I arrived to a university in Japan to finish the last two years of my degree about last week. I was very excited to arrive and start my new life, but am having very mixed feelings about my new life. Just to preface, it is an American University with a school in Japan, AKA tuition is pretty high. I will most likely be taking out private loans since even after talking to financial aid support I got basically nothing. That stressed me out for the first few days (was already conscious of it, but it all just hit me at once.) I have about 26k usd saved up, plan to get a part time job and use the money that I have for living expenses, but the upfront costs on some things feel high. I have jlpt N1 so I know that I can work in an environment in all Japanese. The language barrier is never the problem, but I do worry about not being able to actually get a decent job to support myself.
Other than money, the feelings of homesickness are eating away at me. I never felt particularly close with my family, but feelings of loneliness and having no one to talk to is a scary thing. If I want to call or talk to them in real time I have to either be up early before school or stay up at night to make sure I can speak to them for any substantial amount of time. If I want to hang out with any people I have met so far at information sessions or the welcome party for the university, I have to spend money at whatever activity we end up doing. After telling my family about my feelings of anxiousness, they said that I can come home whenever and to prioritize my mental health–which did make me feel significantly better, but it feels like every little inconvenience and expense is so much bigger and drains me more than it did when I was in the U.S.. Advice is helpful, but if anyone else has any experience with this I would love to hear about it.
by Spiritual-Grass-8002