After more than 26 years in Japan, Michael Machida offers Dating Experiences In Japan for foreigners who are visiting and/or living in Tokyo and Beyond! To join, contact us! Looking for a new job in Japan? Click! & Go to learn how we can assist you!
There is a funny thing about Finding Love In Japan
You think you’re going to learn about the country. Then you discover you’re actually going to learn a lot about yourself. That certainly happened to me.
More than 26 years ago, I left America and moved to Japan. I came from a small town in the Midwest, and although I loved my home country, I had reached a point where I knew I needed to see what else was out there.
Finding Love In Japan Was Not My Reason To Move To Japan…
I wanted to experience another culture. I wanted to meet different people. I wanted to challenge myself. And, if I’m being completely honest, I wanted to find out whether I could actually build a life somewhere completely different from the place where I grew up.
Japan became that place. I just didn’t realize how much it was going to change me. And I certainly didn’t understand what it would teach me about love.
How Did I End Up Finding Love In Japan?
When people hear that someone has lived in Japan for more than two decades, they sometimes assume there must have been some master plan.
There wasn’t. And there was no plan in Finding Love In Japan either…
I wasn’t sitting in America with a five-year strategy for becoming a permanent resident of Japan, building an international career and figuring out my romantic future.
I was simply a guy from the Midwest who wanted to see the world.
That was it.
When I first arrived, I had very little Japanese and far too much confidence in my ability to figure things out as I went along. I had somehow convinced myself that Tokyo was such a huge international city that English would be much easier to use than it actually was.
I learned quickly.
Ordering food could be an experience. Getting somewhere could become an adventure. Reading signs was sometimes impossible. Even simple errands could take more concentration than they ever would have back home.
And while I was trying to figure out how to live in Japan, I was also trying to figure out how to meet people.
That turned out to be a completely different challenge.
Finding Love In Japan As A Foreigner?
There were certainly advantages to being a foreigner. People were curious.
They wanted to know where I came from, why I had moved to Japan and what I thought about the country. Sometimes a conversation would start simply because I was American.
I enjoyed that. Who wouldn’t? But I eventually learned an important distinction. Attention isn’t love. Sometimes it’s not even romantic interest. Sometimes somebody is simply curious.
I had to learn not to read too much into those situations. When you’re single, living overseas and trying to establish yourself in a completely unfamiliar environment, it’s easy to get excited when somebody shows interest in you. I know I did. But being “the American guy” can only take you so far.Eventually, the novelty wears off.
Then the other person has to get to know Michael. And Michael is considerably more complicated than “American.”
I’ve got opinions. I’ve got a strange sense of humor. I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I’ve changed my mind about things. I’ve had good years and bad years. In other words, I’m a person.
That’s what someone eventually has to decide whether they like.
Finding Love In Japan Is A Fantasy Many People Have, But Hahahahaha! On Us!
I think this is something a lot of foreign men need to hear.
When I first came to Japan, I had ideas about Japanese women that were probably influenced by everything from movies to television to stories I’d heard from other foreigners.
The longer I lived here, the more I realized how little those generalizations meant.There isn’t one type of Japanese woman.
Some are traditional. Some aren’t. Some are outgoing. Some are quiet.Some are interested in foreigners. Some couldn’t care less.Some want marriage and children. Others have completely different priorities.
I had to stop thinking about “Japanese women” and start thinking about individual women. That sounds obvious.It wasn’t always obvious to me.
One of the biggest mistakes a foreigner can make is arriving in Japan with an imaginary version of the person he hopes to meet. You don’t fall in love with an imaginary person.
You fall in love with the complicated human being sitting across the table from you. And sometimes that person is nothing like what you expected.
That’s when things get interesting.
Then There Was the Language Problem
I learned Japanese because I had to.
At first, I wanted to be able to survive everyday life. I wanted to communicate at work, order food, get around and handle the basic things everybody takes for granted when they’re living in their own country.
But language becomes much more important when you’re in a relationship.You can have a great date with limited language skills.
You can laugh together. You can eat dinner. You can walk around Tokyo. You can enjoy each other’s company.But eventually, life gets serious.
Then you’re talking about Finding Love In Japan and marriage:
Money
Family
Children
Parents
Careers
Where you might live. What happens if one person wants to return to America. What happens if one person wants to stay in Japan.
Those aren’t conversations where you want to understand 70 percent of what the other person is saying. You want 100 percent.
And even then, you can still misunderstand each other.I learned that understanding someone’s words isn’t necessarily the same as understanding what they mean.
That lesson took me years.
I Was Sometimes Trying to Understand Japan Through American Eyes
This was another mistake I had to work through.
I was an American living in Japan, so naturally I carried American expectations with me.I had an idea of how people should communicate. I had expectations about dating. I had assumptions about how quickly people should express their feelings and how disagreements should be handled.
Then Japan would come along and politely remind me that my expectations were not universal. That could be frustrating. As so can Finding Love In Japan as well.
There were times when I wanted somebody to simply tell me exactly what she was thinking.I remember thinking, “Why can’t you just tell me?”
Eventually, I had to ask myself a different question.Why was I assuming she should communicate the way I did? That was harder to answer.
Living abroad has a funny way of exposing your own habits. Things you thought were normal suddenly become things you have to explain. Sometimes you discover that what you called “normal” was really just “what I’m used to.”
That’s a big difference.
Finding Love In Japan Can Make You Lonely
If there’s one thing I wish somebody had explained to me before I moved overseas, it’s this: You can be surrounded by people and still be lonely. I’ve experienced that feeling in Japan.
You’re far away from your family. Old friends are thousands of miles away. You’re dealing with another language and another culture. Even when things are going well, there can be moments when you desperately want somebody who knows you.
Then somebody comes along. She listens. She wants to spend time with you. You laugh together. You feel understood. And suddenly that loneliness starts disappearing. It feels wonderful. But I learned that there’s a difference between being in love with someone and being grateful that you’re no longer alone. That distinction isn’t always easy to see when you’re in the middle of it.
I’ve had to look honestly at my own decisions and admit that there were times when loneliness influenced how I felt about a relationship. That’s not something I’m particularly proud of. But it’s real. And I’ve learned more from admitting that than I ever would have from pretending I had everything figured out.
I Eventually Stopped Trying ~ Finding Love In Japan
This may be the biggest change Japan brought into my life. I had to become comfortable with myself. Not perfectly comfortable. I’m still working on that. But comfortable enough that I didn’t need another person to make my life feel worthwhile.
I needed friends. I needed meaningful work. I needed interests of my own. I needed places I enjoyed going and things I enjoyed doing. I needed to be able to spend a Saturday by myself without feeling like the entire day had somehow been wasted. That changed the way I looked at relationships.
When you’re lonely, you can meet somebody and immediately think, “Could this person be the answer?” When you’re comfortable with your own life, you can ask a much better question. “Do I actually like this person?” That’s a completely different starting point.
Finding Love In Japan Love Didn’t Become Easier Just Because I Was in Japan
This is where I disagree with some of the romantic stories you see about moving to Japan. You know the ones. Foreign guy moves to Japan. He discovers the culture. He meets a beautiful Japanese woman. They fall in love. Everything works out. The end. Nice story. Real life doesn’t usually work that way. My life certainly didn’t.
There were misunderstandings. There were disappointments. There were times when I thought something was going somewhere and it didn’t. There were moments when I probably expected too much and moments when I didn’t communicate enough.
There were also good times. Really good times. That’s the part that gets left out when people try to make life overseas look perfect. Living in Japan has given me some incredible experiences, but it has also forced me to deal with myself in ways I never expected. That’s what makes the experience meaningful.
Japan Changed the Way I Look at Relationships
After more than 26 years here, I don’t think about relationships the same way I did when I arrived.
I don’t believe there is some perfect formula. I don’t believe being American makes you more attractive. I don’t believe being Japanese makes someone automatically more compatible with you. And I certainly don’t believe moving to Japan will solve your romantic problems. If anything, moving overseas can expose them.
You bring yourself with you. Your insecurities come with you. Your bad communication habits come with you. Your unrealistic expectations come with you. Changing countries doesn’t magically leave those things at the airport. I know that now.
Would I Still Move to Japan?
Without question.
Even knowing everything I know now, I’d still get on that airplane. I would still leave that small Midwestern town. I’d still make the mistakes. I’d still struggle with the language. I’d still have the embarrassing moments. I’d still experience the relationships that worked and the ones that didn’t.
Because somewhere along the way, Japan became much more than the country I moved to. It became the place where I grew up in ways I didn’t know I needed to. When I arrived, I thought I was going to learn about Japan. Instead, I learned a lot about Michael. That’s probably the greatest surprise of all.
If You’re Thinking About Moving to Japan for Love
If you’re reading this because you’re thinking about moving to Japan and finding a Japanese partner, I’m not going to tell you it’s impossible.
It isn’t. You might meet someone here. You might fall deeply in love. You might even build the life you’ve been imagining. But don’t make finding a relationship the reason you come.
Come because you want to experience Japan. Come because you want to challenge yourself. Come because you want to learn. Come because you want to see what happens when you take yourself completely out of your comfort zone. Build your own life first. Learn the language. Make friends. Find work. Go places. Get lost. Make mistakes. Laugh at yourself.
And give relationships time to develop naturally. The right person doesn’t need to be the reward for moving to Japan. She can simply be someone you meet while you’re busy living your life. That’s a much better story. And it’s much closer to the story I’ve lived.
Want to Read the Next Story Before Everyone Else?
My experience in Japan didn’t end with this story.
There are plenty more stories to tell—about moving to Japan, work, relationships, friendship, cultural misunderstandings, starting over, and the things nobody tells you before you leave home.
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Don’t miss the next chapter of Michael Machida’s Japan story.
Looking for a Job in Japan?
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How are you going to make a living?
Finding the right job can be one of the hardest parts of starting a new life in Japan, especially if you need full visa sponsorship.
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Your life in Japan has to start somewhere.
Maybe this is where yours starts
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