Why I’m here

Hi, I’m Ellen. I’m an American living and teaching in English in Japan. Or at least that would have been my simple introduction for the last three years. The teaching English part is the same, but now I help co-host a guesthouse with my Japanese husband near Miyajima (Hiroshima Prefecture).

I used to live out in the countryside of Tochigi Prefecture participating in various traditional Japanese cultural activities such as nihonbuyo and kyudo when the opportunity presented itself, but now I’ve gotten a more expansive view of Japan through my husband (for better or worse) and a taste of how small my perspective has really been up until this point after having met various guests from all over the world.

I regret not really recording my first three years in Japan, but now that I’m not living just for myself anymore, I’d like to document some of the experiences we’ve come across. Some of them may be useful bits of information for other foreigners living in Japan. Others might just be stories of characters I’ve come across living in almost a completely new world even though I’m sure I only just moved across the country.