dont feel bad skuu, many people who go overseas for more than a vacation usual return with a healthy appreciation of where they might call home. its normal and if you feel that its time to go then its time to go.

take it from a life long expat, dont stay somewhere if you'd rather be somewhere else. it'll just make you bitter. the main thing is to take something positive away from this whole experience, and it seems you have with your greater independence.

few people can hack it as an expat, and as you said, its not a necessary life skill. some of us are natural life long wanderers and some of us arent.

but for those still thinking of living in japan, i think most of you already know as much as you can cram into your heads. so i would start reading about expatriate life where ever if i were you. it is much more relevant, and will help you to prepare yourself for the mindset required to live in a foreign country for an extended period of time.

some shrink must have written a book about it somewhere.

And to be honest, it's all really a crapshoot -- you don't know where your going to end up during one of those homestay things.


During my trip I was with a really friendly, passionate, and unusually entertaining family. They were rich, and lived in a great neighborhood (Takefu, Fukui) untainted by wordly things.

My friend, on the other hand, was stuck with a really bizarre family -- a kind of rude, "surfer" like dad, normal mom, and a mentally handicapped kid. Not that there is anything wrong with that sort of thing, but he didn't speak any English -- where as our host brothers and sisters were pretty well spoken. By the end of the trip he was pretty turned off by the whole Japan experience.

My 'schpeal' :vsign:


To the OP:

What was it that you expected going into it? Did you have any preconceived ideas of what Japan was like?

I've kinda mentioned before that I consciously didnt have much of an idea what it would be like, but I had a naive idea that I'd always have things to do.

Also I was overconfident in that I knew I'd have problems but just expected myself to deal with them because 'I had to'. In hindsight I shouldnt have got the year visa, should have just gone as a tourist and stayed in places a short while with no strings until I knew I was OK.