Is it difficult to get used to living in Japan & some idea to make it easier?

[aprenderidy]

I'd like to ask all of you who have visited and stayed in Japan for more than a few months whether you had a hard time in finding a place for having fun. I came up with this question when I stayed in India for about 3 months this year. There, I met lots of businessmen from Japan. I got to join their football team and I played with them every week.

This club was started this May with only 3 people but now with over 40 people.

I talked to the captain and the organizer who started this club and he told me that he wanted to have a community or opportunity to play football and have fun on weekends and also to keep meeting his friends.
Through this talk and also in many other situations of this kind I started to feel that when you go to another country you have difficulty in finding place for having fun because you don't have the same social networks that you have in your home country, you don't know how to really communicate with local people, you don't really know where to go etc.
Of course situation should be different in Japan from India but I still wonder this because when I see exchanges, businessmen, immigrants and so on in Japan I see them not so happy for many times (as for immigrants, this question doesn't really mean anything or doesn't apply though) and these kinds of exchanges IMO rather stay together in group and don't really go out or do activities.

Then, I thought if there was a Japanese football community for example to welcome foreigners it may be a place for everybody having fun. I'm playing football/footsal in a team and I though we could use this club to have foreigners and have interaction with those people. My friends from this club and I went to India to play football and we had lots of fun there so through this activity we think that we also are going to have lots of fun again.

What do you think?

I'd like to ask you who especially have had a difficult time in getting used to living in Japan.

Do you think this kind of club or organization would be good for people coming from outside? And if you have had some difficult time, what was it about?

Well, of course if there is nobody like that I will be really glad also
Thank you in advance.

 

[Glenski]

Getting used to Japan (or any foreign country) is an individual thing. If you choose to live in the city vs. countryside, that could make a difference, too.

For daily survival, one should try to learn some basic written and spoken Japanese. You can get by without very much, but as you asked, to make it easier, learn at least a little.

Have an open mind, too. Customs and general culture here will likely be very different from where you live. Some things will affect you positively, but other things might drive you crazy because you are comparing to home. If you realize where people are coming from socially here, there will be less stress.

I assume that if you plan to stay longer than 3 months, you will have a job here. Is that right? If so, then knowing as much as possible about what is expected of you is a biggie. It's the same as anywhere else in any job, but as I wrote above, business customs and expectations may be quite different.

Be more polite than usual. Be more patient, too. Being aggressive or direct is a negative thing here, as is being impatient.

Kind of hard to be more specific than that. You wrote about someone who has "visited and stayed in Japan for more than a few months", yet you use the words "living in Japan", too. Different situations.