At 22, heartbroken, depressed, and unsure about my future, I craved novelty and adventure, so I packed up my life in England and moved to Japan.
Now, 31, living in Tokyo, and more secure than I’ve ever felt in my adult life, I can’t help but feel that creeping depression, pushing me to pack my bags once more.
In my early 20s, upending my life felt exciting. Now, in my 30s, it just feels indecisive.
In 2016, I’d graduated with a degree in fashion photography and was working three part-time jobs in my university town to scrape by while simultaneously trying (and failing) to get over intense heartbreak. I was struggling.
Hobbies like theater and kung fu had lost their shine, my future felt vast and uncertain. I wanted a fresh slate.
During my personally elected studies into Japanese fashion and aesthetics, I fell in love with Japan. My dissertation was titled “The rise of gender neutrality and its origins in Japanese design.” I even visited a friend studying abroad there in 2015, and that brief but fantastic sojourn left me thinking — somewhat naively — “I could live here.”
A year later, in my depressed state, that thought resurfaced. Then it became all I could focus on.
I needed to move to Japan
The move wasn’t completely off the cuff ー I’m not spontaneous enough for that. I applied to and was accepted into the JET Program, an organization that recruits thousands of graduates to teach English.
Rather than a traditional school placement, I was based at an education center in Kanagawa, about an hour from Tokyo, with occasional assignments at local high schools.
I threw myself into adapting: learning the rhythms of a new culture, working on my basic Japanese skills, and exploring my new environment. With every mountain climb, temple visit, and ramen bowl, I felt the blanket of depression start to fall from my shoulders.
I put myself out there once again, starting new hobbies such as MMA, kendo, and ikebana while reviving my old passions like drama. These led to new connections and opportunities. I felt reborn.
Japan had rekindled my passion for life. Feeling I’d gotten all I could from my teaching role, I decided to leave Japan with the goal of picking up where I was prior to my depressive episode.
Provided by Laura Pollacco
Life back in Europe
I returned to the UK only for the pandemic to cut right across all my well-laid plans. Like most of the country, I was trapped inside, questioning my life decisions, especially about leaving Japan.
I was better connected in Tokyo’s creative circles than in the UK, I had support in Japan, and the cost of living was considerably lower. I decided to move back, this time not out of depression, but out of hope and ambition.
In 2022, I returned on a working holiday visa, juggling remote freelance writing gigs with pitching to local publications. I pushed hard until, when my working holiday visa came to an end, I had enough work behind me to switch to the journalism visa in 2023.
Despite expanding my client list and gaining experience, my original fire began to flicker, then sputter, and more recently, it’s felt like I’m helplessly blowing on the embers to keep them from going out. I was burned out.
Depression was setting in again. I experienced fatigue, a lack of interest in my hobbies, a desire to be left alone, all while self-flagellating my lack of ambition and for “settling” in my career.
My loving fiancé — whom I met here in Japan — was starting to worry to the point where he offered to cover the cost of online therapy. During these sessions, I realized that, for the first time since moving back to Japan, I was starting to feel homesick.
Provided by Laura Pollacco
Living in a foreign country is tough
For starters, while I speak enough to get by, not speaking fluent Japanese is exhausting. As a multifaceted freelancer, immigration’s restrictive boxes feel like a choking dog collar yanking me back from new opportunities, not to mention the new gray hairs I gain with every annual visa renewal.
On top of that, I’ve felt a rise of anti-foreigner sentiment, and Tokyo’s concrete jungle is starting to feel claustrophobic and repressive.
In recent months, my brain has been flooded with ideas of returning back to the pastoral days of my youth. Stone cottages with actual gardens, walks down country paths with a dog by my side, fully understanding what’s being said to me at a doctor’s visit.
But I can’t tell if I’m truly wanting to return to England or if I’m trying to escape back into a childhood where responsibilities were minimal.
I’ve worked so hard to get to and stay in Japan, I don’t know whether to push through what could simply be a low period and wait to get to the other side, or whether my gut, my instinct, is trying to tell me something.
When it comes to big life choices like these, I realize I’ll only find out if it was the right decision after the fact. I just hope that, whatever my partner and I choose to do, we make the best of that decision.
