Mugi Blog

11 Years in Japan: My Very Strange Career So Far

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I just realized something… It’s been exactly 11 years since I packed up and moved from the US to Japan! Time flies, and it sure doesn’t slow down either.

In those 11 years, my life and career have gone in directions I never would have guessed. Government job → translator → project manager → software engineer → university staff → freelancer (and many detours in between).

I wanted to take some time to write about how I got here: how I first moved to Japan, landed my first job, and ended up on a completely different career path than the one I planned. If you’re thinking about moving to Japan, or you’re already here and just want another perspective, I hope this is useful or at least an interesting read.

How It Started: The JET Program

I was born and raised in the US, and I studied Japanese and education in university because I thought I wanted to be a teacher.

Spoiler: I am not a teacher. But that was the plan at the time.

(I did write a full year-by-year account of how I learned Japanese during those college years, starting with my first year as a complete beginner, if you’re curious about that part specifically.)

Like a lot of people interested in Japan, I heard about the JET Program and applied, since it seemed like a solid way to get into the country and land a first job. It turned out to be exactly that.

Here’s the funny part: since I actually wanted to become a teacher, the ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) position would have made more sense for me. But the CIR (Coordinator for International Relations) position caught my eye instead, because rather than working in a school, you work in an office environment, 100% in Japanese. I won’t say it sounded more fun, but it sounded like a rarer opportunity.

So I applied for the CIR position. There was a little checkbox on the application that basically said, “If my Japanese isn’t good enough to be a CIR, or there aren’t enough CIR positions, please make me an ALT instead.” I checked that box, of course…and then I actually got the CIR job. Whoops.

I moved to Japan in the summer of 2015, did orientation in Tokyo for a few days, and then flew out to my placement in Izumo, Shimane Prefecture. It was a pretty rural placement in a part of the country that a lot of people (even Japanese people) sadly forget about. And a lot of my friends were like, “Where the hell is that??” But I figured it was a chance to go somewhere I never would have gone otherwise.

(I’ve written a lot more about what the day-to-day work and life were like in another post if you want a deep dive)

Life as a CIR

I was a CIR in Izumo for three years, and the job pretty much matched what I’d heard from other JET alumni. Most days were spent in the office doing translation work, and sometimes interpreting for visitors from abroad. A couple times a week, I’d head out to schools, libraries, or community events to give talks about American culture. Not exactly lessons, but more like presentations, where I just tried to give people in the community a bit more exposure to the world outside Japan.

That part of the job was really fun. I won’t say I loved sitting in the office translating things all day, but getting out and talking with people (many of whom were quite curious about my background) was really rewarding.

Looking back, this job was a great way to ease into working in Japan. There wasn’t a ton of pressure, stress, or overtime. I think that’s pretty typical for CIR positions, though it does vary a lot. I’ve heard that some people get tough placements or difficult coworkers, while others have almost nothing to do. I landed somewhere in the middle, and I’m grateful for that.

That said, I started getting really bored in my second year. The first year, everything was new and there was a lot to learn. But years two and three just felt like exact repeats of year one. So by the time year three wrapped up, I was ready to leave, which was convenient because I actually had to leave. My contracting organization capped CIR contracts at three years (some places allow five, but not mine). The decision was made for me, so I started job hunting.

Job Hunting After JET

This part is stressful for a lot of JET participants, ALTs and CIRs alike. Honestly, I had no idea what I wanted to do next. I had some experience in translation and general office work, a bit of public speaking, and I still had that itch to try teaching. So I did what a lot of people in that position do: I applied to basically everything I thought I was even remotely qualified for. Translation and interpretation jobs, teaching jobs, even a few hospitality gigs at hotels and tourist spots.

I think I applied to over 30 companies. This was back in 2018 — I have no idea if that number is normal now, especially with how the job market has changed since. But eventually, I landed a job at Mercari.

Mercari, Chapter One: Translator

Mercari is a pretty big company now, but when I joined, it was in that awkward growth phase, transitioning from a startup into a major company.

My timing turned out to be great. It’s a competitive company to get into, but they happened to be desperate for translators and interpreters at the time. They were building out international teams and hiring engineers from all over the world, which meant a lot of employees were struggling to communicate with each other due to language barriers. I was brought in to handle internal translation and interpretation at meetings. Good timing, honestly.

I did that for about two years, and it was basically the opposite of my CIR job! Mercari was intense, fast-paced, and busy from morning to evening. Nobody told me to work overtime, but I did it anyways, translating as many documents as I possibly could. Partly because I wanted to make a good impression, and partly because I really wanted to get better at translation. It was a lot harder here than it had been before, since there was a ton of technical engineering/software vocabulary I had to learn from scratch.

I’m compressing two years into a few sentences here, but the tl;dr is: after meeting a lot of people, working with a lot of different teams, and building relationships in the company, I got an offer to switch into a more project-management-focused role, helping engineering teams coordinate big development projects.

That was completely new territory for me, but obviously I took it since it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. And honestly, that opportunity never would have shown up if I hadn’t put in those two years of grinding as a translator. It was hard work but I don’t regret the hours I put in (Though I also wouldn’t ever tell anyone to willingly do overtime, since it does take a toll).

Learning to Code

Around the same time I became a project manager, I was also attending a coding bootcamp after work called Le Wagon. I signed up because, after two years of working closely with engineering teams, I actually started getting interested in software.

I want to reiterate that I had zero technical background, and I never considered myself good with technology. But watching software teams build things and ship them to millions of users across the country was fascinating, and I thought, why not learn to code and see where I can take this?

The bootcamp was fun, hard, and intense. I’m pretty sure I lost a lot of hair over it, spending many evenings wondering why my code wouldn’t work (…or in some cases, wondering why my code worked). But joining was definitely the right decision, and I remember thinking, “Okay, I can actually see myself doing software dev for a living.”

(I go into a lot more detail on exactly how this transition worked in a dedicated post if you want to know more)

Becoming an Engineer at Mercari

So, still at Mercari, I requested an internal transfer to an engineering team. This is a real path there — several people before me had made the jump from non-technical roles into engineering. It’s difficult, but possible. There were basically two requirements.

First, obviously, you need the skills. They weren’t going to hand me an engineering title just because I asked nicely. I had to prove I could actually code and build things.

Second, I needed a specific team lined up that wanted to work with me. Mercari wasn’t going to go out of its way to find an open position for me — I had to do that myself, find a team with headcount for a junior engineer, and convince them I was worth taking a chance on. Since I’d already been at the company a few years and knew a lot of engineers, I asked around and found a tech lead who was interested in working with me. From there, I formally made a transfer request to HR and my manager, and things got moving.

The hard part was the interview process, and I mean the full process, the same one they run for external candidates. A technical test (think LeetCode-style algorithm problems), followed by three or four more interviews testing technical knowledge and culture fit. On top of that there was a take-home assignment: build a functional API in Go (a language I never used before), connected to a database and returning specific data.

The whole thing took several months and was quite painful, especially since I was never great at algorithm-style interview questions. But somehow it worked out, and I became an engineer at Mercari. And I was over the moon.

I was a software engineer at a big company, and it was hard to imagine anything that would make my Asian parents happier. I worked as an engineer there for about two and a half years, learned a ton, and only broke a couple things along the way.

Leaving Tech to Try Something Else

This probably sounds dumb and irresponsible right after mentioning how much hard work it took to become an engineer. And it probably was! But hear me out.

Toward the end of those two and a half years, I hit a point where I thought: being an engineer at a big company is fine. Stable income, pays the bills, and all that. But I really, really wasn’t sure it was what I wanted to be doing long-term.

Also, I had been at Mercari for nearly six years at that point, and I was ready for a change. The company had been a huge part of my work & social life that whole time (probably to an unhealthy degree), and there were still other things I wanted to try. So I finally left the company.

The timing worked out well, probably by accident. This was 2024, shortly after the COVID era wound down. I’d been working fully remote and had actually moved from Tokyo to Kyoto, since I like living there more (my favorite city in Japan, for a lot of reasons). Around that same time, Mercari started shifting toward a hybrid setup, wanting people back in the office a couple days a week. Commuting from Kyoto for that would’ve been rough. Not impossible, but I definitely didn’t want to be riding the Shinkansen for 4+ hours roundtrip, several times a week. So leaving when I did worked out.

The Experimental Phase

After that, I entered what I’d call a weird, exploratory chapter of life. Thankfully I already had my permanent residency by then, so I didn’t have to worry about visas, and I had enough savings to get by for a few months without panicking. So I just… tried a bunch of things I was curious about.

I did freelance translation work, a bit of game localization (which was really cool, even though I didn’t do much of it), and freelance writing, including some articles for TokyoDev and Japan Dev (both are great resources if you’re an engineer interested in Japan). I also worked part-time at the Nintendo Museum when it opened in Kyoto that fall (maybe I’ll make a separate post about that experience someday).

I also did some teaching at an after-school and Saturday program for English-speaking kids in Kyoto, helping with English lessons and also coding lessons. We taught kids how to build mini projects and games, mostly using simple tools like Scratch. That was the first time I actually got to be in a classroom as a teacher, which was a lot of fun.

Then I picked up work at a hostel run by some friends, doing hospitality work I’d always been curious about, plus some food prep and service at their cafe and lounge.

For over a year, I bounced between this mix of part-time, in-person work in Kyoto and freelance work on the side. Eventually I hit a point of, “Okay, I’ve tried a bunch of interesting things, but the income isn’t enough to actually live on.” So I decided to go back to full-time work.

Back to Full-Time: A University Job

One thing I’d always wanted to try was working at a university — not as a professor, but more like admin staff, something in the student advisor space. The reason goes back more than 10 years: when I was a student, the staff at my university helped me a lot. I studied abroad, switched majors multiple times, and needed a lot of support along the way.

They were incredibly helpful, and I honestly don’t think I would have graduated without them. Ever since, I’d thought it would be meaningful to be on the other side of that, helping students figure out their lives and careers.

I ended up finding a job at KUAS, a relatively new private university in Japan (that place alone has a whole story I won’t get into here). They were hiring full-time staff, the pay and conditions were better than I expected, and I figured, why not try it? I got the job and worked there for… seven months.

A really short tenure, I know. But after going back to a full-time job with a rigid schedule, I realized I just couldn’t do it anymore. I know that probably sounds really privileged, but I struggled so much with being in the same place every single day. Having already been through a few very different kinds of work, I had a much clearer sense of what fit me and what didn’t.

I liked my coworkers and I liked the students I worked with, but I decided it was better for me to leave and figure out the next thing.

Where I Am Now

So here I am, more or less back where I was before: working part-time a few days a week, doing freelance work on the side, and trying to figure out what personal projects are worth spinning up.

One thing I’m working on now is Mugi, a Japanese learning app mentioned on this very website you’re looking at! I’m taking everything I learned after many years of studying Japanese, and putting it into one app to make language learning easier and more fun.

So I’m not making a stable income right now, or living a life that most people would consider responsible. But I’m back in that experimental phase, trying to figure out how to combine everything I’ve picked up over the last 10–11 years — Japanese and English, translation and language work, a bit of education, and software engineering — into something that works.

Maybe the smart move would have been to specialize early, get really good at one thing, and do that for a decade. But I ended up as a generalist, switching roles every couple of years. No regrets though, just a different path.

In the meantime, I’ll keep sharing stories and lessons from my 10+ years in Japan. If there’s something specific you want to hear about, whether it be about visas, JET, the switch into engineering, freelancing, or whatever, feel free to contact me anytime!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one.

Why Kyoto Is My Favorite City in Japan (After 10 Years and Three Different Cities)

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Let me ramble a bit about Kyoto, the city I’ve lived in for the last five years.

During my time in Japan, I’ve lived in three very different parts of the country: first was Shimane Prefecture, out in western Japan. Next was Tokyo for about three years. And now, I’m in Kyoto. Of all the places I’ve lived, Kyoto is by far my favorite, and here’s why.

(Side note: My connection to this city goes back even further since I actually studied abroad in Kyoto back in college, years before I ever imagined living here permanently.)

It’s Beautiful and Not Overrated

The obvious reason first: it’s just a really beautiful city, with an enormous amount to do. I know Kyoto has a reputation for being overly touristy, but honestly, tourists come here for good reason. It really is a wonderful place to visit. There’s no shortage of amazing attractions: temples, shrines, historic streets.

Visitors tend to funnel into a handful of famous spots, like Fushimi Inari Shrine, the Arashiyama area, and Kiyomizu-dera. And yes, those places get insanely crowded. Tourists might wonder how anyone could possibly live in such a crowded city. But the paradox is that people who actually live in Kyoto never actually go to those places. It’s the same as how Parisians have no particular reason to visit the Eiffel Tower, and New Yorkers avoid Times Square like the plague.

Outside of those tourist-heavy areas, there’s a ton to explore and so many great things to do off the beaten path.

Perfect Balance of City and Nature

Kyoto is, by every measure, a major Japanese city: there are several bustling downtown areas, tons of shops and restaurants, plenty of tall buildings. If you want that big-city energy, it’s there for you.

But if city life ever starts to wear you down, Kyoto also gives you very easy access to nature and quiet. My favorite spot in the whole city is the Kamogawa River, which runs straight through Kyoto from north to south. It’s this incredible public space where people gather to do basically everything: picnics, jogging, biking, practicing instruments (nobody minds the noise on the riverbanks), playing sports, even dance practice. It’s free, it’s open to everyone, and it’s one of the most relaxing places I know. Kyoto is also surrounded by mountains, so if you’re into hiking or just want to get some fresh air away from the pavement, there are always great trails nearby.

When I lived in Shimane, which is a much more rural part of the country, things were relaxing for sure. But I often felt like something was missing, because I felt isolated and really missed the big-city energy. Tokyo was the opposite problem: incredible energy, but sometimes overwhelming, and it was actually hard to find places to just relax and get away from it all. In over five years living in Kyoto, I’ve never really run into either problem because I can match my day to my mood. High energy when I want it, and quiet and calm when I don’t.

An Amazing Location

Kyoto sits in the Kansai region, alongside cities like Osaka, Kobe, Nara, and Shiga Prefecture, which is literally Kyoto’s next-door neighbor. Osaka in particular is one of Japan’s biggest cities, rivaling Tokyo in scale and sheer amount of things to do. So if Kyoto ever doesn’t have quite what I’m looking for on a given day, Osaka is right there, less than an hour away by train. Kobe, Nara, and Shiga are all just as easy to reach. Living here, you’re basically never at a loss for somewhere new to explore.

Not Too Big, Not Too Small

Kyoto is also refreshingly compact, nothing like the sprawling, sometimes overwhelming scale of Tokyo. That compactness makes getting around really easy, especially if you have a bicycle. Public transportation isn’t quite as extensive as Tokyo’s, but it’s more than enough. I’ve never once felt like I needed a car here.

And speaking of biking, it’s great here since the city is compact and mostly flat. Most places I want to go are reachable in under 20 minutes by bike, since everything is close together. And outside a handful of specific areas, the city just isn’t that busy.

Biking along the river is one of my favorite things to do here. It’s incredibly relaxing.

It’s Actually Affordable

Tokyo is, by a wide margin, the most expensive city in Japan. A studio apartment there can run anywhere from about ¥70,000 to well over ¥100,000 a month, depending heavily on location, size, and age of the building. Kyoto rent, by comparison, tends to land around the national average, more like ¥40,000 to ¥60,000 a month. Nicer parts of town might push toward ¥70,000, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. Most people I know living in studio apartments here pay somewhere around ¥50,000 a month or less.

For comparison: when I lived in Tokyo, I had a fairly nice studio apartment, about 25 square meters, in a decent neighborhood, and I was paying just over ¥100,000 a month. In Kyoto, my first place was actually a small detached house: two floors, a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and even an attic. Way more space than I needed living alone, and it only cost around ¥85,000 a month. That was literally cheaper than my Tokyo apartment which felt like a shoebox in comparison. If I’d gone for a more typical studio setup instead, I could easily have found something under ¥50,000 a month. It’s easier to live affordably here if that’s what you want.

To be fair, this comes with a trade-off: average wages in Kyoto are lower than in Tokyo if you’re working locally. But in my own experience, I’ve been able to save considerably more money living here and worry a lot less about things like finances and hellish morning commutes. That extra breathing room ended up mattering a lot during the more experimental, lower-income stretch of my career after I left my full-time job.

It’s Chill

Last thing: Kyoto just has an easygoing vibe, and everything here moves at a noticeably slower pace than in a big city. People generally seem more relaxed, and in my experience, friendlier overall than in Tokyo. I think that edge you feel in big cities is kind of unavoidable: there’s so much constant stimulation that people naturally learn to tune out the world around them just to function. I get it, since I literally did that myself when I lived in Tokyo. But that pressure just doesn’t really exist here in the same way. People seem to have a bit more time and energy to spare, which has made it much easier for me to connect with people and build real friendships. That, to me, has been one of the most valuable parts of living here.

Final Thoughts

If you’re thinking about visiting Japan, I’d definitely recommend making Kyoto a stop. Some people will tell you it’s overcrowded or overrated, but I don’t agree. I think this city has something to offer almost anyone. And if you happen to be considering studying or working in Japan and have some say in where you end up living, I’d recommend giving Kyoto a try. It’s been fantastic for me, and I plan on staying here for the long run.

That’s just my perspective, but I hope it was interesting if you were curious what it’s actually like to live here. If you’ve got questions about the city, or about living in Japan more broadly, drop a message and I’m happy to answer.

3 Language Learning Tips That Actually Got Me to Fluency in Japanese

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Three quick and unconventional(?) tips for anyone learning Japanese!

My background: I was born and raised in the US, and English is my native language. I started learning Japanese completely from scratch at 18, so as an adult with zero head start. Over the course of about two to three years, I got to a level most people would call fluent. (If you want the exact semester-by-semester details, I wrote a three-part timeline covering the whole thing.)

Those two to three years were hard, and there were plenty of moments where I seriously wondered if I’d ever get my Japanese to a meaningful level. But I did, and I picked up a few things along the way that I think mattered more than any specific study method. Here they are.

Tip 1: Be Obsessed With the Language

I really think people don’t talk about this enough, but in my opinion it’s by far the most important factor when learning any language. It’s more important than which textbook you use or which app or method you follow. Before any of that, you need a reason. Ideally, an obsessive one.

In my case, I started learning Japanese because I was obsessed with Japanese pop culture. That’s not exactly a deep or noble reason to pick up a second language, but it was my reason, and it worked, because that obsession is what kept me studying year after year until I finally hit a level I was happy with.

I’d encourage anyone learning a language to find that same kind of pull. If you’re learning a language purely because school requires it, or because you think it’ll be good for your career someday, those motivations tend to fizzle out. They’re real, but they’re surface-level, and language learning is a long game. It can take years before you see real results. Without something closer to obsession driving you, it’s an uphill battle.

If you’re reading this, there’s probably something about the Japanese language or culture that really excites you. Lean into it hard! Even if that means being a total nerd about it, binge-watching anime for days on end, whatever form your obsession takes, embrace it shamelessly. It’ll end up being your biggest ally during the long journey.

Tip 2: Focus on Input Over Output

When people start learning a language, they tend to stress about things like, “I don’t have anyone to practice speaking with,” or “I don’t have opportunities to use it.” I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Practicing speaking (getting comfortable making mistakes and correcting them) does matter, but it matters a lot less than input.

The logic is simply that if you’re not taking in the language, you have nothing to draw from when you try to produce it. And if you’re studying a language while living somewhere it isn’t spoken, you still have tons of options: you can immerse yourself digitally. YouTube, radio, podcasts, Netflix, whatever. You can build an environment where you’re hearing your target language constantly, all day if you want. And in this sort of mysterious way, all that listening input naturally starts showing up in your speaking ability over time.

I like to draw a distinction between learning a language and acquiring one. Learning is the conscious stuff: studying grammar from a textbook, memorizing vocab lists, then deliberately pulling those words up when you speak or take a test. That’s useful, and you should certainly do it if you have the time. But it’s different from acquisition, which is when the language actually gets internalized. It’s when you speak and the words just come out without you consciously assembling every sentence in your head first.

The only way to acquire a language to that level is through a huge volume of input. Think about how people learn their native language: years and years of nonstop input before they’re really fluent. Learning a second language as an adult isn’t fundamentally different in that regard. Flashcards and textbooks are actually good tools (again, I’d never tell you to skip them), but they should be a supplement to your studying, not the main event.

Tip 3: Create Opportunities to Actually Use the Language

I know this sounds like it contradicts Tip 2, where I just told you output matters less than input. But hear me out: the reason this matters isn’t really about getting more speaking practice reps in. It’s about the feeling.

Getting the chance to actually use a language you’ve been grinding away at (to communicate, to be understood) is an incredibly fun and rewarding experience. That moment when you’ve put in real work, then go to the country where the language is spoken and successfully have a meaningful conversation and actually connect with someone, that’s one of the best feelings out there. And chasing that feeling, that little high of “I did this, and it’s because of the work I put in,” is one of the biggest things that will keep you motivated through a long, slow process.

Personally, I’ll never forget the feeling I had when I visited Japan for the very first time. My Japanese was very rough and I sounded like an incoherent child, if I’m being generous. But somehow, when I asked the airport staff where I could store my bags, and I asked a station attendant how I could buy a ticket to get to Osaka… They understood me. They responded, solved my problems, and got me on my way.

I remember thinking, “holy crap, the Japanese that I studied is real, and it works! It’s actually working!!”

It’s a great feeling when you succeed at communicating, even if it’s the most basic conversation. When I was at the beginner/intermediate levels, that stretch of my life was one of the most exciting periods I can remember, almost entirely because of how often I got to feel that sense of accomplishment.

So those are my three tips, straight from my own experience: get obsessed with the language, prioritize input over output, and go out of your way to create chances to actually use what you’re learning.

Hope this was helpful, and thanks for reading!

If you’re curious how I ended up using Japanese professionally (translation, interpretation, and eventually a completely different career), I’ve written about that too, starting with my three years as a JET Program CIR.

What It's Actually Like to Be a CIR on the JET Program: My 3 Years in Izumo

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I was on the JET Program for three years, working as a CIR (Coordinator for International Relations) in a small city called Izumo, in Shimane Prefecture. Like a lot of JET participants, this was my first job in Japan. I moved there right after graduating college, and it ended up being my introduction to working in this country.

I just realized it’s July again, which means a new batch of people are getting ready to head to Japan for their JET experience later this month. It’s been about 10 years since I started myself, but I wanted to write up my own experience: what the job actually looked like day to day, what living there was like, and my honest take on whether it’s worth it. I hope it’s useful if you’re heading into JET, or just curious what working in Japan is like.

(This is the detailed version of one chapter from my 11 years in Japan post)

My Placement: Izumo City Hall

I was placed at Izumo City Hall. When I arrived in 2015, the building was fairly new and quite nice (I think they’d just finished construction on it not long before). My office was on the third floor.

We finished orientation in Tokyo, and all the JETs (ALTs and CIRs alike) placed in Shimane Prefecture flew out together on the same flight. After landing, one of my bosses and my predecessor (another American who held the CIR position before me) picked me up from the airport. It was super casual and friendly right from the start: we stopped at a family restaurant called Joyfull on the way, had lunch, and then they took me to the office and got me all set up.

The Department I Worked In

My department was called Kokusai Kouryu Shitsu (国際交流室), basically the international affairs division. We handled things like coordinating visits from guests of other countries, whether for diplomatic or business reasons.

But the bigger part of the job was translation. We translated pretty much every document the city used: things residents needed for move-in procedures, enrolling kids in preschool, applying for health insurance or pension, and all the everyday bureaucracy people have to deal with. Izumo actually had a surprisingly large foreign population thanks to a couple of universities in the area, so we had a fair number of master’s and PhD students from all over the world who needed these documents translated.

We also did a bit of educational outreach. Not really teaching, but visiting schools to give talks about our home countries: what it’s like to grow up in the US, what it’s like living in Japan as a foreigner, that kind of thing. The goal was mostly to get students a little more curious about the world outside Japan.

My Team and Coworkers

Our team was five people. There was our boss, who we called shitsucho (室長), since we were part of a “shitsu” (室) rather than the more common departmental structure where you’d use titles like kacho (課長) or bucho (部長).

Next to him was our main supervisor, whose official title was shunin (主任). She was the direct supervisor for all the JET participants on our team, so she was the person I reported to and worked with most closely.

Then there was our Portuguese interpreter. One thing that surprised me about Izumo: it had a very large Brazilian population, many of Japanese descent, who came to work in local manufacturing (mostly electronics components made by companies like Murata and Fujitsu). A lot of them didn’t speak Japanese or English, so the city hired a dedicated Portuguese-Japanese interpreter. She too was Japanese-Brazilian, fluent in both languages, and an absolute joy to work with.

Across from her was another CIR, from Finland. I got really lucky having her there: she’d already worked professionally as a translator and interpreter in Finland for several years before JET. She was excellent at her job across the board: great translations, great interpreting, and her talks about Finland and Finnish culture at local schools were always entertaining and actually educational. I learned a ton just from watching how she worked. My desk was right next to hers.

Overall, the office was a lot more casual and friendly than I expected going in. There are tons of stereotypes about Japanese work culture, involving brutal overtime, abusive bosses, harassment, and all that. And that is a real problem at plenty of companies and workplaces in Japan; it’s slowly improving, but it’s far from solved everywhere. Still, going into this job without knowing what to expect, I found it was much better than I’d braced for. Everyone just wanted to do their work and go home at a reasonable hour.

My direct supervisor and I did butt heads sometimes. There were moments I thought she was being a bit strict or unreasonable, and it got a little awkward. But looking back, I was a cheeky 22-year-old fresh out of college, pretty immature for my age honestly, and I probably annoyed her more often than she annoyed me. It is what it is.

The Actual Work

As far as day-to-day tasks go, I’d say 60–70% of my job was translation. I think my CIR position ended up being more translation-heavy than some others. A typical day: I’d get into the office, check my email, and usually have a handful of translation requests from other departments in the city. Maybe the insurance department had updated an application form. Maybe the city rolled out new incentives for parents of newborns and needed materials translated.

Occasionally, there’d be tourism-related work too. Despite being pretty far out there and considered fairly rural, Izumo is home to Izumo Taisha, one of Japan’s most important shrines and a major tourist destination.

One of the more absurd translations I did: when Pokémon Go launched in 2016, we had a problem with people wandering around like smartphone zombies, bumping into things on the shrine grounds. So I got to translate a sign for Izumo Taisha that basically read, “Please don’t play Pokémon Go on the shrine grounds.” You get some pretty quirky assignments in a job like this.

I didn’t do as much interpreting: maybe once or twice a week, a foreign resident would come into city hall, run into a language barrier at the counter, and I’d get a call to come interpret. I helped people register addresses, sign up for insurance and pension, that sort of thing. It was pretty cool because I got to meet people with completely different careers and life paths than mine. Quite a few researchers and PhD students from South and Southeast Asia, a couple from Mongolia (I had never actually met anyone from Mongolia before moving to Japan).

The most fun part of the job, though, was the once-or-twice-a-week visits to schools, libraries, or preschools to do talks and workshops. At elementary, junior high, and high schools, I’d basically give this rundown: I grew up in America, here’s what the country is like, here’s what it’s known for, and here’s what you could expect if you visited. I also went fairly often to hoikuen (保育園), basically nursery schools or preschools. The kids there were around two to three years old and barely spoke Japanese yet, let alone English, so a 10-15 minute talk was obviously out of the question. Instead, we’d play games in English, like an English version of musical chairs. We also did the “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” song and dance a lot, which the kids loved and would try to sing along to. It wasn’t really English instruction in any formal sense, but more like just exposure to the sounds and words. I’m not sure how much educational value it had, but we did what we could to make it fun.

Where I Lived and How I Got Around

Like pretty much all JETs, I had my own apartment, arranged and subsidized by the city. It was about a 15-minute bike ride from the office, and I was expected to walk or bike in every day. There was no public transportation to speak of. I was allowed to own a car if I wanted one, and I did end up getting one, but I wasn’t allowed to drive it to work. (I think that came down to insurance: if I got into an accident commuting, it wouldn’t have been covered under workers’ insurance, and since I lived so close to the office anyway, they just didn’t bother enrolling me for that.)

So I biked to work every single day. It was a really nice way to commute, except when the weather was bad. The other downside was that I’ve always been terrible at waking up early, and now I had a job that required it. I also have long-ish hair for a guy, so there were many mornings where I wouldn’t have time to comb it, I would bike to work as fast as I could, and would show up with the wind having turned my hair into an absolute disaster. My supervisor understandably got mad at me a couple times for looking like a mess. Whoops.

The Apartment

The apartment itself was a 2DK: two bedrooms plus a small combined dining and kitchen area. For a Japanese apartment, it was more spacious than I expected, honestly more than I needed. And the best part is that it was cheap! The city heavily subsidized it, so I only paid 10,000 yen a month in rent, and that was the same deal for every JET in my city, ALTs and CIRs alike. We had it pretty good. That said, subsidy amounts do vary a lot by placement, so I wouldn’t count on getting a deal like that; go in expecting to pay a normal amount for rent, and treat any subsidy as a bonus.

The one real downside was that the building was old and not well insulated. Winters got freakishly, uncomfortably cold. There were mornings I could see my breath indoors. It was somehow colder inside than outside, probably a mix of no sunlight and the apartment just trapping cold air. It felt like living in a cardboard box some days. I also didn’t understand how to use the heating properly at first. Eventually I figured out a system: close all the interior doors, hole up in one room, run the heater, and add an electric carpet and some floor insulation. That helped a lot. But coming from the US, where central heating is just a given, that first winter was rough.

The Car

I ended up leasing a car from a small, family-run company that had a good reputation among JETs in the area and was friendly to foreigners. Nothing fancy: a very basic kei car, but cheap, around 15,000 yen a month plus a bit extra for insurance.

I didn’t strictly need a car. Izumo counts as inaka (countryside), but it’s not so remote that you can’t get by on a bike or the occasional bus and train. Having a car just opened up more options: events, activities, places that weren’t reachable by public transportation. Most of the ALTs in my city ended up getting cars too, since many of them worked across different schools scattered around the city. Among the CIRs, though, I think I was the only one who bothered. The others mostly biked or took the train into city hall. It really comes down to personal preference.

The Good Things About Being a CIR

I’ll just say it upfront: I’m really glad I did JET, and I think being a CIR was the best possible way for me to start my career in Japan. It eases you into working in a Japanese environment. They’re forgiving if your Japanese isn’t perfect or if you make mistakes, and while you do have real responsibilities, they’re not overwhelming: there were no high-stakes projects where messing up could cause financial damage or seriously inconvenience a lot of people. It’s a good place to learn without a ton of pressure.

I also got to meet a huge range of people and try a lot of different things. On the work side alone: translation, interpreting, public speaking, some event planning, even a couple of business trips to the US. I interacted with people across the entire age spectrum, from two-year-olds to senior citizens. It’s a job that demands you be a bit social and curious, and while I wouldn’t call myself the most naturally social person, I am a curious one, so that worked in my favor.

There was a lot to learn overall, and by the end of my three years, I was surprised at how much I actually had to put on my resume and talk about in job interviews. Being a CIR gives you a really solid, talkable skill set.

One more thing worth mentioning: the vacation policy was generous. Legally, workplaces in Japan only need to give a minimum of 10 paid vacation days a year, which is terrible. But my placement gave us 20, which is very generous by Japanese standards. Even better, when I got sick (which happened a couple of times), I was allowed to take sick leave separately instead of burning through my paid vacation days. I think a lot of people don’t realize this is even an option. I remember my bosses actually contacting CLAIR (the organization that runs the JET Program) to confirm how to handle it, and it turned out those days off were essentially free, separate from my allotment of paid vacation days.

The Not-So-Good Things

The first downside is a bit expected: the work culture is pretty rigid. I mentioned it was more casual and friendly than I expected, and that’s true, but it’s still a Japanese office environment. Which means dressing formally and wearing a necktie outside of summer months. I personally really dislike dressing formally, so that was quite a pain in the neck 🥁

They were also strict about time. Our official hours were 9:15 to 5:15, and thankfully we could pretty much always leave right on time. But in the mornings, you were expected to be in the office and ready to work by 9:00. If you arrived at 9:15, the technical start time, that counted as late, and people noticed. I was late more than a few times, because I still, to this day, am bad at waking up. When that happened, I had to go apologize (formally bowing and everything) to the head of the department above ours, essentially my boss’s boss’s boss, someone I’d otherwise never interact with. Very Japanese-office energy. Lunch was also strictly 12:00 to 1:00pm with very little flexibility. Everyone went to the same lunch spots at the same time, so it was always crowded, and you had to be back on time.

The other issue, common to a lot of jobs to be fair, was the unevenness of the workload. There were busy times, but there were also times where there was literally nothing to do. And I mean nothing. I had entire days where I just sat in the office pretending to look busy. In hindsight, I should have taken the initiative to find or invent new projects, but at the time I just didn’t have the inspiration for it.

This got especially noticeable after the first year. During year one, everything was new and I was learning constantly, which was great. Years two and three were basically exact repeats of year one: same schedule of events, same schools, same people (which was nice in its own way, but also a sign I wasn’t growing anymore). I was comfortable and I knew exactly what to expect, but I wasn’t being challenged. By year three, I was mentally checked out.

To be clear, plenty of CIRs stay three to five years and really enjoy the whole experience from start to finish. It can be a very comfortable place to be. I think I’m just someone who craves novelty more than most, so doing the same thing for three straight years wasn’t great for me specifically. That doesn’t mean it won’t be great for you: you know yourself better than I do, so take my experience with a grain of salt.

Overall Thoughts

Being a CIR on JET was, overall, a really good decision. I went in without knowing whether I’d enjoy it, and it worked out. After my CIR contract ended, I landed a new job in Tokyo and moved there. And by now, I’ve been in Japan for almost 11 years. I eventually made my way to Kyoto too, which is my favorite city in Japan and where I still live now. I’m comfortably settled here, I have a family here, and I have no plans to move back to the US anytime soon. JET was the first stepping stone that got me into the country and set me on the path to where I am now, and I’m really glad I did it.

Whether you go in as an ALT or a CIR, both routes open up a lot of doors. A lot of the ALTs I met during my time ended up staying in Japan long-term; some got their teaching licenses and became full-time teachers, but plenty of others branched into completely different fields: sales, tech, university admin work, even becoming professors. There’s a wide range of paths available if you go looking for them. In my own case, that path eventually led me into software engineering, of all things, not something I ever expected when I was translating city hall pamphlets in Izumo.

If you want to hear more about what I’ve done and learned over my decade-plus in Japan, I hope you’ll stick around. And feel free to send a message if you have specific questions about JET, and I’m happy to help where I can.

How I Became a Software Engineer in Japan With Zero Tech Background

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I worked as a software engineer at one of Japan’s biggest tech companies for about three years. Looking back, it’s still a little surreal, because it was an extremely unexpected career turn for me. I’m writing this up in case it’s useful for anyone else trying to break into tech from a non-technical background, especially if you’re doing it in Japan, where the work culture doesn’t always seem built for that kind of pivot.

This covers the same stretch of my career as my longer 11 Years in Japan retrospective, but goes a lot deeper into the actual mechanics of the tech transition. If you want the fuller story of everything before and after this, that post has it.

Where I Started

I don’t have any background in tech, coding, or anything close to it. My academic background is in Japanese and education: I studied Japanese as a second language in college in the US, along with education, hoping to become either an English teacher in Japan or a Japanese teacher back home. Neither of those things happened.

Instead, I came to Japan exactly 10 years ago through the JET Program, usually known for placing people in schools to teach English, but I went a different route and became a CIR (Coordinator for International Relations) instead, doing translation and interpretation work rather than teaching. I did that for three years until my contract wrapped up, then started job hunting.

Purely by chance, I interviewed with Mercari, which at the time was a young, fast-growing company (it’s a much more established name in Japan now, but back then it was still very much in its scrappy growth phase). Good timing on my part. I joined as a translator and interpreter on their language team.

The Language Gap That Pushed Me Toward Code

Mercari was a young tech startup, and my job put me in constant meetings with software engineers and product teams, interpreting between Japanese engineers who didn’t speak much English and engineers from abroad who didn’t speak much Japanese. There was a real language gap to bridge, and I had zero technical background to help me bridge it.

Honestly, it was brutal at first. I had no idea what anyone was talking about half the time, and I mean that literally. I couldn’t translate concepts I didn’t understand. So I made a decision: I needed to actually learn about tech. Not necessarily to become an engineer, just to become a competent translator. I started spending my free time studying technical concepts — not just how to code, but how product development actually works.

Somewhere in that process, watching engineers build really cool products and ship them to the world, I got curious about something bigger: what if I became an engineer at this company? What if I got good enough at coding to actually ask my boss for a transfer to the engineering team?

It turned out I wasn’t the only one who’d thought about this. There were a few other people at the company who’d come from non-technical, business-facing roles and found their own way into engineering by picking up the skills on their own. Seeing that it was possible for them made it feel possible for me too.

Starting With Code in Place (Stanford)

I started taking it seriously. First step: I signed up for Code in Place, a free online coding class offered by Stanford during the first year of the pandemic. It ran about a month and a half and taught the fundamentals of programming.

This ended up mattering more than I expected, not just for the skills, but because it’s where I learned I actually liked coding. Something about using logic to solve problems and writing code just clicked for me. That was the moment I started thinking engineering might be a real career option, not just a curiosity.

Going Deeper: Le Wagon

From there, I signed up for a coding bootcamp called Le Wagon, a much deeper, six-month, part-time program. I kept working my full-time job the entire time and did bootcamp coursework on weeknights and weekends. It was intense: roughly 20 hours a week of studying on top of a full-time job. Not easy by any stretch, but I came out of it having learned far more than I expected going in.

Making the Internal Transfer

By the time I finished the bootcamp, I was ready to actually start the transfer process at my company. I had a real advantage here: I’d already been at the company for a couple of years, had built up genuine friendships and professional connections across different teams, and people who knew and trusted me. After talking to a number of people, including my managers at the time, we agreed I could transfer to engineering, provided I passed the same interview process any external candidate would.

They weren’t going to hand me the role. I had to prove I could actually code and think like an engineer. The hardest part by far was the first technical interview: algorithm-based, LeetCode-style. I spent several months grinding LeetCode problems, which was actually painful, but I eventually got the hang of it and passed. The interviews after that focused more on mindset, culture fit, and talking through projects I’d built. The whole transfer process took two to three months from start to finish — not fast, but it worked. I got my first engineering role and spent almost three years working as a backend engineer on the company’s app.

The Bigger Lesson

The whole experience still feels a little unreal to me. I was never a “technical” person growing up. I was bad at math and science in school and always assumed I’d end up in some career that didn’t involve much logical problem-solving. A few years into my career, I ended up a software engineer, which is about the last thing I would have predicted for myself.

What I took away from it is that your career can go in directions you’d never expect, and if you want to change direction, you probably can. There’s nothing stopping you from learning a new skill from scratch and using it to land a different kind of job.

There are a lot of paths into engineering, but if I simplify what worked for me, it looks something like this:

Join a company in a non-technical role, doing something you already know how to do.
Build real relationships across teams while you’re there: trust matters more than people expect.
Use your free time to learn the skills the new role actually requires.
Leverage the trust and connections you’ve built to make the internal switch once you’re ready.

This is surprisingly doable even in a country like Japan, where the work culture leans more rigid and less flexible than people might assume. It just takes some commitment and a willingness to put in the work outside your normal hours. I’m not the smartest person around, and I can be plenty lazy on a given day, but I managed to redirect my career, and I think most people could do the same if they wanted to.

That’s my story. Hope it was useful, or at least interesting. If you’ve got questions about working in tech in Japan, or working in Japan in general, drop a message and I’m happy to answer what I can.

The Real Cost of Living in Kyoto

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve been living in Kyoto since 2021. Before that I was in Shimane (very rural) and Tokyo for a while. Kyoto is where I’ve stuck around the longest, and it’s also where I plan to stay for the foreseeable future.

Of course, Kyoto is famous for tourism. Millions of people visit every year, and I hope they all have an amazing time here, because it really is an awesome city to visit. But not many people stop to think about what it’s actually like to live here day to day. So that’s what this post is: a full breakdown of what my life costs in Kyoto.

Quick intro in case you’re new here: I’m Alex, and I’ve been living in Japan for 11 years now. I came here on the JET Program, later worked at a tech company, then a university, and now I’m doing my own thing. Some part-time work, some freelance writing, and building Mugi, my Japanese-learning app.

Let’s get into it!

Like most people, my biggest expense is rent. I live in a two-bedroom apartment, also known as a “2LDK” here. That means 2 bedrooms plus a Living/Dining/Kitchen room. I live with my wife and my dog, Mugi (who inspired the app!)

Total rent for the place is ¥90,000/month, which is pretty cheap for an apartment this size in Kyoto. The catch is the location, as we’re not in central Kyoto. We’re out in the suburbs, where it’s mostly families, not much in the way of entertainment, and it’s a solid 15–20 minute walk to the nearest station, which is further than average. That’s basically what brings the price down.

I pay ¥50,000/month, which is a bit more than half. I think it’s fair since I work from home a lot, so I’m using more electricity and utilities and stuff than my wife.

Utilities include electricity, gas, water, and internet, and they vary a lot depending on the season.

Electricity — In the nicer months (spring, autumn) it’s usually around ¥2,000–3,000/month. But in summer when it’s stupidly hot, or winter when it’s freezing, it can go over ¥10,000/month. Part of that is because the apartment’s a bit old and the insulation isn’t great. Averaged across the year it’s about ¥9,500/month, split evenly, so I pay ¥4,750/month.

Gas: Mainly for cooking and heating water, so it can also vary by season. Averages around ¥5,500/month, so my half is ¥2,750/month.

Water: Averages about ¥5,000/month, so my share is ¥2,500/month. It’s a little higher than average because we use the bathtub a lot, because hot baths are awesome!

Internet: About ¥4,700/month, and I pay this one entirely myself since I’m home more and use the internet way more (I’m addicted to the internet, send help). I use Rakuten Hikari, but most providers cost about the same.

Phone — I also use Rakuten Mobile, mainly because they had a good sign-up deal a few years back. Their pricing is data-tiered: under 3GB is about ¥1,000, 3–20GB is about ¥2,000, and over 20GB is ¥3,000 flat with unlimited data after that. I use somewhere around 5–10GB a month, so my bill lands around ¥2,000/month.

Haircuts: ¥2,000/month

I’m lazy about this. I let my hair grow out for a couple of months and then get it all cut at once, which usually costs around ¥3,500 for a proper cut every 2–3 months. A more disciplined person might go monthly for a cheaper ¥2,000 cut. Averaging it out, I’d put this at about ¥2,000/month.

Dog: ¥2,000/month

Food, vet visits, treats, toys. She’s a small dog and doesn’t eat a huge amount, so we buy a 5kg bag of food and it lasts a while. Japan also does pretty great, cheap dog toys. Vet visits are occasional since she’s young and thankfully healthy, so it’s mostly just vaccinations or the occasional checkup. Dog-related costs run about ¥2,000/month.

Groceries: ¥12,000/month

I don’t buy anything fancy. I just go to my neighborhood supermarket and get whatever’s cheap or on sale that day: meat, vegetables, and the usual staples like rice and pasta. I don’t overthink it too much. This comes out to about ¥12,000/month.

Dining Out: under ¥20,000/month

Dining out is a real wildcard. I don’t go out much these days (I’m a bit of a shut-in) but my wife and I try to get dinner out once or twice a week, nothing fancy. Prices in Japan have been creeping up lately, but it’s still pretty reasonable compared to wages. A decent sit-down meal runs about ¥1,000–2,000 per person. Add in the occasional lunch or dinner I buy on days when I go to work, and I’d say my average dining-out cost is under ¥20,000/month. That’s a rough but fairly generous estimate, as the real number’s probably a bit lower.

Transportation: ¥2,500/month

I don’t go out a ton, and when I do it’s usually just within Kyoto city. A train ride to downtown Kyoto costs about ¥200. Maybe once a month I’ll head over to Osaka, which runs about ¥400. My commute to work is covered by my employer, which is pretty standard here. Overall, transportation costs me around ¥2,500/month, not too much.

Entertainment: ¥5,000/month

Another wildcard. Once every couple of months we might catch a concert or a movie. Movies aren’t cheap in Japan these days, but it’s just an occasional thing. Averaging out concerts, movies, and the occasional event, I’d put entertainment at about ¥5,000/month.

Subscriptions: ¥2,000/month

We don’t use a ton of these. Netflix standard plan is about ¥1,500/month. Apple Music and iCloud, which I share with my wife, adds roughly ¥500/month. Total: ¥2,000/month.

Medical: ¥1,500/month

This one’s hard to predict. But because I’m in Japan (and not a certain other country… 🇺🇸) healthcare is very affordable. If I’m feeling a little off, I’ll usually just go see a doctor because why not? I’d estimate this at around ¥1,500/month.

What I’m not including

One thing I’ve left out of these numbers is the cost of travel. I do like to take smaller trips a couple times a year: maybe a night or two in Tokyo, or heading over to somewhere like South Korea, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. And then there’s the big one: since I’m from the US, once a year I fly back home to see family, and that costs… a lot. Like a ridiculous amount, especially given the weak yen. But that’s specific to me, so to keep this a useful reference for you, I’ll leave it out of the total budget.

So, what’s the total?

Adding it all up:

Category	Monthly cost
Rent (my share)	¥50,000
Utilities	¥10,000
Internet	¥4,700
Phone	¥2,000
Haircuts	¥2,000
Dog	¥2,000
Groceries	¥12,000
Dining out	¥20,000
Transportation	¥2,500
Entertainment	¥5,000
Subscriptions	¥2,000
Medical	¥1,500
Total	¥113,700 (~$700 USD)

I think my lifestyle is pretty modest, especially since I don’t go out a huge amount. If you’re more social than me (not hard to do lol) you’d probably go a bit higher on dining out and entertainment. If you’re living solo in Kyoto rather than splitting rent, you can still expect to pay closer around ¥50,000/month on your own. That’s roughly the average here, and thanks to Kyoto’s huge student population, there’s no shortage of studio and one-bedroom apartments in pretty central neighborhoods at that price.

How does this compare to what I make?

Wages in Kyoto are lower than Tokyo, but so is the cost of living, so I think most people working “normal” full-time jobs can get by comfortably here. If you’re a digital nomad earning in a stronger currency than yen, you’ll do especially well.

As for me, my income right now is probably the lowest it’s been since I moved to Japan, because I’ve stepped away from full-time work. I do a part-time job that pays ¥1,500/hour for around 20 hours a week, which works out to about ¥125,000/month after tax and insurance. I also pick up freelance writing work occasionally, which brings in roughly ¥25,000/month. All together, my monthly income lands around ¥150,000/month.

It’s enough to get by. I’m not exactly living luxuriously or saving much at all, but I guess that’s the price of trying to do my own thing instead of grinding a full-time job. Speaking of which, Mugi is a big project right now - it’s a language learning app I made using everything I’ve discovered from studying Japanese and living in Japan for the past decade. If you’re also learning Japanese and you’re interested, I hope you’ll give it a try!

Wrapping up

I hope this was a useful reference for anyone curious about real living costs in Japan. Keep in mind that this is just one living situation: over the past 11 years I’ve lived in a handful of different cities and apartments, each with pretty different costs and lifestyles, so I might do more posts like this down the line.

If there’s anything else you’d want me to break down, feel free to contact me any time. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one.

Shared Living in Japan: What's It Actually Like?

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Thoughts from someone who lived in 4 different share houses across Tokyo and Kyoto: the good, the bad, and what I learned about picking the right one.

How I Learned Japanese From Scratch: My Full Timeline (Year 1)

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

If you’ve started learning a new language recently, you might be wondering just how long it will take to see results. I hope I can help by sharing my own story of how I learned Japanese as an absolute beginner and eventually reached fluency.

To answer the question “How long did it take to get fluent?” right off the bat, I would say it took somewhere around two and a half years.

I’ll elaborate more in this article, but for now please take that number with a grain of salt. The reality is that everyone has a different idea of what “fluent” means, and how quickly you reach that point will still depend on countless different factors, including what languages you already speak and how much time you’re able to invest in your studies.

When I look back on my Japanese learning journey, I tend to break it down into the following time frames based on US college semesters.

Year 1: Fall 2010 → Spring 2011 → Summer 2011
Year 2: Fall 2011 → Spring 2012 → Summer 2012
Year 3: Fall 2012 → Spring 2013 → Summer 2013

In this article I’ll share everything I remember from my first year.

Fall 2010 (September to December)

This is when I signed up for Japanese 101 and started formally studying the language. It was my first year of college and I was pretty much a complete beginner. I had learned a couple of very basic words and phrases from anime (like “hello,” “thank you,” and “I’ll kill you”) and I had memorized the two basic writing systems, hiragana and katakana. The writing systems can be learned in less than a week, so I don’t consider it to be a meaningful head start.

I didn’t have any particular goals at this point. I just wanted to get my feet wet and see if I enjoyed it or not. Luckily, I did!

I attended classes three times a week, each class being 80 minutes long. I also spent on average four to five hours a week on homework or studying for quizzes and tests.

I did exactly what was required to do well in class, but nothing beyond that. No supplemental studying other than periodically watching anime, although at this stage my anime viewing was entirely for entertainment rather than active studying.

At the end of these 4 months, my skills were somewhere along these lines:

I could read and write hiragana and katakana, and around 150–200 kanji.
I could form basic sentences and questions like “This is my brother. He has long hair,” “Let’s meet at 7 o’clock,” and “I eat hamburgers at McDonald’s.”
When trying to speak (without having rehearsed anything), my brain needed around 5–10 seconds of loading time.

Overall, I think it was a reasonable amount of progress! In 4 months I picked up a good amount of vocabulary and grammar, and could “speak” if given enough time to think or rehearse. As experienced by most language learners, I had learned a bit of Japanese but had not actually internalized it.

If I were to take a trip to Japan at this point, I definitely wouldn’t be able to have spontaneous conversations. But I would be able to survive.

After the fall semester, I rewarded myself by spending my entire winter vacation binge-watching anime and frequently thinking “Hey, I know some of these words!” That was a lot of fun.

Spring 2011 (January to May)

It was my second semester of college and I had moved on to Japanese 102. I approached this the same way I did before — go to class, do the homework, and study for the tests. We started learning slightly more complex grammar and kanji, but everything was building off what we had learned before. I didn’t feel like it was a major jump in difficulty.

At this stage, I began to notice that my Korean-speaking classmates were exceptionally better than the rest of us. They barely had to think before speaking, their sentences flowed smoothly, and their pronunciation was cleaner. I was quite jealous.

I later learned that this is common because Korean and Japanese have a ton of similarities in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. So Korean speakers do have a significant advantage.

I mention this not to complain about my overpowered classmates, but because I want to bring up the important point that everyone has their own advantages and disadvantages when learning a new language, depending on their linguistic background.

A lot of people wonder if they’ll ever catch up with classmates who naturally have an edge. Here’s the quick answer: yes, you will!

By the end of the semester, I could do the following:

Make more complex sentences like “I have to go to the bathroom because I drank too much water” and “I think McDonald’s burgers taste better than Wendy’s burgers.”
Read and write around 350 kanji.
Improvise very basic conversations with a lot of hesitation and overthinking.

Not too shabby for two semesters of study. I had made noticeable progress, although I was starting to wonder when I would actually get the chance to use all the Japanese I was learning. Every single word of Japanese I’d spoken up until now was in the classroom, so I was itching to use what I learned in real life.

Summer 2011 (June to August)

As expected, I spent most of my free time playing games and watching anime. Life was good.

I noticed that watching anime was a lot more interesting now because I could pick out a lot more random words and phrases that I understood. I think my overall listening comprehension was still less than 15%, but it was nice being able to enjoy more of these “Hey, I understood that!” moments than before.

However, the biggest highlight of my summer was when I finally got my chance to use Japanese outside of the classroom.

During a family trip to Taiwan, I had the unexpected chance to meet and chat with some students from Japan. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could understand small bits and pieces of their conversations. And when I attempted to say a few random sentences in Japanese, they understood me!

To be fair, I don’t think I said anything more complicated than “I’m studying Japanese. I’ve never been to Japan, but I want to go.” That’s all I could handle in the moment.

But for whatever reason, I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment from being able to communicate a few of my thoughts, in a language I had started learning less than a year ago. It was a small win, but a very important point in my journey.

My new friends and I added each other on Facebook, and from that day I started occasionally seeing Japanese posts and comments pop up on my feed. Not textbook Japanese manufactured for a classroom — real Japanese posted by real people. Suddenly, this language was no longer just a school subject for me. It was a real, useful skill.

This summer experience was super encouraging and gave me a huge boost of motivation. I realized that I wanted Japanese to be more than just a hobby — I wanted to take it seriously.

Wrap-Up of the First Year

In one year of learning Japanese, I learned around 1,000 vocabulary words, 350 kanji, and many essential grammar points needed for day-to-day conversation. That’s not the important part though.

The important part is this: I found out that I enjoyed learning Japanese immensely, and wanted to pursue it seriously with the goal of fluency in mind.

Most language learners don’t reach this stage, and I was very fortunate to have discovered something I cared so much about.

Before I knew it, Fall 2011 was right around the corner. It was time to start year two of my Japanese journey, this time with a newfound motivation!

If you’re interested, check out part 2 of the story.

How I Learned Japanese From Scratch: My Full Timeline (Year 2)

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This is a continuation of part 1, where I share everything I learned during my first year as a complete beginner. If you’re learning a language and wondering what the journey is like, I hope my story will help you!

Fall 2011 (September to December)

Just one year ago, I was a nervous but excited kid stepping into my first class of Japanese 101. Now it was time for Japanese 201, and things felt a bit different.

I had significantly fewer classmates than I did a year ago. Things were starting to get more intense — grammar points and sentence structures were complex and had more nuances to watch out for. Kanji was getting bigger and more scary-looking.

Thankfully, none of this fazed me. I knew I was in the language-learning game for the long run, and everything I learned in this class would pay off later on.

Like in the previous semesters, I attended every class, did every homework assignment, and studied for every test. But I started to realize that it wasn’t enough.

One of my classmates introduced me to my college’s Japanese Conversation Club (JCC). I joined one of their meetings and found myself surrounded by students who had been studying for way longer than me, and a couple of native-speaking members too.

I attempted to have some conversation practice with them, and immediately noticed a huge problem.

I sucked at speaking.

Speaking in class wasn’t this hard at all. Whenever I answered my teacher’s questions, I had some time to think and rehearse the answers in my head. When I did speaking exercises with classmates, there was always a script to follow that made it easy.

I didn’t struggle much with writing either. Given enough time to think, I had no problems writing reasonably long and thoughtful answers on my homework and tests.

But when having an actual conversation? It was like all the Japanese I had ever learned flew out the window. This is when I realized that speaking in real time was an entirely different game, and it was something I couldn’t practice in class. I had to find my own way.

Other than this eye-opening experience, the next few months went by without any issues. By the end of the semester, I could do the following:

Communicate more complex ideas like “Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of the Pokémon series, grew up in a town called Machida. Although he often skipped classes, he learned how to program and started a game company.”
Read and write around 500 kanji.

Spring 2012 (January to May)

New semester, new class. It was time for Japanese 202.

I had been warned by some of my seniors in JCC that 202 was significantly harder than the previous levels. I went in prepared for the worst, and found out what the culprit was:

Keigo!

Honorific speech used in Japanese to show respect to others. In oversimplified terms, we learned two of the main ways to use keigo:

When the speaker “lowers” their own position by using humble language.
When the speaker “raises” the position of whoever they’re speaking to by using honorific language.

I understood why most students found these lessons difficult. It wasn’t necessarily the language itself that was confusing — it was the cultural aspects. In American English, honorific speech is a concept that hardly exists in day-to-day life, and certainly isn’t something people consciously think about. Even if we memorized every keigo-related word and grammar pattern, knowing when to actually use it was an entirely different challenge.

It took me some time to wrap my head around this, but I personally found the keigo lessons both enjoyable and fascinating. We were really diving deep into both the language and culture, and we were all a bit relieved when our teacher mentioned that even native Japanese speakers get confused by keigo from time to time.

That was the main curveball that Japanese 202 threw at us. Other than that, we continued learning more grammar, vocabulary, and crazy-looking kanji like 痛 and 違. Difficult, but nothing life-changing.

The actual life-changing thing that happened was outside the classroom, and it was none other than making friends.

My school has a partnership with Ritsumeikan University, a school in Kyoto — the same city I’d end up calling home more than a decade later, though I had no way of knowing that at the time. Every spring, a group of around ten students from Ritsumeikan would visit my school for a short-term, one-month study abroad program.

This year, I was super lucky because I had the chance to meet and get to know them. As an (unofficial) host, I had the chance to show them around campus, take them to a few different classes and club activities, and invite them to my apartment to eat pizza and play video games in true American fashion.

They spoke English a little bit, and I spoke Japanese a little bit. Our conversations were a completely improvised mix of whatever language was easier to use at the moment. It was weird, it was sloppy, and it was insanely fun.

I embarrassed myself and said things that made no sense, more times than I could count. But I got used to the feeling, and thanks to that I’m pretty sure I learned more Japanese in that one month than I did during an entire semester in a classroom.

A month flew by in an instant, and it was time for my new friends to go home. We met up one last time on the morning of their flight, just before they started boarding the bus to the airport. We tearfully exchanged goodbyes, I promised I would visit them in Japan, and I waved until their bus was out of sight.

That day, I decided I would study abroad in Japan.

Summer 2012 (June to August)

My plan was to go to Japan in spring 2013 and stay there for a full semester. This meant I had a little less than a year to get ready.

Now that I had the goal of actually going to Japan — a real, specific, dated goal, not just a vague wish — I was in hardcore study mode. In order to immerse myself in the language as much as possible, I went as far as to stop consuming English media and replaced it with as much Japanese media as I could. This meant:

Only watching Japanese TV shows
Only listening to Japanese music
Only listening to Japanese radio and podcasts
Only playing video games in Japanese

To anyone else, I was probably completely nuts. But I figured that this level of dedication would be needed to meet my extreme goal of learning a language in a short amount of time.

Another very lucky thing happened this summer: I got to visit Japan for the first time.

Like last summer, I took a trip to Taiwan and visited my relatives there. This time, on the way back home I was supposed to have a layover in Osaka. I thought to myself: if I’m going to be in Japan, wouldn’t it be great if I could stay there for a bit? Even just for a day or two?

I negotiated with my parents (more like begged and pleaded), who had booked the flight for me, and they were kind enough to let me do it! Thanks to them, I’d be able to stay in Osaka for two nights. A short stay, but an incredibly valuable experience for me.

And so I went to Japan for the very first time in my life. It took around 20 years but it finally happened.

To make a long story short, the trip was absolutely blissful. I could talk for hours about everything that happened in those two days, but the biggest highlight was that my Japanese worked.

I didn’t have a smartphone back then, so I couldn’t rely on translation apps to help me converse, or Google Maps to help me get around. And being in an unfamiliar country for the first time, I had lots of questions and got lost plenty of times. So I had to do things the old-fashioned way and go around asking people for help.

I was incredibly, indescribably happy when people understood what I was saying, and when I could understand their answers. I vividly remember thinking to myself, “All the time I spent studying paid off! It’s actually working!”

This was particularly mind-bending as someone who never enjoyed studying and spent most of his school days thinking “I’m never going to use this in real life.”

I also got to visit Kyoto and briefly reunite with the friends I had met in the spring. Once again I promised I’d come back next year, and this time we said our goodbyes over smiles instead of tears.

Wrap-Up of the Second Year

Without exaggerating, I can say that my second year of learning Japanese was one of the most important years of my life.

I had progressed to an intermediate level where I could realistically use what I learned in real situations. I made actual friends from Japan who I wanted to keep in touch with. I decided I would study abroad and that I would either get fluent in Japanese or die trying.

I stopped keeping track of things like how many vocabulary words and kanji I had memorized because I realized it didn’t really matter. I focused instead on simply immersing myself in Japanese during my free time and absorbing as much as I could.

Before I knew it, Fall 2012 was at my doorstep. It was time for the final stretch!

Please feel free to check out part 3 if you’re interested.

How I Learned Japanese From Scratch: My Full Timeline (Year 3)

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I’ll share what I did in my third year of learning Japanese — the year I finally reached a level that most would consider “fluent.” You can read about my experiences as a beginner and intermediate learner in part 1 and part 2 respectively.

Fall 2012 (September to December)

It was the start of my third year of college, and I had finally ascended to Japanese 301 — Advanced Japanese. Sounds intimidating, right?

I noticed right away that compared to the fun and thrilling first two years of Japanese classes, the 301 level was noticeably less interesting.

I believe this was the reason: during the beginner and early intermediate phases of learning a language, everything is new and exciting. Every vocabulary word and grammar point you learn is novel and immediately useful.

But after reaching the “advanced” level, you start getting diminishing returns. Most of the new vocabulary and grammar are just variations of what you’ve learned in the past.

To give a simple example: one of the first words I learned in my first-ever Japanese class was とても, the most commonly used word for “very.”

Over time, I learned various other ways to say “very.” すごく. 非常に. めちゃくちゃ. あまりにも. The list goes on.

When I learned とても, it was incredibly useful because I literally didn’t know any other way to say “very” at the time. By learning that one word, my ability to express myself in Japanese rose dramatically.

By the third year of Japanese class, I’d already learned at least five other ways to say “very.” Each new variation, while certainly nice to know, didn’t drastically change my ability to express myself. This is a prime example of diminishing returns.

This made studying feel a lot less satisfying than it did before.

Because of this, I realized something very important: it was time to focus less on studying, and focus more on practicing.

In two years of formal study I had accumulated a reasonable base of knowledge, vocabulary, grammar, and kanji. But I had very little experience actually using it. It didn’t matter how many synonyms of とても I knew if I couldn’t even get the words out of my head during a real conversation.

It was time to fix this problem.

How I Practiced

A year earlier I had attended my college’s Japanese Conversation Club, only to find out that my speaking skills were dreadfully bad. To spare myself from further embarrassment, I pretty much stopped going.

A year later, I was determined to face my fear of embarrassment and finally get good at speaking. So I committed to attending every single one of the club’s meetings without fail and practicing as much as I possibly could.

To make a long story short, this decision paid off immensely. I not only found opportunities to practice speaking, but I also met and befriended several of my seniors who had previously studied abroad in Japan and were, in my eyes, absolutely badasses at Japanese. I looked up to them and was able to get a lot of advice and encouragement from them.

I also spent every second of my spare time practicing in various other ways. I installed Anki on my iPod touch (yes, that ancient device) and went through tons of flashcards when waiting for trains and buses. When in transit or walking to and from class, I put in my earbuds and listened to Japanese podcasts. And at home, I consumed as much Japanese media as I possibly could on YouTube and shady anime streaming sites (this was before Netflix was a thing).

By the end of the semester, I found that my speaking abilities had improved noticeably. Words were starting to come out of my mouth naturally without needing to think beforehand. I was hesitating less and starting to have more natural-sounding conversations. Suddenly, fluency no longer felt out of reach — it was totally achievable and all I needed was a bit more time.

Spring 2013 (January to April)

This is everything I had been waiting for. I was accepted to a study abroad program in Kyoto, due to start in April 2013.

Because of the different academic calendars in the US and Japan, I had a long stretch of free time from January to April, when I didn’t have any classes or obligations. So other than working part-time to save money, I dedicated these few months to leveling up my Japanese as much as humanly possible.

I continued exactly what I had been doing before — spending every waking hour immersing myself in the Japanese language. I had essentially created a mini Japan for myself where I could get as much language input as I needed at any time of the day. If that sounds familiar, it’s basically the same principle behind prioritizing input over output that I still stand by today.

I also continued attending the conversation club’s meetings every week and practicing as much as I could.

During that time, I befriended a Japanese exchange student from Tokyo who was studying at my college for the academic year. Although he was completely fluent in English (having put in a great deal of time and hard work to learn it), he was so kind as to help me practice my Japanese, correct my mistakes, and give me pointers.

When it was finally time for me to fly to Japan and begin my semester abroad, he told me:

“I know you’re going to Japan to study Japanese, but I want to tell you that you’re already fluent. Even though I can speak to you in English, speaking Japanese with you feels just as natural and easy. You’re going to make lots of friends in Japan — good luck and have fun!”

Words can’t describe how much this meant to me. This wasn’t your standard “Nihongo jouzu desu ne!” that Japanese learners are so used to hearing — it was a real compliment and message of encouragement from someone who also went through the journey of learning a language.

After I finally made my way to Kyoto and began my semester abroad, I found out that I indeed was already able to converse about a variety of topics and communicate without any major hindrances.

I certainly stumbled over my words and forgot how to say things mid-sentence — that happened more times than I can count. But I did truly feel that I had already broken past the intermediate barrier and reached a degree of conversational fluency. There was no longer a huge gap between the Japanese I had studied, and the Japanese I could actually use.

The interesting part is that I had managed to do this before actually going to study in Japan. Looking back, I believe it was all thanks to being able to immerse myself in the language at home using TV, movies, music, podcasts, books, and games.

Even though I only had limited opportunities to practice output, the ridiculous amount of input I got was enough to develop my abilities in the language and help me actually acquire it on a deeper level.

Thanks to that, I was able to enjoy my semester abroad to the fullest, focusing on the most enriching experiences like making friends and exploring the country.

A Message to Fellow Language Learners

Remember that learning a language is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes years of dedication to reach fluency, and you will likely hit plateaus on the way and wonder if it’s really worth the hard work.

However, I cannot overstate that yes, it is absolutely worth it.

My journey to learn Japanese was one of the most joyful, rewarding, and transformative experiences I’ve ever had. It also quite literally changed my life — I later moved to Japan and have lived here for over a decade since.

I never would have thought that the decision to take a beginner-level Japanese class years ago would lead me to where I am now. But this is the beauty of learning languages — it can take you places you never imagined before.

This is just my humble story, but I hope it’s been helpful or inspiring in some way. I wish you all the best of luck on your language-learning adventures.