In September 2018, at the age of fifty-one, I left Germany on a one-way ticket to Japan with my Japanese wife, four suitcases, a finite amount of savings, and no job waiting for me at the other end. We believed that Japan would be a better place for us to live than Germany, but we were taking a real personal risk.
For around twenty-five years in Germany, I had been working in various IT and consulting roles, and I was confident I had a solid set of skills and experience to offer - but I had little Japanese language ability, and no idea whether a Japanese employer would hire someone my age.
*
In a way, the story began twelve years earlier, with my decision to not travel to Las Vegas.
Since the late 1990s, I had travelled regularly to North America. I visited New York twice, travelled around the Great Lakes, explored the Pacific Northwest, the Mid-Atlantic and New England states, Yellowstone and Grand Teton, the Canadian Rockies, and Florida. In addition, while working at HP until the mid-2010s, I travelled from Germany to the San Francisco Bay Area on business more than 20 times.
Travel had become a part of my life. I enjoyed the experience of arriving somewhere unfamiliar, discovering the scenery, observing how people went about their lives, and keeping a photographic record of the most memorable parts. In early 2006, I had just started to think about another trip, this time to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon.
But then I woke up one morning and thought to myself: How about if I go in the opposite direction for my next trip? Somewhere in Asia, not in North America?
So, in early 2006, I started planning a trip to Japan.
*
At first, Japan was simply another travel destination. But soon after I arrived, it started to become more than that. My first trip was almost dreamlike - the country, the culture, the people, and simply being there resonated with me in a way I found difficult to explain.
Some scenes from my first trip to Japan in the spring of 2006.
A few months later, I met a Japanese woman - first online, then in person during a second trip to Japan in the same year. Less than a year later, she moved to Germany, and we got married.
From 2007 until 2018, we lived as a couple in Germany. There were quite a few aspects of that life that we genuinely appreciated. My wife worked hard to learn German, and we both enjoyed the wide-open countryside, the landscapes, the seasons (including Christmas Markets), and the calm way of life outside a large city.
But neither of us ever became entirely comfortable there.
*
For my wife, fully adapting to life in Europe was difficult despite the effort the made. And even though it may sound surprising, it was complicated for me, too: I am German, I had lived in Austria or Germany for my entire life up to that point - and yet I found everyday interactions with local people difficult and often exhausting. Germany was familiar, but over the years, a feeling gradually took hold: we had built a life that worked on paper, but it never quite felt like our own.
Both my wife and I had complicated relationships with our families. Perhaps that shared history made us especially determined to create a home of our own. Not a perfect home, and not a place without challenges - but a life in which we could choose the terms.
We had also hoped to have children. We tried for years, including undergoing several fertility treatments, but it never happened. The experience was emotionally exhausting for both of us and shaped how we thought about our future.
*
Meanwhile, Japan became a constant presence in our lives.
Ever since we had married in 2007, we travelled to Japan at least once a year. We understood the old adage that visiting a country is not the same thing as living there - yet each trip reinforced the same feeling: Japan was not merely a country we loved to visit. It was a place where we could imagine living more fully and more freely.
In many ways, Japan had already become part of our daily life in Germany. We cooked mostly Japanese food, and my wifeâs parents - who farm their own rice - would regularly send us rice and other ingredients. We made frequent trips to a reasonably well-stocked Asian supermarket in Stuttgart. Long before we moved, our "Japanese" kitchen in our German home had become one of our happy places.
*
By 2018, we had decided that we no longer wanted to stay in Germany - a decision that felt both liberating and unsettling. Preparing for the move was exhausting - you don't fully appreciate how much you own until you have to go through everything, one item at a time, and decide what can realistically be taken to the other side of the world. Each of us would have two suitcases on the flight. Everything else had to be evaluated and then packed, sold, donated, discarded, or left behind.
We ended up with twenty boxes of personal and household belongings to ship to Japan. My wife's parents kindly agreed to store them for us until we knew whether our plan would succeed. Looking back, that arrangement was a perfect metaphor for our situation: our boxes were waiting in limbo, and so were we. If I found work and we could remain in Japan, we would eventually retrieve the boxes and build a more permanent life. If our savings ran out first, we would have to bite the bullet and return to Germany - and somehow send our possessions back again.
Meanwhile, we sold most of what we owned in Germany. Household goods, clothes, books, DVDs, records, and electronics went through eBay or specialized buyers. We were fortunate to also find buyers for some of the larger items, including our refrigerator and several pieces of furniture. By the time our departure date arrived, we had managed to empty our home almost completely.
Looking back, I can see that I made some imperfect decisions. I sold a few irreplaceable books and personal items that I now regret letting go, while keeping some rather ordinary things. But that's what happens when you're on a clock trying to sort through an entire life. At the time, you make the best decisions you can with the information you have. đ€·ââïž
20 boxes of packaged life inside the empty house, and later on the Nippon Express truck.
*
Nobody in Germany knew what we were planning.
I had a fairly good idea of how most people would react. I expected discouragement, disbelief, and variations of the question, âHave you lost your mind?â. I did not want to spend the final months before leaving defending a decision that already required enough courage.
On the other hand, the people who did encourage me were not always realistically weighing the risks. Some American friends brought their characteristic optimism to the situation: Go for it. You'll be fine. I appreciated the sentiment, but it didn't make the worries that kept me awake at night go away.
Recruiters in Japan offered a seemingly more practical version of the same reassurance. They told me that once I was in Japan, it would be easier to attend interviews at short notice and that this should improve my chances of eventually finding something. There was truth in that - but of course availability alone would not increase the odds of a Japanese company hiring a fifty-one-year-old foreign professional with limited local language ability.
Despite all this uncertainty, I was fundamentally optimistic about our chances. There was always a "cloud of worry", but somewhere deep inside, I trusted that things would work out fine in the end.
*
Time passed quickly, and towards the end of September 2018, the day had come to say goodbye to the house in Germany, and get ready for the decisive departure to Japan. Upon arrival at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, a friendly immigration officer handed me my new residence card, which felt very reassuring.
Our first apartment was a small furnished flat in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo. I still quite vividly remember arriving by taxi from Haneda Airport after the long journey from Germany. The ride took us along a lively street with colorful shops and restaurants, glowing signs, and the homely vibe of a Tokyo neighborhood beginning its night.
It's hard to put the mixture of emotions into words.
There was excitement: We had finally done it!
There was a sense of wonder: Japan, which I had casually chosen as a travel destination twelve years earlier, was now where we would try to get settled.
But there was also anxiety: Would I be able to find a job? How long would it take? How long would our savings allow us to stay?
View from the apartment building in which we lived at the beginning, in the Itabashi Ward of Tokyo. It looks a bit wonky, as it was shot with the iPhone's "manual" panorama function.
*
The job hunt lasted around half a year, and it was an emotional rollercoaster.
There were fewer suitable jobs than I had hoped for. Recruiters often seemed unable - or unwilling - to understand my particular situation. Some sent me roles that bore no relation whatsoever to my skills or experience. Others repeatedly pushed me toward the same companies, even after previous attempts had ended in rejection. At times, I had the distinct impression that my age was held against me, regardless of what the rules might say on paper.
It wasn't the rejection itself that made the experience so difficult - rejection is part of any job search. It was the feeling of being reduced to a set of keywords in a résumé database, rather than being seen as a person with a 25-year career, transferable experience, and a genuine desire to build a new life in Japan. As time went on, each rejection returned me to the same question: had we made a mistake?
*
Then in March 2019, my luck changed.
I found a recruiter who actually listened. He made the effort to understand my experience, my circumstances, and the kind of role in which I could realistically contribute. More importantly, he had direct connections into an international team within a large Japanese company. He had already helped place other foreign professionals there, and he understood how I might fit into that environment and introduced me.
I had a feeling that the interviews had gone reasonably well, but as always, I had no choice but to patiently wait for the decision.
Then one afternoon, the recruiter called me.
âHi Norbert,â he said, in a neutral voice. âI have heard back from the company on the job opening.â
He paused.
Then his voice became upbeat: âYou got the job. Congratulations, man!â
It may sound like a cliché, but in that moment I understood what it means to feel the weight of the world lift from your shoulders. For months, my wife and I had lived with this lingering uncertainty: whether I could work, whether we could stay, how long our savings would last, whether leaving Germany had been brave or foolish.
That phone call lifted the uncertainty that had hung over us for months, and gave me the work that I have been doing ever since.
*
Since then, we have built the kind of life in Japan that we had hoped was possible.
We love the convenience, variety, and sense of safety that Tokyo offers. It is a city of enormous scale, but our daily life in Itabashi Ward is actually surprisingly local - built around familiar streets, local shops and restaurants, and a stop of a well-connected subway line.
My Japanese has improved gradually over the years. I still have a mountain to climb in terms of learning, but I'm climbing it at my pace and the language no longer feels like an insurmountable obstacle. Japan has become home to me, and it feels like the place where I belong.
More importantly, both my wife and I have found a sense of freedom here. In Germany, we often felt that we were being observed, evaluated, or quietly judged against expectations about how people were supposed to live their lives. In Tokyo, paradoxically, we feel more able to be ourselves. We have more space to define our own routines, interests, and identities without feeling the need to explain or defend them.
Photography has become a key way in which I experience life here. Before moving to Japan, I photographed the places we visited on our annual trips. Now I enjoy exploring Tokyo neighborhoods at different times of the year, capturing the small details of everyday life, and recording the ever-changing urban environment.
On top of that, we have found new activities that have become part of our life together. Both of us go to kickboxing training twice a week. My wife sings in a gospel choir, and I have begun learning to play the drums. These may sound like small things, but they make me happy, and I am proud of the life we have built.
Some neighborhood photos from Itabashi Ward in Tokyo, Japan, across the four seasons.
*
We left Germany in 2018 because staying would have meant continuing a life that no longer felt right for us. We chose a risky and unconventional way of trying to get settled in Japan - thankfully it ended well, and it gave us a life that would not have existed otherwise. It made us become people we might not have become if we had stayed in Germany.
I should also say that we were incredibly lucky with the timing. Had we waited just a little longer, the COVID-19 pandemic might have made it almost impossible to enter Japan or conduct a normal job search here. Who knows whether our move would ever have happened.
And finally, words alone cannot express how grateful I am to my wife for going along with this crazy idea and bravely facing obstacles and uncertainty with me. I'm so glad we took this leap together and built the life we have today in Tokyo.
*
P.S.: I never went to Las Vegas. "The Opposite Direction" was the right way to go. đ