So for the past 3 month or so, Dan and I were reluctant to plan to move back to our home country, England. Unfortunately, our life in Japan didn’t work out as we wished it to.
Dan had the best job an English teacher could of hoped for. He was employed by the board of education which is said to be the place most people work towards. Although this is said to be a good place to be, the pay wasn’t enough to support a family in the long term. Along side rent & food prices, for a foreign couple to start a family, it would of been too difficult. This made us think, “Well, how to Japanese teachers afford to support a family?” Then we found out that Japanese teachers earn more than foreign teachers as standard wage. Which I personally find discriminatory against foreigners. Don’t you?
After I finished my studying, I got a job in a bar to tide over the bills.
The first 8 months of us being there, we were living off savings we had saved up before coming. After they had gone, we were living off only Dan’s wage. It also doesn’t help that teachers in Japan do not get paid for the holiday like they do in England. So that was difficult! So we were forced to decide between living in Japan, scraping to get the bills paid, in a great country struggling to start a family or back to a not so great country, with our family, better house prices/sizes, able to support a family. And since we’re here in England, It’s obvious what we chose.
So, when we ‘decided’ to move back here, in lovely England, we had to sell all of our furniture etc. Obviously, we didn't accumulate much but we had a really good rice cooker and a traditional kotatsu that we were in love with! <3 We did want to have them sent to England but it turned out to be too expensive. :’( We, luckily managed to sell everything. Not for much but in our situation, (Moving back and starting a fresh) anything was better than nothing!
To ease the stress a little we booked to stay at a hotel the day of our last day in the apartment. We had booked to have a short holiday in Tokyo the day after.
Once we handed over the keys to our apartment, and we said our goodbyes to the amazing, helpful landlord, I had a little cry to myself. It was happening.
What was keep our minds off the whole thing was that neither of our families knew we were coming back, let alone coming back for good. (I will write about that in another blog) So we were both excited to see everyone.
The whole thing was crazy stressful, we would occasionally ask each other “Is this what we want?” “Are we doing the right thing?” etc It was never a 100% happy decision but we have to make the most out of it.
Never regret ANY decision you make. Everything happens for a reason. We both count ourselves amazingly lucky that we even got to experience it for a year. And who knows what will happen in the future?
