Hey there. It's official. I'm going to Japan!!! I can't wait to get immersed in Japanese culture while completing design and development projects. This will be a seven-week trip to Tokyo. Wish me luck!
It has always been my dream to travel to Japan. Despite my situation, I did all I could to turn my dream into a reality. Yes, I’m one of those people that has been into anime and manga since childhood, no shame, but the language also fascinates me. I’ve studied Japanese for quite a while. I lucked out in taking a college course, additional noncredit classes, and joined a Japanese meetup group. Mix these with self-study and a lot of audio tracks, and I might be able to survive in Japan. I want to practice what I've learned while I'm there. Being in the country of my target language will force me into situations where I’d have to speak in Japanese. This will make for a good challenge and could even improve my Japanese.
So why haven't I gone to Japan until now? Despite always wanting to visit Japan, the price of a plane is expensive. It makes sense, given that I’d be coming from the United States. So considering the price and extremely far distance, staying for a week or two doesn’t make sense to me. Just being on the plane would take up most of those days.
Staying for longer than two weeks is a part of my motives and reasons for taking a web design role in Japan. Another factor is my desire to improve as a web designer. The field of web design is always changing. There’s always a new JavaScript library, framework or language being developed. Though I attend many meetups and practice at home, I still felt my growth was beginning to stagnate.
And if I can be honest for a moment, I wasn’t exactly happy at my job. I was able to do the work and enjoyed the pay, but something felt off. Being able to pay bills and live independently was great, but at what cost? It wasn’t until I, in a moment of reflection, began working on another iteration of my portfolio website realized I only had a handful of “good” work. I was stifling my growth.
At my current position, I mostly worked on the company's corporate and career sites. My most significant responsibility was the website redesign, though it took longer than anticipated. Otherwise, I did more marketing tasks than web design. I oversaw the social media marketing for over a year, developed and sent out the email campaigns, published the blog posts, and compiled analytics reports. Occasionally I created landing pages for conferences and standalone products or interactive interfaces, but those projects were few and far in-between. 😑
Since I was the only web designer on the team, I didn’t have anyone to seek out advice from. I was unable to ask for a second opinion from another creative from within the company. There was no senior designer to look up to. I was left to my own device, which was nice, but I became my only resource, alongside the internet, to solve problems. I missed talking with other individuals about frustrations with coding or creating a design and sharing silent victories once resolved. For understandable reasons, there were also restrictions within the company. For example, the internet network was on lockdown, making work for a web designer difficult. Gaining access to necessary templates, software or libraries was strenuous.
Compared to other designers I met or followed online, I felt I was falling behind. This feeling caused me to seek out growth outside of the company. I attended meetups to learn more and joined Slack groups. I started new projects and even collaborated with other designers across the world. I soon became happy being challenged as a designer and developer once more. But my side projects provided more feeling of fulfillment than my job.
I hope this background information, leads you to see my train of thought and understanding where I was at this point in my life. If I traveled to Japan and paid a lot to do so, I would like to stay for a lengthy time. If I stayed for a long period, I'd prefer it'd be for a purpose. At the same time, my desire to grow as a web designer tugged at my heart. I want to work on projects that'll cause me to grow as a designer.
Ultimately, I figured out how to combine my love of web design with my love for Japan. Yay!
I’m in Japan
Right now, I'm feeling slightly numb while checking if everything is real as I sit on the bed of a shared vacation home in Sakura, Japan. It's 2 am as I head downstairs to the dining room. Trying to get accustomed to my environment, I'll be enjoying a takeaway meal, how takeouts are referred, in a traditional Japanese home. I took flight Tuesday, August 8th and will post this article on the same date in honor. I arrived in Japan on Sunday, August 13th. I plan to document my adventure and recap lessons learned through blogging, social media, and email. I start work on Monday. I start the job on Monday, and in a couple of hours, the true challenge begins. Wish me luck!
I hope you’ll continue to follow me through this journey. I include recap segments in my monthly newsletter “Let’s Talk Design” I also have a weekly segment going more in-depth. If you’d prefer a monthly recap feel free to sign up. If you’re okay with a weekly read join here and only select the “Designing in Japan” series. No worries, the newsletter will stop at the end of my trip.
I’ll document my time on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Medium.
