Living abroad is like looking in a mirror while convinced you’re gazing out a window. Put differently, it’s a Rorschach blot where you unconsciously project yourself. You experience your failures as rejection, but you must realize: you are the one who needs to understand and adapt.

Japan, in particular, is idealized and demonized in equal measure. Everyone sees their own prejudices reflected in it.

That said, Japan is a very difficult country because it’s profoundly different and demands immense effort to adapt. There are three distinct obstacles, all daunting.

The first is the language barrier, once nearly insurmountable—almost none of my peers spoke Japanese—but now, largely thanks to the internet, far less problematic. Still, it’s not a language you can master in a few years.

The second is the cultural barrier. Here too, younger generations fare much better than mine. Yet the country provokes polar opposite reactions. My sense is that your first instinct is the right one. If you want to stay, you’ll make it; otherwise, the countdown has already begun.

The third challenge is psychological survival. If you don’t speak the language or understand the culture, surviving is tough. Empathizing with the Japanese, seeing them as humans like yourself, is profoundly difficult.

But if you can wait, the rewards are equally great. You must make sacrifices. Be patient.

This morning, my neighbor came to return the 1,000 yen he owed me. The bills were, naturally, in a pristine envelope bearing my name in elegant katakana. We both bowed—for different reasons—and I rediscovered, as often happens, the joy of living in a country like this. It has skeletons in its closet, big ones too, but it also has something else hard to define: elegance, style, energy. A constant source of surprises.

Entering a restaurant today—just an ordinary one—I saw this:

Japan always holds little surprises like this

But the most beautiful thing about this country is its people, though many foreigners might disagree.

It’s not where I was born, but it’s certainly where I want to die. I am rich in the affection of my friends—not that I lacked it in Italy. And that’s the strange part: it took forty years to arrive back where I started.

During an evening with Japanese friends, someone said, “Shall we make coffee?”—and I remembered identical evenings and words decades ago in Italy. Different people, same friendship, same mutual affection. Beyond cultural differences—which now, more than dividing us, offer chances for mutual enrichment.

So why endure the discomfort, frequent loneliness, and feeling like a fish out of water? I don’t know, but it was worth it.

I once had one culture. Now I have two.