Welcome to a great expat interview with Mike from the great blog Mikes Blender. Mike is a Canadian expat living in Japan and has one of the most interesting blogs I have ever come across. If you are looking for anything from beer shampoo to chocolate beer to golden sh** you can just hop on over to his site and you don’t even have to look past the first page (at least for now, when this post is published).

It was really fun for me going though the archives of Mikes site to see that there are some commonalities among expats around the world weather you are living in Norway or Japan. For example, missing things like Kraft macaroni and cheese. The event of going to the local Ikea and eating Swedish meatballs.

I would really suggest you take some time and stop over at his site to read all about his life in Japan. It is really a great site. Oh, but of course, only AFTER you read this great interview!

“Funny the things you miss when they aren’t readily available. When you live in a foreign country one of the things that affects you the most is the lack of many of the food products that you can get back home.In Japan, the list of things that you can’t find here … is very, very long. Back home I only occasionally ate Kraft (macaroni and cheese) Dinner, and while I liked it, I didn’t love it. More than 6 years in Japan makes you crave the things you can’t have though…” ~Mike

1.Where are you from originally, where are you now and what brought you there?

I’m originally from Ottawa, Canada and am now living in Tokyo Japan.  I can probably trace my path here to way back when I was a teenager and was interested in Japanese culture, I studied karate and aikido for about 10 years, but the thing that really pushed me to come was in university where I first started studying the language.  That class was definitely the best course I ever took.  The teacher not only taught the language, but also the culture, and she did an amazing job in terms of making the class productive and enjoyable.  After two years of studying Japanese I was definitely feeling like I wanted to go to Japan and take my language studies to the next level.  Of course it also helped that I my girlfriend at the time was Japanese

2.What do you like/dislike about your new home overseas?

Japan, well Tokyo especially, is an incredibly exciting place to live.  You really can find/do/buy/eat anything you want or need here.  Even after living here for 10 years there are always new and different things to experience, hence material for my website is seemingly endless.  In terms of food, restaurants and entertainment, it is top notch.

As for dislike, well a few things come to mind pretty quickly, but the worst in my mind is the crowded trains and subways.  Coming from a Canada where I grew up with wide open spaces and sparse crowds, public transportation here can sometimes be almost unbearable.  Even walking down the street can sometimes be a hassle.

3.Do you have any advice for someone who wants to get a job or visa in a foreign country?

If you’re thinking about working overseas, it is very helpful to study some of the language before you go.  Even if it’s just some greetings, natives of any country will appreciate this, and be more open to talking to you, and helping you.  In the case of Japan, it is not uncommon for Japanese people to actually be afraid to speak English. Sometimes they’ll do their  best to avoid speaking to you if you persist in using English or your mother tongue.

In terms of getting a visa and a job, it was in my mind very easy.  Of course I’ve only worked in Japan, so I can’t compare it to another foreign company, but generally, if you have a university or college degree, look professional and presentable, and can come across as eager to work, you’ll have no problem finding an English teaching job here.

Myself, I found a job here before arriving, which I’d recommend doing unless you want to come here and spend maybe a month looking around for a job with no salary in one of the most expensive countries in the world.  The internet has lots of sites devoted to jobs in Asia which you can browse through.  Keep in mind that you’ll most likely have to work in a small town in the countryside first as jobs in Tokyo are generally only available to people actually living here.  The reason for this is supply and demand. There are lots of foreigners living in Tokyo so companies here don’t have to look to far to fill a position.  Smaller towns have fewer options, and are often forced to hire from overseas to fill positions.  This can be a good thing for you in many ways. Not only will they will generally take care of your visa documents for you, small town companies will generally treat you with more respect and care than their Tokyo counterparts.

Companies in Tokyo can sometimes see you as just an number, and will sometimes treat you as such.  Best of all though, if you’re looking for the real Japanese experience, you’ll definitely find it in a smaller, out of the way town.  Myself I lived in the city of Hakodate in Hokkaido (the northernmost island of Japan).

4.What was the most challenging part of living in a foreign country when you first started out as an expat? Do you have any advice for those facing similar challenges?

For me the most challenging part of living overseas was arriving in a place where I knew absolutely nobody.  For the first few weeks I was pretty lonely, and a little depressed.  I wondered if I had made a good decision.  However I soon started to meet new people and those feelings vanished.  Had I not spoken a little Japanese, things would’ve been even more difficult, which goes back to the advice I gave in question 3.

5.If you were to do it all again, what would you do different?

Mike isn’t just a great expat writer and blogger, he is also an artist. Check out his artwork here!

Interesting question!  To be honest I don’t think there’s much that I would do different, things have worked out amazingly well for me.

6.Do you want to move back to where you came from? If not, what is it about the expat life that makes it all worth it to you?

I’ve lived in Japan for about 10 years now, and yes, most likely I will move back home sometime in the near future.  Japan has been good to me, but I don’t see myself living the rest of my life here.

7.What are some of the good, the bad, the ugly…and the funny things you have experienced living overseas? Please share any funny or fun stories you have about expat life in Japan.

Here’s a true experience I had one time.  I wrote it as a short story for a small English magazine.

So there I was, standing in front of the train station exit, trying to force open the pocket zipper of my gym pants.  Normally I don’t wear my gym clothes to the gym, but today I had been thinking it might save time to do so.  I put down my gym bag and tackled the broken zipper with both hands, still no luck.  Of course my train pass was inside my pocket and now I was stuck inside the train station, terrific.

Asking the guy at the ticket window for help in my broken Japanese would surely only serve to make a ridiculous situation look worse, so I pulled harder, nothing.  However I was to receive help from an unexpected source, the police.

I had only been wrestling with the zipper for about 3 minutes when I was suddenly surrounded by three undercover policemen.  The lead guy, dressed like a salaryman, flashed me his badge and an insincere smile and asked me what the problem was.  Explaining what the heck I was doing took a bit of time, but when I managed to do so they looked at each other as if to say, ‘yeah right, nice story’.  Another guy, dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, lent me his ballpoint pen and I managed to get the zipper unstuck and my train pass out, proving that I wasn’t a nutcase.  I wasn’t free yet though, first they interrogated me about what I was doing in Japan, and not until I had shown them my gaijin card was I free to go.

In retrospect I guess I might have looked kind of weird, no shower, unshaven, wearing my dress shoes with my gym clothes, yanking my pants around….

Take a sip of what Mikes mixed up in his blender with a few of his most popular posts:

The Pizza Nightmare
Ninja
Genki Drinks
Haikyo

Anyway it made me feel somewhat better that the police are keeping an eye out around the busy train stations these days, good work guys.  A friendly warning to those of you who didn’t come through the front door when entering Japan, don’t loiter around the train stations.

8. Did you experience culture shock when you moved? What was that like? How did you overcome it?

I’ll be honest with you.  People talk about culture shock, but I never really had it.  Maybe it had to do with the fact that I studied so much about Japanese culture before I came here, but from the very beginning I was quite comfortable living in Japan.  If culture shock equals things that I don’t like about Japan, then I can go back to question 2 and talk again about the crowds and public transportation.  As for how I deal with it, I don’t.  I just can’t get used to it.

9.Any practical tips for the new expats out there?

Always be open minded about whatever situation you’re in outside your home country.  How you see things may be completely different than how a native of the country your in sees it.  You know the expression ‘when in Rome’, well this is a good rule to live by.  Remember, if you decide to move to a new country, you are a guest there, not a citizen.

10.Where do you think you’ll go next?

I’ll always have a desire to travel, but in terms of living in a new country, I have no new destination in mind except back home to Canada.

Are you an expat living in Japan? Have you ever visited Tokyo? Please tell us all about it in a comment below!