. Creating community in the new places we call home is so important, especially when moving abroad.

But accepting love, accepting that you don’t have all the answers and that you don’t have to be a warrior, is vulnerable. I learned that when you have people who love and support you, accept it. Don’t think, if I can’t do this on my own, then I don’t deserve to do this with someone else.

We weren’t meant to be alone. Of course, you need to be active and motivated. Other people can’t do everything for you, and we can’t throw our problems onto others.

But life isn’t a contest about how far you can get solo.

For me, it is now measured in my relationships. That realization alone was huge in easing my stress.

Zazen

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

Okay, so I’ll be honest. The title of this next section should really be, “Zazen, yoga, writing, and cutting down on social media.” But that would have made for quite the horrible title. Anyway, the similarity between those four things is that they are all meditative practices.

The Japanese Zen school of Buddhism practices seated meditation, known as Zazen. I don’t claim to be a master. Growing up Catholic in America, most of my knowledge of Buddhism came from reading or the few courses I took on it in college.

In the stress of moving to Japan, I lost touch with a lot of the spirituality and religion that played a large role in my young life. I didn’t find it again until recently. My experiences in Japan have led me to explore the fascinating religions in this country.

Seeking more, I read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. Suzuki was a Japanese monk who came to America, and a large part of the spread of Zen Buddhism in the west. The book is a collection of Suzuki’s informal talks on Zen meditation and practice.

In it, Suzuki stresses the idea of the “beginner’s mind.” He talks about how the beginner is always eager to learn, easy to teach, and will progress faster than someone who thinks they are an expert. He calls on us to have this beginner’s mind, no matter how experienced we get in whatever it is we are doing.

I connected with this idea in my attempts to rewire the stress pathways in my brain. A mind reset, if you will. Striving for this beginner’s mind, forgoing all that I thought I knew about stress and Japan and writing. My intention was to begin anew.

I also started meditating. Having no idea what I was doing, I used Suzuki’s book as a guide. I soon found that even five minutes in the morning emptied my mind. This emptying of the mind is so, so powerful.

Think of a cup. If you fill a cup of water to the brim in the morning, and then throughout the day add more and more water, it’s going to overflow. However, if you take an empty cup, and fill it throughout the day, it will be fine. It’s a simple concept, but I soon realized that this was how my mind worked.

If I looked at social media in the morning and I saw something that upset me, I already started the day with a half-full cup. Then, throughout the rest of the day, adding only a bit more made it overflow. Yet, this emptying of the mind, this blank slate where I was the painter in control, helped me face the day and the things that came. I wasn’t bombarded by the outside world before I had even stepped foot outside my apartment.

Yoga also helped me with this. Moving intentionally during a yoga practice is something that we have lost in a lot of our busy lives. Going to school, teaching classes, going home, working out, making dinner. I thought these were all good habits. Objectively they are, but if you are stressing over social media while you eat a healthy dinner, you are losing a lot of the benefits of those good habits. Yoga helped me move more intentionally, not only on the mat, but also in other areas of my life.

Lastly, writing. I have always wanted to be a writer. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to write novels.

However, I had this weird aversion to writing about real life. I never made characters based on real people, I never journaled or kept a diary. My writing always existed in these fantastical spaces, far away from real life. That was how I liked it. I thought of it as my escape.

Now, I still write novels, but I began to try to write other about other things. Things like this. Being in Japan has given me the inspiration that maybe real life, too, is worth writing about. I’ve found that there are even greater stories in real life than in our minds.

So, I made a website. I started writing on Medium. I want to write, that’s all I’ve ever thought. What I didn’t realize was that writing about my personal life, about Japan and my experiences here, created its own form of mediation. Of emptying. When I put the words on the page, they are no longer screaming in my head. There is silence; there is calm.

A city called Hachinohe

The Tanesashi Coast in Hachinohe City. Photo by author.

Through this journey, I realized that ghosts are real, and they live in places. My first home in Japan is filled with ghosts. Despite the good times, the memories of discovering Japan and the realization of a dream life, the air in that apartment is heavy. There are too many ghosts, too many memories of being alone in stressful times. I know it’s all in my head, but I believe in the power of place.

I think there are two options when it comes to dealing with haunted places like this. You leave or you change your mind. Both may be equally as difficult depending on the circumstances, but I found myself fortunate enough to have a light at the end of the tunnel. I would soon be moving away from that place.

While I was living in a landlocked town, albeit with beautiful mountain views, there is nothing like the sea. My wife is from a town by the coast — a city called Hachinohe. I had been there only once before I met her. When I realized that this place would become my home, it took on a whole new meaning for me.

The air is different. Perhaps this is because it’s near the sea. Perhaps this is because the air is not heavy with ghosts. Either way, when I take a deep breath, I am refreshed, and I am reminded of what physically moving can help us to do.

Not only this, but because my wife’s family is there, I already feel as if I have more of a community of people in Hachinohe. Going back to my first point, there is so much power in our relationships. Despite making many great connections on my own in the first place I lived, they never stretched beyond the single connection I was able to make. This is a very underrated difficulty of living abroad. The community of people that we spent our whole life building is gone.

In Hachinohe, I have people who are close to me now. They have lived there their whole life and know so many communities of people. This is an invaluable thing. Not having to create every connection yourself is so much more of a relief than I thought it would be.

While stress is a mental struggle, our mind is often a reflection of our environment. My first home in Japan, while having many positives, was full of all the growing pains and stress of moving to a new country.

My lingering memories will always fill that place, no matter how hard I try to fight them. I think one day I’ll look back on it with nostalgia, but for now, it’s time to say goodbye.

There is a lot of power in goodbyes. Hachinohe is a vibrant city, thick with local culture and delicious seafood. The coast is beautiful, and the sea calms me. There are new possibilities in a new place. This is not something I would have been able to create without a physical change in location.

Sometimes, a restart is what we need. There’s no better way to begin again than by starting a new life in a city by the sea.

Originally, I thought this article would be a lot more Japan related. Yet as I sat down and read through it, I realized that this sort of story could happen to anyone, anywhere. But I have a feeling that people who have moved abroad will find similarities in their own experiences.

For me, it was a journey taken through my moving to Japan and what I had to face going through that. However, I hoped this helped you in some way. Whether it was an interesting read, or you have found yourself in a similar situation, thank you for reading.