JAPAN - Expat Contests

Writing Contest March 2013

10 reasons that make Japan special and unique!

Children from the age of 6 years old, go to school by themselves in an urban area with 30 million people. This was one of the images that surprised me the most, when we first moved here. And to make more cute, they all dressed with the lovely uniforms. This shows how safe this big city is!!  People still wearing Kimonos! When walking...

Writing Contest October 2012

How to Fly First Class For Free

It helps if you live abroad for a while. Pick somewhere you’re interested in. Sure, Japan is a great choice. You love Japan – like really love Japan. It’s one of the first places you’ve been that’s made sense: it’s safe, beautiful, has great food and nice people, and is a relatively easy place to live once you set up a routine....

Expat Blog Awards 2013

Japans Five Most Fantastic Festive Events

Under the mythical nation of “homogeneous Japan Inc” lies a reality of unique events that merge sex and death, fire and snow, cooperation and competition in perspectives that cannot be experienced in just one place or during one visit. That’s why Japan never stops blowing the minds of expats in Japan, no matter how long we have lived...

Education and International Schools

Learning Language at an International School - Japanese For Native and Non-Native Speakers

As an expat in Japan, learning Japanese is always on my to-do list. I’ve lived in Tokyo for 8 of the past 10 years and am not even close to fluent. Worst of all, I don’t read. My kids, however, are a different story. They make me feel like my great-grandmother circa 1900 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan when she would hand the mail...

Writing Contest March 2013

The Seven Best and the Worst Experiences of a Hot Spring Addict in Japan

Since there are approximately 27,000 hot springs in Japan, a hot spring is usually close by. I have bathed in about five hundred Japanese hot springs. Memories of seven poignant hot spring experiences still cause strong feelings of relaxation, embarrassment, or repulsion to ripple through my body. From the uniqueness of the location to the...

Writing Contest March 2013

The Top Six Things That Unexpectedly Surprised Me About Japan

In 2004, I left Canada for a year to participate in an exchange program in Nagoya, Japan. A few years later, I returned, and have been living here ever since. When you travel to a new country, you always expect to find things that are different from what you’ve become accustomed to, but sometimes those differences are found in the most...

Expat Blog Awards 2013

Top 10 Feelings You Will Probably Have in Japan

Coming from such a faraway country like Portugal, there are quite a lot of emotions and hard to explain feelings that grow inside of me as an expat. Not only the distance, there are a lot of aspects that are completely different when comparing Japan with my country. But where are my manners, my name is André, I’m a 23-year-old...

Expat Blog Awards 2013

Top 10 Things to Do to Experience Tokyo on a Budget

Tokyo is a city of contrasts, with equal amounts of high tech and ancient tradition, which makes it a fascinating place to visit or live in. We often hear about life in Japan and Tokyo in particular but not many get to experience it first hand or to feel what it is like to live in this bustling metropolis. We are also led to believe that...