Japan ruined my life.
Not dramatically. No heartbreak, no disaster. Just the quiet kind of ruin that happens when you see how much better life can feel when it runs on thoughtfulness and precision.
I didn’t arrive in Japan on holiday. I went to live there, teaching English in elementary and middle schools. It was supposed to be a way to see the world while doing something worthwhile, a kind of grown-up gap year with meaning. I expected PowerPoints and phonics books. What I got was chalk, magnets, and results.
There was no tech, no show, no ticking boxes. And somehow, the children learned. When I tried teaching modern languages back home, armed with all the latest educational software, everything felt flashy yet hollow. Sterile, performative, the opposite of dynamic. That’s when I realised Japan hadn’t just changed how I saw teaching. It had changed how I saw everything.
Substance over spectacle. Attention over automation. Grace in the details. Real value.
When I came home, I was surrounded by things that looked clever but worked badly, gadgets that beeped instead of thinking. Japan made me crave the opposite: quiet design that disappears into usefulness.
By accident, I found my next chapter in travel consultancy, a luxury world I hadn’t even known existed. Suddenly, I was planning sushi dinners at exclusive counters, front-row seats at the sumo, private audiences with geisha, meetings between Olympic fencers and swordsmiths who still forge blades the old way. Skiing in the shadow of a volcano. Tracking black bears through the Japan Alps. I thought I’d found the perfect job. And in some ways, I had.
Dreamweaving for the well-off and curious was intoxicating, a way to keep living in Japan by proxy, through my clients’ eyes. But somewhere in the middle of the logistics and luxury, I realised what kept pulling me back wasn’t the exclusivity (although the private hot-spring baths surrounded by bamboo forest are lovely, and the sunset over Tokyo Bay from the 40th floor is incredible). It was the feeling I’d first found in those classrooms in the middle of nowhere Okayama: attention, patience, and care. It’s heart Jim, but not as we know it.
That care, precision, and respect for process are what make experiences meaningful. Whether it’s a bowl of ramen or a temple stay, the magic is never in the spectacle. It’s in doing things well.
Outside the office, I tried not to talk about it too much. Nobody likes that friend who goes on about how wonderful Japan is. But the truth is, I missed it. I missed the rhythm, the respect, the way things just worked. So I go back. And then I kept going back every couple of years, like pressing a reset button.
Each return trip fixes something I didn’t know was broken. It’s not about temples or sushi anymore. It’s about remembering that calm and precision aren’t luxuries. They’re possible.
Japan ruined my life because it made everything after it harder to settle for. It made me expect elegance in the everyday, and grace where most people don’t even look for it.
So yes, Japan ruined me. And I’m grateful. Because every time I go back, I remember what good can look like when it’s done quietly, precisely, and with purpose.
If you’ve been once and can’t stop thinking about it, I can help you plan the return that changes everything again
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