Morning food stand. There are steamed buns in the taller pots.

It has been 10 years since I started living overseas. Also my family has grown from the two of us to now a family of four.

Besides Japan, I have been to India, North Wales in UK, Spain, the US, the Philippines, and Thailand, and, we are currently living in China. Probably, some of you would think I am an expert on living overseas, however I am not! I have days that feel up and down, of course, and sometimes there are things people in other countries do that are hard to get used to.

１）Do not wait for someone to change, it is you who change the situation.

This happened in the US. I visited my doctor to get medicine. He accidentally sent the script to a pharmacy is about an one hour away on foot. (We do not have a car) I asked the nurse if she could change it to somewhere closer to my apartment. And she replied “Absolutely, I will change it to the closest one within 30 minutes.”

I waited for a long time, but nothing seemed to happen, so I took a taxi to the pharmacy which first received my prescription. And I was able to get my medicine. It was 2 days later when I finally got a message from the nurse that my prescription was sent to the pharmacy that I requested.

2)  You can’t force people to meet your expectations. Lowering your expectations can help make you flexible in any situation.

We all have expectations of ourselves and others, too. But especially living overseas, I realized that freeing yourself from comparing the new country to back home will make it much easier to live overseas.

For example,

You should do laundry every day.

You should take a bath every day.

The store staff have to be very polite to their customers.

You should text or call if you are running late. *I would do it though.

The item that you buy online must arrive exactly as it was advertised. For example, if I buy white headphones, I shouldn’t get gray ones instead.

People should thank me for my hard work.

There are many tiny “expectations” in our life. However, once you leave your own country, you will have experiences that frustrate you because “your normal” “won’t work and people don’t even know what you’re talking about. If you ever feel such frustration, please take your time to think about why these expectations are so important to you. But if you could relax your “normal” and adjust to the situation a little bit, it will help you be kind to yourself and to the others. However, you may have some values that are very important to you. In those situations you need to explain the situation clearly to help others understand where you are coming from.

3) It will be alright. The problems will be taken care of and solved in the end.

Our AC was having a problem, frequent water leaks, when we were in the Philippines. Three months had already passed since we asked the maintenance staff to fix it. They came once just to have a look, but no one came to actually fix it for another few months. People would think why don’t you just call them again and again. Let me tell you, I was not just dealing with this problem. Living overseas is not as simple as you would imagine. hehe… We waited for the engineers patiently and put buckets where the water was lkeaing. Every time water dropped, it was sounded like hearing the music

This picture above shows the actual buckets we put to deal with the water leak.🪣

I danced with my kids to the beat of water. hehe Once our AC was fixed, however, the same problem occurred again and again. I started thinking, “Oh well, it is ok to just leave it as it is, because we have other ACs in our apartment that work well. Instead we should enjoy our remaining time in this beautiful country.”

This is called “Kawa bath”. This is a big pot that was used for making brown sugar back then. But now they are used as big fun baths.

Kawa bath with eucalyptus and roses. This is a hot bath and the staff help adjust the temperature.

Of course I feel frustrated when I start thinking that the AC will be fixed within a day or so, as this is how it is handled in Japan. But in some situations, even when my husband or I get involved, it can’t be solved easily.

So these 3 reminders are my rules to help keep and protect my mental health when I have some difficult encounters.

１）Do not wait for someone to change, it is YOU who change the situation.

2)  You can’t force people to meet your expectations. Lowering your expectations can help make you flexible in any situation.

3) It will be alright. The problems will be taken care of and solved at the end.

I hope my messages will reach people who are interested in living overseas, or who are facing difficult situations at least.

Thank you for reading my blog!