TimTime JP

I’ve moved enough times in my life that people have stopped being surprised when I tell them I live in Tokyo now. Belgium first, then the Netherlands, then Catalunya, then Australia. At some point moving just became the thing I do when somewhere stops feeling like the right fit.

Australia was good. Really good actually. Melbourne has a quality of life that’s hard to argue with — the weather, the beaches, the coffee culture which I will defend as genuinely world class. I stayed longer than I expected to. But after a year, I started getting that familiar itch. The one that shows up when everything is comfortable but nothing is particularly challenging anymore.

I’d been to Japan once while living the Netherlands, a short trip that was supposed to scratch the curiosity and get it out of my system. It did the opposite. There was something about Tokyo specifically that felt like a city operating on a completely different frequency to anywhere I’d lived before. Coming from Melbourne where everything moves at a certain relaxed pace, and before that Barcelona where everything moves at whatever pace it feels like on the day, Tokyo was a genuine shock to the system in the best possible way.

So I made the call. Packed up Melbourne, sorted the paperwork, and landed in Tokyo just over a year ago.

The first thing nobody prepares you for when you move to Japan from a Western country is how competent you stop feeling overnight. I’d navigated moving to Australia alone, figured out Barcelona, built a life in multiple countries across two continents. Then I tried to set up a Japanese bank account and felt like I was starting from zero. The forms, the stamps, the very specific way things need to be done in a very specific order — it’s a system that rewards patience in a way that genuinely tested mine.

The language barrier hit differently than in Catalunya or the Netherlands where you can usually get by on a mix of languages and goodwill. In Japan the gap is wider and the workarounds require more creativity. I have eaten an embarrassing number of meals by pointing at plastic food displays outside restaurants. I have bowed at a vending machine by accident. I have confidently walked into what I thought was a cafe and turned out to be a very small private office.

But over a year in and Tokyo has become home in a way that surprised me. Not the tourist version of Tokyo, not the Shibuya crossing and the robot restaurant version. The neighbourhood konbini at midnight version, the tiny ramen place with six seats and no English menu version, the somehow always on time train version. The version that reveals itself slowly once you stop being a visitor and start just living here.

This site is where I put everything I’ve figured out along the way. Practical stuff, honest stuff, the things I wished someone had told me before I moved rather than after. If you’re visiting Japan, thinking about moving here, or just want an honest look at what life in Tokyo actually looks like in 2026 from someone who has lived across enough countries to have some perspective — you’re in the right place.