As background, I (52M) have watched anime and later Japanese live action shows for at least 30 years, and have admired Japanese culture and history since I watched Shogun in the 80s. I've done a lot of work in engineering custom heavy equipment for export to Japan. Last year, I decided to start learning Japanese. I put that in my work goals for this year, because it is kind of relevant to my work.
Fast forward to last week. My boss's boss showed me an internal job listing they're getting ready to post, in Tokyo, requiring skills and experience I have, and asked if I was interested. After a day or two of agonizing, I told her the timing was wrong, and asked how often these sort of things come up. She said about once a year, and in the meantime she'd introduce me to some of the people in our Roppongi office.
While I'd idly thought moving to Japan one day might be cool, sh!t just got real.. If I want to do this, I'll need to make a bunch of choices, some of which could be painful. So, I need to make a decision pretty soon whether to pursue this. I'm going to Tokyo with my wife for 3 weeks in April, but other than that, I have no idea how to reason through this. I'm a lot better at "how" than "whether".
FWIW, I currently live in Alabama, US, and I'm not happy here. Other than my wife, I have no roots here.
by JustALittleDog