Should I stay or should I go?

Someone asked me a while back why I stay in Japan. In recent weeks that very question has been niggling at me, transforming me into the type of nutter who debates with themselves (or worse, with an imaginary audience) on the train.

After 18 months in Tokyo, I am torn between wanting to stay and wanting to leave. Although Matt and I have made some great friends here, sooner or later we will have to leave them and return to our friendships in Australia, that, through no fault of their own have suffered the test of long-distance.

Should I stay...

1. We love our jobs. Teaching English as a foreign language is cool. Not least because I am endlessly entertained by the funny, unconscious mistakes students make with English, such as; "My husband is a cock!" (cook) and "I want to eat my wife!". What the hell we are going to do when we get back to Australia is a question neither of us is prepared to deal with right now.

2. Living in a foreign country, particularly one as quaintly alien as Japan, is an undeniably gratifying experience. I have been forced to learn a language that I may not have otherwise studied, in spite of my former insistence that I didn't have to study, rather I, "soak up information by osmosis". This was folly. I admit it.

3. Tokyo is unique. After 18 months the novelty of certain things is starting to wear off, such as pint-sized apartments with paper-thin walls, but I still manage to see something I have never seen (or have never wanted to see) before, for example, a young man on a bicycle, stopped at the end of our street, curling his eyelashes. A man would be socially crucified for less in Australia.

4. ...and convenient. I am not ready to face hour long waits at Westgarth station for a delayed train. Japan is the only country I know of where flights arrive ahead of their scheduled time.

5. I would miss Japanese TV and pop-culture (read, karoake) like a baby misses breast milk.

...or should I go?

1. The main issue is the uncompromising ethnocentricity in Japan. One of the "novelties" that wore off a long time ago was the ignorant (yet benign) insistence that if something is stolen or if a violent crime occurs in Japan, then an assumption is made that it; "must have been a foreigner". This title of 'foreigner' extends to other Asians, such as Koreans, Chinese and Taiwanese, who are tarred with the same brush as 'whites'. I have met many Koreans in particular who have changed their name to a Japanese moniker so as to avoid this discrimination. Interestingly, the discrimination is often tacit. You won't find many Japanese people comfortable with sharing a negative opinion about you as a foreigner, as ingrained as it may be. The Japanese call this approach "not losing face". I call it passive-aggression.

2. Experience is one thing, but when you have to navigate a linguistic minefield just to buy a pair of shoes, it can get pretty exhausting.

3. I miss my friends and family back home. Although we have made excellent friends here (including plenty of Japanese), they can not replace the ones we have had for years. I haven't been lucky enough to find many people in Tokyo who I would consider kindred spirits. And the very temporary nature of living in a foreign country means that those you do find, usually don't stay forever (including yourself). With respect to Japanese men and women, there is often a language or cultural barrier, even amongst those who I would classify as 'westernised'. Tokyo can be a pretty lonely place, not just for ex-pats who have had to generate new support groups in a new country, but for Japanese people too. Like any big and ostensibly soulless city, it tends to swallow its residents and forget about them.

The crux of why I stay here is simply this. Japan gets under your skin. It becomes an experiential addiction after a while. And it will be a hard habit to kick.