• Moving to Japan from New Zealand gave my family cheaper living and better healthcare.
• Inexpensive flights and Japan's rail network made frequent travel part of everyday life.
• Less financial stress and a slower lifestyle improved my mental health and overall quality of life

Three years ago, my family of three left New Zealand for Kobe, Japan, desperate for a total reset. We were running on empty, exhausted by skyrocketing living costs, limited career growth, and relentless financial stress.

We already loved Japan as tourists, but moving here permanently felt like a massive gamble. Instead, trading hemispheres didn't just change our coordinates; it completely rewrote our quality of life.

Same-day medical care is possible

Back in New Zealand, my husband once waited months for an MRI after a severe work injury, while I spent years and thousands of dollars chasing answers to chronic health concerns through a clogged public system.

When his back pain returned, I braced for the same exhausting delays in Japan. Instead, I laughed out loud when the clinic doctor asked if he'd prefer his MRI in three hours or later in the day, after he'd had some lunch. The total cost was just ¥6000 (around $38 USD).

While New Zealand's healthcare is technically free, accessibility was often the real issue. I now feel an enormous sense of relief knowing affordable and timely care is available when we need it. My 10-year-old daughter's monthly pediatric specialist appointments cost just ¥280 — less than $2 USD.

Ditching our car improved our lives

We don't own a car, so movement is embedded in our daily life. Between train stations, school runs, and grocery trips, I easily clear 10,000 steps a day.

In my first four months here, I lost 10 kilograms (about 22 pounds), though I quickly found them again thanks to Japan's incredibly delicious bakeries.

Increased walking has also changed how I connect with my environment. In a car, seasonal changes passed me by. Now, I slow down to notice spring buds, cherry blossoms hanging over train tracks, or autumn maples turning a deep crimson. I even took extra winter walks just to feel snowflakes settle on my cheeks as the hills behind my home turned white.

We can travel frequently

In New Zealand, international trips were a rare and expensive treat. In Japan, cheap flights across Asia and an extensive rail network make travel effortless and affordable.

Last summer alone, we visited Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, Bali, and the Setouchi Islands. Our multi-stop summer itinerary — flying from Osaka to Singapore and Bali before heading back to Japan — cost just 212,587 Yen ($1,332 USD) for all three of us on budget carriers.

Traveling to Beppu this May made me realize just how lucky we are. As I rode the Yufuin no Mori scenic train past mountains covered in vivid green cedar and purple wisteria, I looked out the window and actually cried out of pure gratitude for this new life.

Having affordable international flights at our doorstep and a domestic transit system that makes spontaneous weekend trips easy has turned travel from an occasional luxury into a normal part of our lives.

Our housing and grocery bills plummeted by more than half

In New Zealand, we paid NZ $1,680, or about $985 USD, a month for a small two-bedroom unit outside Christchurch's city center. In Kobe, we now pay around $450 a month for a much larger three-bedroom apartment.

The first time I did a week's worth of grocery shopping in Japan, I walked into the supermarket with ¥50,000 (about $315 USD) in my wallet, expecting to spend most of it. When the total came to just ¥15,000 ($95 USD), I genuinely thought there had been a mistake at the register.

While rising prices and the weak yen have made everyday life more expensive for many families in Japan, it still feels far more financially manageable for us than life in New Zealand did, especially when it comes to housing, groceries, internet, and eating out.

Living in Japan has reshaped my perspective and improved my mental health

Starting over in Japan wasn't a magical fix; navigating a new language and culture was lonely at times. Yet immersing myself in a completely different way of living reshaped my perspective, teaching me to appreciate more and fight the current less.

They say money can't buy happiness, but the financial stability and lifestyle shift here reduced my stress so drastically that eight months ago, I finally came off antidepressants after relying on them since I was 17.

Japan didn't cure me, but it created the conditions for recovery, which reignited my curiosity for learning about the world.

• Laura Pollacco was struggling with depression and moved to Japan for two years to teach English.
• After returning home, she realized her career prospects and professional network were stronger in Tokyo, so she moved back.
• Now 31, working as a freelancer, and engaged, she's torn over where to build her future.

At 22, heartbroken, depressed, and unsure about my future, I craved novelty and adventure, so I packed up my life in England and moved to Japan.

Now, 31, living in Tokyo, and more secure than I've ever felt in my adult life, I can't help but feel that creeping depression, pushing me to pack my bags once more.

In my early 20s, upending my life felt exciting. Now, in my 30s, it just feels indecisive.

In 2016, I'd graduated with a degree in fashion photography and was working three part-time jobs in my university town to scrape by while simultaneously trying (and failing) to get over intense heartbreak. I was struggling.

Hobbies like theater and kung fu had lost their shine, my future felt vast and uncertain. I wanted a fresh slate.

During my personally elected studies into Japanese fashion and aesthetics, I fell in love with Japan. My dissertation was titled "The rise of gender neutrality and its origins in Japanese design." I even visited a friend studying abroad there in 2015, and that brief but fantastic sojourn left me thinking — somewhat naively — "I could live here."

A year later, in my depressed state, that thought resurfaced. Then it became all I could focus on.

I needed to move to Japan

The move wasn't completely off the cuff ー I'm not spontaneous enough for that. I applied to and was accepted into the JET Program, an organization that recruits thousands of graduates to teach English.

Rather than a traditional school placement, I was based at an education center in Kanagawa, about an hour from Tokyo, with occasional assignments at local high schools.

I threw myself into adapting: learning the rhythms of a new culture, working on my basic Japanese skills, and exploring my new environment. With every mountain climb, temple visit, and ramen bowl, I felt the blanket of depression start to fall from my shoulders.

I put myself out there once again, starting new hobbies such as MMA, kendo, and ikebana while reviving my old passions like drama. These led to new connections and opportunities. I felt reborn.

Japan had rekindled my passion for life. Feeling I'd gotten all I could from my teaching role, I decided to leave Japan with the goal of picking up where I was prior to my depressive episode.

Life back in Europe

I returned to the UK only for the pandemic to cut right across all my well-laid plans. Like most of the country, I was trapped inside, questioning my life decisions, especially about leaving Japan.

I was better connected in Tokyo's creative circles than in the UK, I had support in Japan, and the cost of living was considerably lower. I decided to move back, this time not out of depression, but out of hope and ambition.

In 2022, I returned on a working holiday visa, juggling remote freelance writing gigs with pitching to local publications. I pushed hard until, when my working holiday visa came to an end, I had enough work behind me to switch to the journalism visa in 2023.

Despite expanding my client list and gaining experience, my original fire began to flicker, then sputter, and more recently, it's felt like I'm helplessly blowing on the embers to keep them from going out. I was burned out.

Depression was setting in again. I experienced fatigue, a lack of interest in my hobbies, a desire to be left alone, all while self-flagellating my lack of ambition and for "settling" in my career.

My loving fiancé — whom I met here in Japan — was starting to worry to the point where he offered to cover the cost of online therapy. During these sessions, I realized that, for the first time since moving back to Japan, I was starting to feel homesick.

Living in a foreign country is tough

For starters, while I speak enough to get by, not speaking fluent Japanese is exhausting. As a multifaceted freelancer, immigration's restrictive boxes feel like a choking dog collar yanking me back from new opportunities, not to mention the new gray hairs I gain with every annual visa renewal.

On top of that, I've felt a rise of anti-foreigner sentiment, and Tokyo's concrete jungle is starting to feel claustrophobic and repressive.

In recent months, my brain has been flooded with ideas of returning back to the pastoral days of my youth. Stone cottages with actual gardens, walks down country paths with a dog by my side, fully understanding what's being said to me at a doctor's visit.

But I can't tell if I'm truly wanting to return to England or if I'm trying to escape back into a childhood where responsibilities were minimal.

I've worked so hard to get to and stay in Japan, I don't know whether to push through what could simply be a low period and wait to get to the other side, or whether my gut, my instinct, is trying to tell me something.

When it comes to big life choices like these, I realize I'll only find out if it was the right decision after the fact. I just hope that, whatever my partner and I choose to do, we make the best of that decision.

"H

ow long have you been living in Singapore?"

It's a question taxi drivers have been asking me since I arrived from New York nearly 20 years ago.

In the beginning, the answer was small, just a year, then two.

My husband and I had come with a two-year plan. Freshly married, we told ourselves it was an exciting chapter in our new life together. We left boxes in the basement of my sister's Brooklyn apartment, assuming we'd be back for them soon.

But as the number crept past that deadline — five years, then 10 — those boxes slowly made their way over.

These days, it's not just taxi drivers asking how long we plan to stay.

My mom comments on how far away we live, now that it includes her two grandchildren. My in-laws gently remind us of the advantages of being closer. Everyone seems to assume there's a logical next stop, a final destination that will eventually make sense of everything.

But somewhere along the way, Singapore stopped feeling like a chapter and started feeling like muscle memory. I've lost my tolerance for cold weather after years in the tropics. Back in New York, walking into someone's apartment without taking off my shoes feels strange.

Still, there are reminders that my life is split across borders. As an American, I file US taxes every year — the US is one of the few countries that require it of citizens abroad — a constant reminder that I'm living between places.

My two kids look genuinely confused when someone asks them, "Where are you from?"

As more families build lives abroad, we're not the only ones being asked that question.

In 2024, about 3.3 million Americans were living overseas — a 15% increase since 2010 — according to a Federal Voting Assistance Program estimate that pieces together tax records, Social Security data, and foreign census figures. Because Americans don't have to register when they move abroad, there's no official count.

In this series, you'll hear from others who have made homes overseas, at different ages, for different reasons, and at different stages of staying, all answering the same question in their own way: Where is home, really?