Hi, I'm Masato.
Move abroad long-term — working holiday, sudden relocation — and mental rough patches arrive far more often than they did in ordinary salaried life. Mine were loneliness and badly managed work hours. I've fully recovered since.
This article draws on that experience to explain how to live well abroad — mainly how to beat loneliness and how to accumulate genuinely interesting experiences.
My track record: a circuit of Japan in 2022, touring Asia in 2023, and moving to Thailand in 2024. Earlier, about a year total living in the Philippines and Australia — working holiday back then, digital nomad for the last two years.
Making friends and escaping loneliness, even without language confidence
Here's what worked for me. These are also ways to meet people — but meeting alone doesn't make friends. The key is engineering an environment that forces you to meet the same people repeatedly.
- Attend a language school
- Live in a share house
- Work locally
- Return to the same places (sauna, restaurant, basketball court, bar, café)
- Attend a Meetup event daily (free events are fine)
- Join your home-country community
- Visit other share houses
Do these and friends appear fast. Shallow at first, but time deepens them. Treat finding one or two people you genuinely click with as lucky. Adults get skilled at managing distance and end up all surface — but in a second language you can stop caring about that, which is oddly freeing.
Attend a language school
"I don't need more language study," "school is too expensive" — I thought both. But attending locally pays off:
Why school helps
You make friends
You learn which parts of town are dangerous
You find work
You find a share house
School is nominally for studying, but abroad it doubles as an intelligence-gathering operation. Sign up in person after arriving rather than remotely and it usually costs less.
Live in a share house
Approaching strangers on the street is hard; so is striking up easy conversation in a guesthouse. Hence the share house — though choosing well matters:
- A clean, spacious living room (critical)
- Shared rooms over private ones, if friends are the goal
- Confirm whether guests are allowed
- Know the owner's nationality
The living room drives everything. Without one, you can't even eat together — and conversation opportunities collapse.
Check the guest policy too. My place was strict — no friends, ever. A friend's house allowed them anytime, so it ran constant parties, and that's where he built his circle.
On owner nationality: this isn't prejudice, it's cultural preparation. In Japan and Korea, shoes come off indoors and tidiness runs high. In parts of the US and Europe, shoes stay on and showers may be every third day. It varies by person, of course — but those gaps generate friction. Share houses tend to attract residents matching the owner's background, so ask during your viewing.
Attend a Meetup event every day
During my Australian working holiday I went to Meetups almost daily. The first few, I was terrified and talked to nobody. But daily attendance breeds familiarity — regulars emerged, and we started hanging out.
Don't despair over a silent first attempt: go every time and talk for five minutes. A month of that makes you a regular. Big Meetup events are full of people standing alone — many will approach you. The bar is low.
Join your home-country community
"I came abroad, so I won't speak my own language" is a fine rule — until a long stay makes you crave friends from home. Knowing at least where your countrymen gather makes emergencies survivable and daily life lighter.
My personal highlight: the share house building had a sauna, and I went daily — purely because I love saunas. Regulars accumulated, locals taught me English, we lifted weights together. Perfect time.
Accumulating more experience than anyone else
- Work locally
- Get a bicycle, motorbike, or car
Work locally (nomad or not)
Visa and duration permitting, local work delivers many times the experience you expect — and friends besides. Honestly the single most important item.
Being a digital nomad changes nothing: take a local part-time job. Full-time remote? Work a little on weekends. You absorb local friends, local values, and the texture of how people there work.
Australians who work start early and finish early, and head to work visibly upbeat — a different atmosphere from Japan's morning commuter trains. It told me: people here find work reasonably enjoyable, and many seem happy. National mood matters.
What kind of job?
Any job works — except one run by your own countrymen, in your own language, with no customer contact. At minimum you want customer interaction. A warehouse staffed entirely by people from home defeats the point of leaving.
I took exactly that job in Australia and quit within a week — the whole place was Japan, and 1970s Japan at that. Rather than simply quitting, I used the week to find the next job.
Ask senior colleagues: "are there many companies like this?", "what are your plans?" — and you get intelligence: "Company X pays better," "Company Y is far easier." Note the names, search them later, apply immediately.
Result: I moved from "Japanese-run, Japanese-only, no customers" to "Australian-run, English-primary, customer-facing" in one week — with a $6/hour raise and work perhaps a tenth as demanding.
Get a bicycle, motorbike, or car
A car means group trips and total mobility, but it isn't easy to arrange. So: a bicycle. It's exercise, it reaches surprisingly far, and the growing ease as your fitness improves feels like progress. You also absorb the countryside and nature on the way.
Public transit abroad, meanwhile, is a mess: trains that simply don't come, timetables treated as suggestions, departures ahead of schedule. Country-dependent, and fine for long trips — but as a daily tool, wearing.
If I moved abroad again, here's exactly what I'd do
- Housing: a share house
- Transport: buy a used bicycle
- School: one week of language school (friends, job leads)
- Work: start hunting after two weeks; until then, ask everyone I meet
- Habit: visit the same nearby shop daily and chat with staff
- Community: start or join a home-country group
- Return to the same sauna or basketball court weekly or daily
- Attend Meetups every day
