Two years of life as an expat coder in middle-of-no-where Japan | Hacker News Reader

Two years of life as an expat coder in middle-of-no-where Japan

bemmu.com

176 pointsbemmu94 comments

Hey, I know that feeling. That was me just a few months ago. I went to Germany to live for a year and change with my girlfriend. We lived in a small town. While the town itself was beautiful, after a few months there was little to do and it was difficult to make friends. (I didn't speak the language, and while I was taking language classes there, my heart wasn't in them.)

I eventually fell in to a similar funk: without friends to chat with, and as a sole business owner, I'd find myself working through the day on my laptop, going to sleep, then waking up and working more. It turned in to a grind and I realized I wasn't enjoying myself anymore. So when my visa ran out I decided to return home and see what happens next. While I greatly prefer the German (and European in general) lifestyle, and things like health care are much less stressful over there, in the end I realized I need people to connect with on a day-to-day basis for me to be happy.

I've spent much of the last 5 or so years traveling the world and I don't regret a minute of it. But eventually I think you need some kind of familiar stability, an anchor, to feel more at peace.

Have you tried a city with a US army base? They usually have and attract a substantial English speaking crowd, and there's culture events as well (not just from the base).

Alternately a "cosmopolitan" city like Berlin and Copenhagen could work. Most of the locals speak English, and there are so many foreigners that English is heard pretty regularly in bars and on the street. (Some of the foreigners are swaps between the two: lots of Danes in Berlin and Germans in Copenhagen.)

In Copenhagen a number of the cultural events are also in English, e.g. http://www.scienceandcocktails.org/about.html and http://english.dadiu.dk/invitation-spilbar-14-0-surprise to pick two random science/tech ones.

Especially in Copenhagen, getting around shouldn't be an issue. The Danes are pretty good at English.

I would have preferred a larger city like Munich but my girlfriend's work was in our town and it was far enough away from a big city to not be able to commute.

I did alright in a small-ish college town for two years; nearly all of the 20-somethings were fluent in English.

> "I've spent much of the last 5 or so years traveling the world and I don't regret a minute of it. But eventually I think you need some kind of familiar stability, an anchor, to feel more at peace."

Hear hear. I've lived in 8 cities in the last 9 years - intentionally. I don't regret any of it, and it was definitely a deliberate plan to see as much of the world as I can while minimizing career sacrifice (i.e., not just quitting everything and traveling), but the isolation becomes taxing after a while.

Hitting the big Reset button on your social circles every year gets tiring after a while. I think I'll stick around my current place for a while.

I've been working remotely from Seoul for the past nine months and have had similar experiences at times. Sometimes I would look back and not feel like I had had a good reason to get out of the house the entire week. Luckily Seoul is a large city, so I meeting people has not been incredibly hard. My solution was to create my own network. I started a Seoul Ruby meetup group and eventually got connected with a co-working space here.

Sweet sweet python stacktrace:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/_webapp25.py", line 714, in __call__ handler.get(groups) File "/base/data/home/apps/s~combemmu-hrd/1.366712374553545399/main.py", line 432, in get if self.blog(self.request.path[1:]): File "/base/data/home/apps/s~combemmu-hrd/1.366712374553545399/main.py", line 230, in blog posts = [BlogPost.get_by_key_name('p' + slug)] File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/db/__init__.py", line 1275, in get_by_key_name return get(keys[0], kwargs) File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/db/__init__.py", line 1533, in get return get_async(keys, *kwargs).get_result() File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/api/apiproxy_stub_map.py", line 604, in get_result return self.__get_result_hook(self) File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/datastore/datastore_rpc.py", line 1450, in __get_hook self.check_rpc_success(rpc) File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/datastore/datastore_rpc.py", line 1222, in check_rpc_success rpc.check_success() File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/api/apiproxy_stub_map.py", line 570, in check_success self.__rpc.CheckSuccess() File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/api/apiproxy_rpc.py", line 133, in CheckSuccess raise self.exception OverQuotaError: The API call datastore_v3.Get() required more quota than is available.

A GAE app without a credit card attached + debug = True in the settings ^^

Yep, Google App Engine ran out of quota while I was asleep.

I have many GAE apps and when you enable billing, each app puts I think a $2 weekly charge on your card. To avoid spamming my books with dozens of tiny charges I turned off the billing for less popular ones like my blog. D'oh.

Additionally I had commented out memcache in the blog for some reason. Free quota would have been enough if it wasn't for that mistake.

Bemmu, Google recently removed the $2/month minimum charge when you have billing enabled.

Have a look at http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2013/04/app-engine-177-r...

Thanks for telling us a bit about yourself, it felt very personal :)

Your problem is two-fold: You're not only in a lonely place physically, but you do your work alone as well. Despite being exclusively a remote worker, I still socialize constantly throughout the day. My projects are always done in at least pairs, if not entire teams. There are constantly people giving me feedback about my code, and we're always bouncing ideas off of each other.

And outside of work, I have a routine of playing games with friends nearly every night over Skype. This means an hour long session to BS about life and make dirty jokes every day. So even when I don't see another human for a few days, I'm definitely not lonely.

Working remotely, and even from strange places doesn't have to be lonely. There's little value to the face-to-face side of things. Focus on your online networks of friends and this helps the situation a huge amount.

Which games are you playing?

Anything multiplayer, cooperative, and new. When games like Borderlands 2 comes out, my evenings get a lot brighter because we really have something to work together on. Multiplayer RTSes like Starcraft 2 also make for good times because there is a lot of strategy to discuss and coordination to be had.

Most shooters don't work as well, such as if we play Counter-Strike, since we don't end up having as much to talk about.

If you play CS:GO in competitive mode or find scrims, their is definitely a lot of communication and teamwork involved.

Lot's of fun :}

Yeah, Skype is fantastic. I'm on a different continent from my parents (in Budapest, they're in Indiana) and I think I talk to them more now than while we were right next to them for the previous three years.

Being in Japan, he will have some timezone issue (and lag).

The author talks about missed opportunities a third of the way down - then puts one incredible picture of a grassy hill and windmill, and then talks about how it isn't that awesome to wake up and start on his to-do list. Hey! You're missing a really big opportunity! Wake up an hour earlier and go outside and enjoy that amazing scenery. The incredible benefits of being in the middle of no where Japan/Norway/etc is that incredible landscape you can walk out of your door and visit within 5 minutes. Stop living like you're in a city, and start living.

When you've been living with the same amazing scenery for two years, it just stops being quite as amazing.

You definitely make a good point, though, in that there's probably something out there that he could be doing. Problem being it probably won't involve many other people, as there just aren't any nearby (particularly any that share his interests), which seems to be his most significant problem.

It keeps being amazing still, and going to those scenic places is our main weekend activity.

I volunteered as an english conversation partner for a while, so that was a way to get a bit plugged in. I ended up meeting some of those people later, so there was some success there. Teaching English is not something I'm interested in doing all that much though.

Well, I'm glad to be wrong in this case. ;)

I've lived with amazing scenery for ~4 years, and I didn't have any issue with getting bored with it. Could have something to do with growing up in a mostly flat area, and then living with large hills and mountains.

"We humans have this great evolutionary trait that allows us to quickly adapt and become accustomed to new environments and scenarios. For prehistoric man, I'm sure this helped a lot."

We crave change in some parts of our lives. It's like in marriage, do one "exciting" activity with your partner every week and your happiness goes way up. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/opinion/sunday/new-love-a-...

Point taken. Now that the weather is getting better again, I will certainly start doing that more.

Right; the author seems to be blaming the luxuries he skipped out on in the past for the lack of gratification he feels today, but what good would faint memories of him getting drunk with strangers do him today? It's easy to lose sight of just how nice and full of opportunities your life is as a well-off modern-day human.

Bemmu, you should really volunteer as a Computer Programming teacher for some local school. And, in time, be remembered fondly as that guy who managed to start that coder community he sensed the lack of.

This is an excellent point that you should look into. Of course, YMMV, but there are few things that I like as much as teaching.

Doing that will also allow you to bond with other teachers, through means of shared experience.

Have you done that? I'm curious about how it goes. I feel like it would take a while to get things going.

Well, I haven't done exactly the same I suggested to the OP. BTW, I teached the basics of "websites" to a class of teenagers coming from "difficult" families.

I mean, sons of pushers, thiefs, and all the rest...

Plus, there was this lad, who was - how do you say that in english? - "mentally impaired"?

It has been a heavy, slow, frustrating, sometimes dangerous, series of days which culminated in one of the happiest days of my life: my boys and girls passed the final exam. Even that one who was "less smart than the average guy".

Best of the best?

My boys and girls, all except one of them, CAME TO THE EXAM, willing to prove themselves and me that they learned something from that experience.

Any example of a book or blog of someone who has done this? Would love to read this type of thing.

Here's a Google Cache link:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.b...

"2 years of my life in japan and all I got was this python stacktrace"

I was actually kind of hoping that that was the moral of the story. :)

Not sure it has anything to do with being expat, just living in a very remote area. I have no idea where exactly Tokushima is but perhaps you can join a club of some sort? I knew expats in Nagano prefecture who randomly became avid mountaineers/climbers just because it is the thing to do there if you want to build a huge local network. It can also be running, cycling, surfing whatever. Even living in a huge city in NA I find it very fun to be part of a club completely unrelated to programming/dev work. I also run just for myself that is kindof a mind defrag for me.

Judging from pictures I would love to just run there, that is one gorgeous place.

It's definitely too bad you ended up so far out in the inaka. My girlfriend studied at Kumamoto and the time I spent there with her was absolutely a blast... the furthest I've been out was somewhere in Gunma that you could only get to via diesel trolley, and I can't imagine actually living there, despite being only an hour from a large group of people.

I did smile -- well, grin like an idiot -- when I saw "Candy Japan." That's you? Congratulations! That's a very cool service, and the first time I read about it I was both impressed and very jealous.

Thanks! I've been meaning to make an updated post about the Candy Japan stuff too, but not much has really changed. Still sending candy envelopes each month, mostly to those people who originally subscribed through HN plus some random people who find it through Google. Trend is slight decline though.

Hm. Are you familiar with Danny Choo[1]? I talked to him briefly about some work a while back; very nice, down to earth guy, and he's absolutely huge with Japanophiles. If you can either trade work or get him interested in your service, a little promotion from him would go a very, very long way.

[1]Could be mildly NSFW for those in an office: http://www.dannychoo.com/

Kirai[1] is also huge on the spanish speaking otaku communities, could be helpful if you get him to write a blog entry about your service.

He also lives on japan, and last time i read his blog he worked on twitter.

http://www.kirainet.com/

So far in my experience, cold-contacting bloggers doesn't really work. Also, it makes me feel like a pest to try it. Perhaps if I got an introduction or met them at an event I might have better luck.

He seems like such a celebrity that I didn't dare to dream that there might be a way to get him to mention the service.

Dream it! Just don't necessarily expect much and at least you'll know you've tried. I dropped him an email about some work he was advertising and didn't hear back for something like six months, but he did get back. If you put together something brief, professional, and interesting, it could be worth a shot, and it'll only take an hour or so of your time.

Since you're actually in-country, you also have a big advantage: He makes all sorts of appearances; if you can coordinate a trip to match something he's doing, you could always just stop in with a business card and say hi.

Not to say anything would definitely come of it, of course... but it seems like a pretty good upside with a fairly minimal investment. Could be worthwhile.

I lived in both Tokyo and middle-of-nowhere Gunma. While I love Tokyo, middle-of-nowhere Gunma was even more enjoyable.

In particular, the bonds I formed with other foreigners out in Gunma were notable. When you see another foreigner in Tokyo, it's barely worth turing your head. But it's a special occasion out in Gunma—that almost begs for interaction. "What the hell are you doing out here?" And so on.

All the incredible wilderness, all the great hot springs, all the weird people, and you're still just 45 minutes away from Takasaki, and a few more from Tokyo. Here in SV, it takes me 45 minutes just to cross the stupid Dumbarton Bridge to get from Fremont to Stanford. There's a lot to miss in Gunma by comparison.

Here in SV, it takes me 45 minutes just to cross the stupid Dumbarton Bridge to get from Fremont to Stanford. There's a lot to miss in Gunma by comparison.

The lack of good public transit is probably going to be the reason I eventually leave California. I've spent 27 years of my life here, and most of that in the bay area, but I don't love it here.

First of all, if you're an introvert you'll have little problem spending most of your time alone; add in interesting geographic locations and, really, it's not so bad ;-)

I've been an expat coder for nearly 10 years -- have seen way more of this planet than I would have had I taken a 2 week vacation once a year from full-time fixed location gig.

Obviously, not for everyone but for some it's a really good fit. I have no regrets (except for making huge amounts of cash, some of the hourly rates thrown around here are absurd, would love to make $120/hour AND travel).

Two years is not enough

I have not yet read the post as the site is down but this is a common story.

1. excitement about being in a new country

2. isolation being an outsider

3. connection, friends

4. Torn between 2 places

I've seen that repeated in many blogs from expats. Lots of them go back home at step 2. I'm at step 4. I left the country I had been in for 7 years to go back home. I know longer feel like either is really my home and miss both for various reasons. I still have way more friends in the foreign country than I do at home. But those first few years were pretty lonely.

I'm just about to make the same jump. I will leave behind some dear friends, but there was definitely a lonely start.

And I really feel like I need to leave the country I'm in right now. But I go to a place I've never been before, so there will be some loneliness there too, for sure.

I can relate: I lived in Aioi, Hyogo-ken while working at Riken's Spring-8 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPring-8).

The only saving grace was that Aioi was a Shinkansen stop, and I could make it out to Kobe and Osaka on the weekends.

Sounds like the only reason you're in that place is your wife. Is this the only possible location in the whole world (or country) for her to be reasonably happy? If not, start working together to find a better place, no?

This was a great job opportunity for her. It might be possible to relocate later, but I do like Japan and would like to continue living here. Perhaps back to Tokyo some day.

Relocate to somewhere less remote...

I understand the importance of face-to-face human contact, but there are lot of avenues of seeing what other developers are up to, and showing off your stuff. StackExchange (chat and Q&A), Freenode IRC, a hundred random messageboards...

The author mentions YouTube so I'm assuming he has a decent internet connection.

Yes, I try to help people on StackOverflow whenever I can. But it's not the same feeling of trying to make meaningful progress so that you won't be ashamed to have nothing to show the next weekend you meet your hacker friend for a gaming session.

I'm on #startups

As a freelancer in Thailand I know how you feel.

Also laughed at this : > Free worldwide shipping, even to Thailand.

If you visit thailand again, hit me up.

I second the worldwide shipping thing, neat idea and made me smile!

"Free worldwide shipping, even to Poland."

I wonder what happens if someone from the ISS looks at your site? Or Sealand? Do they get free shipping too?

It would certainly be a PR opportunity for SpaceX, so perhaps they could cooperate with me to see it through.

You might want to put a s/United/the United/ wrapper around your geolocation function -- currently it says you ship "even to United States".

BTW, I still remember the time you set up a webcam and let visitors from around the world make your computer talk. Was that while you were in Japan?

That was in Finland. I think the next iteration of that would be to add a cat with a web mouse-controllable laser pointer.

Thailand has a decent developer community. Especially Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Any pointers? I'm hanging out in Bangkok for a month and don't know many people around here

Try the Bangkok barcamp website, they usually have meetups every few weeks

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/bangkok-b...

Check out @bkktweetup as well.

maybe work at hubba co-working space, couple of coders there. can contact me if you want, contact info: hasclass.com also have sign up at hackerhut.org

Can you email me? Thailand related :)

My email's in my profile.

Just updated my profile with email address, feel me to mail me.

I'm also a freelancer in Thailand. Bangkok?

Chiang Mai here..

How do you handle the visa situation?

> Free worldwide shipping, even to Thailand

I thought this was an absolutely brilliant use of GeoIP :)

It sounds like we need to start a club.

I moved to Paraguay a couple years ago and have been going through some of the same types of stresses and emotions. I spend my mornings working alone, in my apartment, on a personal project that will (hopefully) earn me some income. The afternoons, I do a bit of contract programming for a local company, but am the only person on the project, so I don't interact much with the other programmers. When I come home, it's back to my personal project.

I keep telling myself, once I earn enough semi-automated income to pays my bills, I'll get out more. But it often feels like my life is "on hold".

Hi Bemmu Sepponen. I feel exactly like you here in afghanistan :D

It's 2013. If you find yourself. Use the internet to connect. You don't ever need to be face to face. You could be in mars all by yourself and connect with others so long as you have internet. There are tons of python projects out there. Volunteer.

It's not the same as going out for a drink, dinner, museum, etc with people who have similar interests.

I have some friends in Takamatsu, near the airport. They run workshops - some commercial and some just for fun - from their home which is an old farmhouse. 3-581-2, Yasuharashimo, Kagawa-ken, Japan 761-1504. If you wanted to run your own workshop, or join one of theirs I am sure Kazu or Masa would be pleased to know you. They are interested in web design amongst many other things. Anyway, theirs is the kind of place you can just turn up and talk to whoever is around at the time. You'd be welcome to drop in whenever in the area. I will probably be staying there for a week or two myself this summer. Maybe we could meet up? - henchan

Thank you Bemmu for writing about your experience, I'm going to relocate from Italy to Luxembourg within a couple of months (I'll join my wife that is working there) and I still don't know what I'll do. My initial thoughts were working remotely for my current employer but recently the sh hit the fan and it's closing so I'll be soon unemployed, expat and with almost non-existant knowledge of the local language (i've just started studying french from the very basis)

I'm still deciding what to do: start looking for a job, do a startup project, or maybe just come back to studying something (in university or by myself) while learning french..

"The closest community is a 3 hour bus ride away. In my work I mostly use Python, AS3, Objective-C and Javascript. The 3 hour bus ride away -communities mostly use Perl, Ruby, PHP (WordPress). I feel some temptation to change my language, just so I could participate in these rare events and perhaps find a useful sparring partner again."

Might be worth trying Ruby Motion, just as a conversation starter with the Ruby developers.

http://www.rubymotion.com/

(I'm assuming you mention Objective-C because you are doing iOS development.)

I lived in Akita prefecture for just a year while doing the JET program many years ago.

It may be true that it's hard to have face-to-face meetings with coders where you're at, but I would suggest getting involved with the community in whatever way is possible. One great way is to teach an English Conversation (eikaiwa) class for adults. Everyone wants to learn English in Japan and some of my best relationships were from my eikaiwa class. You may not get the coding aspect, but at least you'll form stronger bonds with the local community.

Slightly OT: but I've always loved how Finns are so direct in their writing and speech (yet also able to be really funny at the same time). I suspect that it might have something to do with their famously small alphabet, but it always comes across pretty cool in English :) [EDIT: just realised that the writer of the article is here in the forum. Hi, Bemmu!]

I don't get it. The Finnish alphabet has more characters than the English.

bemmu, I love the candy service. I think there is a lot more you could do with it with a bit more love.

A bit of advice from an expat coder of 20 years in Japan, 13 of that in Oita, Kyushyu.

1) Build the community that you want to participate in. Find a nearby area with a bit of population gravity and start a group, watch it wither away, start another, repeat, repeat, repeat. A more formless drinks in an open office with coders/designers/local businesses/artists/makers can be a lot of fun and there are generally more of these people nearby that you might think. I'm currently working on starting up a hackerspace/fablab downtown.

2) Get involved in any kind of quasi-local information systems group/NPO etc, even if only related tangentially and work their connections for 1). If your good, give out lots of free advice to local businesses and use the group to raise your profile locally as the goto guy to again attract talent for 1). City and prefectural offices can give you leads. Also you might try a regional bank as local banks in the countryside are always getting asked by small businesses about IT and usually have advisors/connections.

3) Regularly travel to where the interesting action is. It's the price for not living in a rabbit hutch in a major city and 3 hours is doable if it helps your long term sanity. You are close enough for overnights to Kobe and Osaka which both have lively developer communities. Once a month can do wonders.

These are all things that helped me when I joined an inaka startup (which is a long, dark, and interesting story itself) and now starting my own company just this week.

Anyway, in the countryside it can be hard to maintain your sanity. I have found at various times martial arts, running, motorcycles, hiking, zazen, pizza, and just doing things like drinks with the father's group from my kid's elementary school to be very helpful.

good luck

I didn't think anyone else programmed AMOS apart from me. I wish I still had all the discs full of my code and Deluxe Paint art.

We even started working on a full adventure game on it. This without knowing about subroutines :) Did not get very far.

Did a lot of AMOS too when I was in high school. We made a nice platform game with two friends and released it as shareware. Lots of small experiments too, including some attempts at adventure games. :)

AMOS was very popular, was even used in some commercial games. You may find this forum thread of interest: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=13117

I completed a turn based strategy game in AMOS. It was an awesome IDE.

Its interesting he is considering going back to Tokyo. To be honest I am not even sure how I'd get started in Tokyo. I don't exactly have the money to just get there, and not have a clue what I'd do there or where I'd stay. Apparently if you don't already have a Japanese girlfriend/wife its hard to figure out how to get started there.

Isn't that true in pretty much any foreign country? Contacts wherever you go are invaluable.

I've never been there, but my Japanese friends tell me Tokyo is getting more cosmopolitan all the time, with foreigners everywhere.

Some solutions to foreign-land isolation that have worked for me:

* living in multi-bedroom apartments with other expats/remote workers

* working in co-working spaces (inherently with other freelancers/small biz owners--locals and non-locals)

In both cases, you'll see the same people often, can identify well with them, and develop camaraderie.

bemmu, i lived in the middle of everywhere in japan (tokyo) and it was the time of my life, but alas now i'm in shanghai (which is not a bad city either). let me know if you're interested in seeking opportunities here.

appengine sucks at notifying you of quota violations. ;)

I would have really appreciated them dispatching someone to my door to wake me up.

>> OverQuotaError: The API call datastore_v3.Get() required more quota than is available.

That's why $20 on Linode is an amazing deal.

There's nothing amazing about Linode's pricing and absolutely not worth the security risk and lack of transparency.

Interesting insight. You taught me to be more grateful in my working environment!

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