Continuing the "Your other man in Japan" blog series... And much sooner than all of you expected too!

After having cashed in my stock options, taken my savings out of the bank and selling 99% of everything I owned, I had a nice chunk of change to pass the time in Japan. Just over $80,000 actually.

My plan was to get to Japan on the 90 day tourist visa and find a school in which I could learn Japanese as that wasn't happening in Indiana. (Found out that about a year after I left they actually started offering Japanese at the local college.) After that, I planned to be on a student visa.

I thought that if I lived in Japan for a year or so, that I would be able to come back to the US feeling relaxed and refreshed.

I came here in March of 2005, looked around at schools and found a few that were to my liking. Unfortunately, I also found that you must have had prior study in order to join these schools. This is where my split-second decision making had thrown me a curveball. I ended up having to try to find a school that had a training program (you may attend those on a tourist visa) that I could attend before the actual semester started.

I did find one and attended a course for 3 weeks. I had no idea what was happening! They said it was a course for beginners, but they had actually just sat me in their regular classes for a shorter period of time. For 3 weeks, I went to this school from 9am to 11am and absolutely everything was presented in Japanese and written in hiragana and katakana. Why is everyone saying watashi all the time? Does it mean hello?

I was so lost...

After that, there was nothing to do until August. I stayed in Japan until the 89th day of my tourist visa. I had already applied for the student visa and would simply re-enter on a new tourist visa and then have it changed. I decided to take this as an opportunity to see my friends and parents as I thought it may be awhile until I would return. I stayed in the US for 2 weeks and then came back to Japan in late June leaving myself a month and a half of free time before school officially started.

That's most of the school and visa story. I signed up for a 1 year student visa, attended classes, felt lost for the first 2 months, started getting the hang of hiragana and katakana and even started picking up some kanji a few months in. The important part of the next portion of the story though is not the schooling, but the thing that led me to stay in Japan...

When I first got here in March and was spending some of my time looking around at schools, but I was also spending a huge amount of my time getting to know my future wife.

We had exchanged email for quite awhile before I came and I was very excited to start spending a lot of quality time with her!
This quality time ended up being us meeting and having some lunch, spending all day walking around shopping, talking, etc. and then having a decent dinner before I sent her home.

Now this $80,000 was worth quite a bit more in Japan than it is today. I probably could have lived here for 2 years pretty comfortably on that if I had kept control over the cash. The problem is, the dating started adding up really quickly. She never wanted to eat at a cheap place, she always wanted to eat at a nice restaurant. She always wanted to get some kind of gift or something while we were out. But me, being lovestruck and an idiot , didn't really notice any of that at all. I just knew that she and I were having great conversations, and that she seemed perfect!

By the time school started, we were getting along very well and, if you had asked me at the time, I would have said things were fantastic!

We had started talking more seriously about the future because I knew that I would not be in Japan for very long really. I would end up with a grand total of a year and a half minus a few weeks back home.

Everything I wanted, she wanted.
I said it would be nice to go back to Indiana because I could get another management job and make plenty of money to support a family. We could live there for another year or so after school was out and then think about getting married. She thought that was a great idea.
I wanted to have a family. So did she.
I wanted to save money for about 2 years while we both worked so we could find a nice place before starting a family. She agreed.

School days came and went, we had our holiday break, and I took her home to meet my parents and friends. She was a little cold, but I thought that she was just a bit uncomfortable because she didn't know anyone and everyone spoke very quickly.

We came back and things continued to go the way they had been. I was thinking that, having waited my whole life to find the right girl before I decided to get married was really paying off! I was not going to be one of those guys that ends up divorced!

For the last two months before school ended, we were really talking a lot about what we were going to do. She started having some reservations about going to live in Indiana while we saved up enough money to get a house. She proposed that she stay in Japan and I go to the US for 2 years and have her come after I had bought a house and was ready to get married. I thought that it was a terrible idea! We had already spent so much time together that I felt being apart for a year or two would do nothing except cause stress. She said that she didn't want to move to the US if we weren't married.

So, we talked it out and eventually we came up with a couple pretty obvious facts.

My savings were down to about $15,000 so whatever we did, we would have to decide soon.
If I went back to the US alone, it would take me a year simply to build up enough savings to feel comfortable bringing her over.

She suggested that we get married in Japan and that I find a job here.

I was not too comfortable with the idea as my Japanese was very low level and I had no experience that would translate to any kind of job in Japan.

She said that I could always teach English. I also had no experience with that, but I had met a few people that taught English here. A large percentage of them were retarded, so I figured I just might be able to do it!

We got married in July 2006 about a month before my student visa ended.

One month later, Satan, the queen of lies herself, ripped herself out of my wife's flesh and stated this all as undisputed fact:

1. I need to give her all of my money because that's how it's done in Japan. The wife manages the finances.

2. School was ending in a few days and I should have already had a job lined up. I must be lazy.

3. She decided that she didn't want to move to America unless I took her to California or Hawaii to live. Both places I have never been.

4. She had furthermore decided that her getting a job was unnecessary. Due to the fact that...

5. She didn't want to have children anymore. Ever.

WHAT
THE
?

So, I did what I thought was right.

I spent the next year being a devoted husband and trying to get her to change her mind about these things.

After that didn't work, there was only one choice remaining. I had to be one of those guys.

But how could I do it?

NEXT BLOG: A crowbar and some holy water.