Japan is an amazing place to get to know over time
This is Daisetsuzan (大雪山)National Park!
I have been living in Japan for almost seven years now.
I was already at early midlife when I came here. I came with a family, no longer sewing my wild oats and had real responsibilities, the kind that contrasted deeply with the itinerant artist life I had previously lived.
Being almost 40 years old when I arrived to a train station on the outskirts of Tokyo, I came with a managerial job, but an artsy, weird one; creating and managing a special window design and display team for the company I worked for. It was perfect at the time. I didn't need to learn 日本語 and could focus on doing what I was already doing when I left Los Angeles. My boss was an American based in the US so I was running my own show.
I always imagined this job like another gig, one that would last for a few years and then I would scoop up the family and move back to the states, chasing some new flavor of creative work and stepping up the corporate creative ladder. But you aren't always able to steer the ship when it comes to life. Sometimes extenuating circumstances are too overpowering and you're forced to choose a new path.
So when the company started to downsize I jumped ship to create a business of my own while living in Japan.
I knew virtually nothing about how to start a business, but I've been a risk-taker and a base-level survivor for most of my life, so I figured I could try and if it didn't work out, well, I'd just cross that bridge when I came to it.
At first, I tried making some crafty type products, but the licensing requirements and the language barrier in Japan proved prohibitive and I only ever sold those products in the local area.
That didn't work out, so then I saw the light on the horizon and it was the internet. I suddenly realized as many do that if you could get it just right, one could build a sustainable life by mastering the craft of doing business online. At once, I was focused on bringing a viable and ethical business idea to life. But I was also going through a lot of personal things related to my life as a foreigner in a land where I had to accept my relative illiteracy and sudden incapacity to exploit my strengths and downplay my weaknesses.
On the internet I saw an endless field of possibility. In my own life in Japan, I felt like a captive and I was disabled to a degree I had never experienced before. The pride I had in the experiences I had gained in life created a further barrier. I would not teach English, I would not settle for the 外人 jobs. Oh no. I was on the hero's journey to gain victory and riches against all the odds.
Tens of thousands of dollars later...
I barely had a business. I had had minimal success with various e-commerce efforts, I had had a little more success when I decided to become a marketer/lead generator for solar companies. The problem, both in the real world and online was my isolation. Because I lived in Japan and was marketing to the US, I never had a real coffee with a prospect. Every contract I won was over the phone with a complete stranger and after doing so many things, trying so many hacks and getting conned by so many gurus, I have finally started to accept a little bit of defeat (but I'm still in business!).
The old adage held true, "when you admit defeat, new opportunities emerge."
And after years of completely stressing out, summer vacations barely noticed, trying to cope with living in a foreign land and not being able to use my life skills while trying to be a solo internet hero and achieve greatness online (often failing), this year I didn't open my laptop the entire time I was in the beautiful lands of Hokkaido (北海道) for our annual family vacation.
I had wanted to visit Japan's northernmost island for years but was only making it here now. You can drive from the North to the South in a few days and there are amazing places to stop all along the way.
We started in Memanbetsu and headed to Shiretoko National Park to see the brown bears
Hokkaido brown bear!
and pristine nature there (I had perhaps the best seafood of my entire life, a gigantic northern crab that easily fed three of us).
Then we headed down to Daisetsuzan National Park, then on through Furano and stopped for a night at Lake Shikotsu (支笏湖), Hokkaido's clearest lake. My eight year old is responsible for these nice shots:
and
and
Don't Forget Yourself - Live Life - What's Big is Small, What's Small Is Big
After a few years of struggle, of not knowing what to do, and of facing uphill battles every day to succeed without support, with sharks in the water, I may finally be reaching a moment of peace.
We all want to achieve great things in life. We all want to rise above our own limitations, but it isn't always easy. If you're a grinder (and I am) it's an easy mistake to just keep pulling against the resistance, trying to make that square peg go into the circular hole (it can be done, not without damage). Sometimes it's important to surrender, to give yourself a break because that allows you to see the world in new ways and be renewed.
There's always tomorrow, but today's where it's really at.
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