Why did you naturalize?
Want to see the world before you end up working at Big Software after graduation? Does a one year paid adventure overseas exchanging culture and language interest you?
At the bottom of the flyer was a phone number and address for the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C. Having not made up my mind where I was going to start my software engineering career, and knowing that the AI exam would signify the conclusion of my undergraduate education, I scribbled down the information then went on IRC (a real-time internet group chat protocol that had its heydays in the nineties) and asked what the flyer was all about on the #japan channel. I was told it was part of the JET Program, and it was legit and sponsored by the government and low risk. So I applied on a lark. I expected to be rejected, because I had absolutely no experience overseas or with foreign languages, but I was surprised when they asked me to come to the embassy for an interview. I went to the interview, and I was enthusiastic, but I was very upfront with them about how little I knew about Japan. I couldn't speak the language, my pop culture knowledge of Japan was Michael Crichtons's Rising Sun, and while I knew that 小和田雅子 was going to become the Crown Princess, I couldn't even name the prime minister (it was 宮澤 喜一). Apparently somebody on the embassy staff had a sense of humor, because they accepted me, much to the chagrin of the other people in my class who had majored in Japanese yet were rejected.
I'll never forget leaving for Japan, non-stop on a 14 hour flight on a 747, from Dulles-International Airport. My family was with me at the gate (before 9.11 family could accompany you all the way to the gate even without a boarding pass) — a seemingly endless brigade of JAL flight attendants, walking with an obviously rehearsed gait in a column two wide, with just the right amount of smile with a dash of seriousness, each sporting an identical luggage bag in the same hand all holding their bag the same way, marched past us onto the jetway onto the plane. The gate attendant started to make the first class boarding announcement. Japanese first. The two sights caused my mother to realize how far away (not driving distance like college) I was going — she's afraid of flying — and started crying.
"You're going to get a career over there, marry a Japanese women, have children, and you'll never see me again!" she cried.
Trying to calm her, I said, "Oh mom, don't be melodramatic. It's a one year contract. I'm not even doing anything related to what I studied in school."Turns out she was right. Sorry mom! What I thought was going to be a one year trip kept getting extended and extended, either because of an opportunity that was too good to pass up or because I was loving it so much.
My first extension came at the end of the one year JET contract. I reasoned, "if I'm going to experience the world, I may as well do it properly. One year isn't enough to truly experience Japan." So I renewed for one more year. After the second year, I again reasoned, "you can only be on JET for a maximum of three years (back then at least), so I may as well do the whole three years so when I'm old and in the U.S. doing what I do best, I can look back and say I had a really nice medium length life experience."
However, just as I was about to go back home and start my software engineering career in the States, fate called. I was introduced by a friend of mine who knew my educational background to the president of a company looking to get into the brand new ISP (internet service provider) business. This small, scrappy, all Japanese startup was looking for something called a "internet engineer." They had to understand stuff like IRIX based Netscape NSAPI, and Japanese EBCDIK IBM minicomputer AS/400 and linking their TCP/IP and SNA together as well as their RPG and CGI. They had never hired a foreigner before, but they couldn't find a Japanese engineer with any experience in this stuff. Even stuff as basic as HTML. This was 1994 remember; the internet just barely started in the States (before Internet Explorer really existed; we're talking Mosaic Browser here), and it was slowly ramping up (dial-up... in a few years consumers would have ISDN in their homes) in Japan. There was no tech industry full of foreigners back in Japan in the early nineties. I would be one of the first. I figured that this would look good on my resume, having an overseas job that was related to my field of study, so I jumped in. Even though they told me it was 終身雇用 (lifetime employment), I figured I would treat it like an internship and do it for a couple years before taking the experience home with me. A line item on my resume. Besides, the company used the old fashioned seniority wage system (年功序列), meaning my salary would be based on my age just like all the other Japanese employees. Still in my early twenties, this meant I would be taking a substantial cut in salary compared to what I was used to on the JET Programme (¥3,600,000/year + perks in 1994).
Just as I was thinking my time in Japan was up and I should take what I learned and experienced home with me, I got another offer which I thought was too good to pass up: a manager of a big national ISP was recruiting for software engineers and was looking for an experienced one that could lead a group of younger engineers. He had seen my open source work and knew of my experience working at ISPs in Japan, and asked if I'd like to "move up" to his company, because they were going to IPO soon and they were going to acquire my company and its customers anyway. I figured going through an IPO in Japan would be a good experience to have, so I decided to stay in Japan for this once-in-a-lifetime experience (again). This is also how my girlfriend turned into my fiance then wife; I had to move from Osaka to Tokyo for this job. I told her I had to move for the sake of work, and I didn't know if things would be stable, but would she like to try Tokyo with me? She agreed. Yes, I know that's not very romantic, but we're still happily married for almost 15 years now.
The good news is that with this new job and the IPO, my income went up by a couple of factors. I wasn't rich, but I was now no longer struggling to pay the rent every month. The gamble paid off. It was at this time that open source software was beginning to take off, and I was asked to join yet another start-up that dealt with Linux that had IPO ambitions. The dot com boom was in full swing. That company didn't succeed, but their rival company, Red Hat, lured me away, with the promise of low exercise-price ISO/NQSO post-IPO stock options and a more mature & stable work environment. As I was just married, the promise of stability was looking more attractive to me. Eventually, they asked if I'd like to really develop my career and do kernel and OS customization work as a company consultant for U.S. intelligence agencies and Wall St. Would I come to the U.S.? I figured this was what I was finally waiting for after all these years: a software engineering career in the States with an established software firm. Although I was really enjoying myself and I was happy in Japan, I thought that returning to the States was the "mature" thing to do, especially as I was about to start a family. It was a career move up, a raise, and a chance at the "American Dream": a paid-for house in the family-friendly suburbs with a back and front yard, two cars, good school district, nice quiet neighborhood. Admittedly, I was also getting jealous of my overseas peers and ex-colleagues who were or had returned to the States to work for Silicon Valley startups and Microsoft or Sun or Oracle or Netscape — telling me how I'm missing out on the golden age of our industry. "So you're big in Japan. Everybody knows Japan is a dishpan."
So after about a decade in Japan, I returned to give the American lifestyle a go with my wife — raising my child from birth there (though we spoke Japanese in the house and maintained a very atypical Japanese-style household) and my wife became a "green card" holding permanent resident of the U.S.
And there was nothing wrong with living in the States. From a metrics point-of-view, my quality of life was better, I was more financially secure than I had ever been, and things were looking up. Still, while I was very comfortable and we liked the United States, neither I nor my spouse were really happy like we were in Japan. Perhaps it was because I had become too accustomed to life in Japan? after all, I had spent my entire adult life in Japan (college doesn't count; I lived in a dorm for four years. That's not real life). Maybe I needed to give it more time?
After about five years, a serendipitous opportunity came via a phone call from my boss. It was an opportunity to go back to Japan. I remember getting the call from my boss on my cell as I was boarding a plane at LGA late Friday night to go home. There was an opportunity in Japan, and she heard that I knew a thing or two about the area. It would be a pay cut and a step down, but was I interested? I called my wife. "This is a big decision. Let's spend the whole weekend discussing it." My wife didn't need a weekend or a discussion. She only needed that five minutes on the phone.
"Let's roll" was her English response right before I had to hang up before the jet doors closed.
By the time I arrived home, she had already started mock packing and was on the internet looking for housing in Tokyo. In just two weeks, I sold my house — at a slight loss from what I paid for (the Great Recession and housing market crash would start in a few months), I sold my cars for cash below Kelly Blue Book value to some very happy teenagers and college students, and I willingly took a pay cut and title demotion. I was heading back to where I called home for the first decade of my adult life. Although I expected some sort of reverse-reverse culture shock, we were both "happy" again almost immediately.
Ironically, it was going to the States that caused me to figure out I wanted to stay in Japan forever. The Japanese have an expression: 後ろ髪を引かれる思い ("a feeling as if one's hair is being pulled back.") It's an expression that expresses one's "what if" ponderings regarding the roads one chooses not to take in life. If I had never returned back to the United States as an adult and I didn't do part of my career (and do it well) there, I would have always wondered if we would have been happier there, more successful there, more content there. I can now say that I did the United States as an adult with a career. It was very nice, and I can recommend it as the land of opportunity still to people. However, it simply doesn't fit the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to in Japan.That's how I knew that naturalization (changing exclusively to a citizen of Japan) was for me. Fortunately, after a few years I recovered from my career setback and am now in a better place than I was ever at when I was in the States. But more importantly, my family and I are happy, which is what counts.
