Grieving my Japan

I didn’t expect to grieve Japan.

When I first traveled there, I arrived on a visitor’s visa with no long-term plan. I thought I might stay a year, maybe two at most, if I decided to extend my time. But two weeks into my visit, I was offered a job that led to a work visa, and suddenly my life took a turn I hadn’t planned. I remember calling my family from a phone at the company’s workplace to tell my parents I was going to stay. What I didn’t know then was that this decision would turn into many years…most of my adult life, and shape who I became.

I expected to miss Japan. The food. The streets. The rhythm of daily life. I expected nostalgia. What I didn’t expect was grief. At first, the word felt too heavy for a place I chose to leave. Over time, I realized it was the most honest way to describe what I felt.

I lived in Japan for fourteen years. I arrived in my twenties and left just days after my fortieth birthday. In between, Japan held my work, my friendships, my marriage, and my first years of motherhood. It influenced how I moved through the world, how I treated people, and how I thought about responsibility and community.

Leaving wasn’t sudden or dramatic. It was a decision made thoughtfully and with care. Still, the grief came.

What I was grieving wasn’t only a country. I was grieving a version of myself that existed only there. A life shaped by a particular rhythm and way of living.

Life in Japan quietly teaches you to think about others. You line up. You clean up after yourself. You pay attention to how your actions affect the people around you. These things aren’t constantly explained or enforced. They’re simply expected. Living within that kind of system leaves an impression. It certainly did on me.

One of the greatest gifts of my time in Japan was the community I found. That community included Kenyans, other foreigners from all over the world, and Japanese friends who chose to open their lives to us. Over time, we were welcomed into homes, invited to celebrations, shared meals, and included in ordinary moments that mattered more than we realized at the time.

We formed close friendships across cultures and languages. In Japan, nationality mattered far less than effort, presence, and care. Those relationships grounded us. They showed me that belonging isn’t always about where you’re from, but about how you show up.

Living in Japan also meant understanding that most of us wouldn’t stay forever. Very few foreigners arrive expecting to. Perhaps that’s why we lived so intentionally. Time felt limited, even when we didn’t know exactly how much of it we had. People came and went constantly. Each departure was marked by another sayonara party. They were always bittersweet - full of laughter, shared memories, and the quiet sadness of knowing it was the last time we’d all be together in that way. We learned how to say goodbye often, and in doing so, we learned how to be present.

Japan can be lonely. Anyone who has lived there as a foreigner knows this. I don’t pretend otherwise. What made my experience meaningful was knowing I wasn’t alone. We had a network of people who held us: friends from many countries who became family; my younger sister, who later moved there and built her own family; Kenyan friends I could meet from time to time to speak in our mother tongues; and a Kenyan roommate and close friend who anchored me in the early years. We also had Japanese friends who welcomed us deeply and treated us like family.

My life in Japan wasn’t sustained by independence or resilience alone. It was sustained by people.

Living there also changed how I understood my first home, Kenya. Growing up in a place rooted in community and shared responsibility prepared me for Japan more than I realized at the time. When I think about growing up in Kenya now, I see values that later felt familiar in Japan: hard work, care for others, and a sense of collective life.

There’s a saying my grandmother and parents often shared: He who never leaves his village believes his mother’s cooking is the best.
I didn’t leave to reject where I came from. I left to understand it.

Before boarding my flight to Japan all those years ago, I was reminded of something important: if I didn’t like the air there, I had a home with air I already knew and loved. I could always come back. Knowing that made it easier to stay, to grow, and eventually, to leave.

Today, I live in America — a country that first introduced me to life abroad over 2 decades ago and later became home to my husband again, my children, and our present life. My children hold more than one citizenship. My son was born in Japan. I now dream in Japanese as often as I do in other languages. Kenya feels rooted deep in my body. Japan lives in how I think and feel. America holds where I am now.

I don’t know which place feels most like home in my body and which lives more in memory. I’ve stopped trying to separate the two.

Grieving Japan doesn’t mean I wish I had stayed forever. It means I’m acknowledging a chapter that mattered deeply. A place that asked a lot of me, gave me just as much, and shaped me in ways I still carry.

That understanding is also why I care so much about how others experience Japan, not just as visitors, but as people stepping into a place that may stay with them long after they leave.