Returning to Japan for Good and Caregiving

Last time, I wrote about my 23 and a half years of living abroad.

In 2015, the laboratory my husband belonged to was closing down once again.
With this, our life abroad—5 and a half years in Germany and 18 years in the United States—came to an end,
and we decided to return to Japan permanently as a couple.

Three factors that led to the decision to return

At the time, my son was just about to enter his second year of university.
I felt fulfilled in my job as an elementary school administrator
and was enjoying my life in Dallas.

Even though I didn't have the slightest desire to return to Japan, we decided to go back.

There were three major factors for this.

1. Life as a researcher is very unstable, my husband was getting on in years, and he was starting to feel exhausted.
2. My mother-in-law and my own parents were becoming increasingly elderly; my mother-in-law, in particular, lived alone.
3. My right hip pain was finally reaching a terminal stage, and I needed replacement surgery.
Furthermore, what would happen if we lived in America until our old age?

"I'm hungry, let's go to McDonald's, shall we?"

We realized that we would never say that when we got old, and that was a big factor too.
Perhaps the day we said, "If we're going to go out, it has to be for udon noodles..." was when we made up our minds to return home (laughs).

Struggling alone to sell our house in America

Once we decided to return, my husband's job was secured.
We both returned to Japan once to complete the setup of our new life.
However, a major task remained.
That was to sell the house in Dallas where we had lived since 2002.

The real estate agent who had always taken care of us advised us,
"If you put in some solid work, it will sell properly."
So, after my husband started his job in Japan,

I returned to Dallas alone.

With the help of a friend, I tidied up the flower bed in front of the house.
I found contractors to rip out all the carpets in the house and replace them with hardwood floors.
With the cooperation of this friend and the real estate agent,
I managed to get it to the point where it could be put on the market.

I sold or gave away items at a garage sale held by a friend.
During the kitchen renovations, the refrigerator had also been removed.
I brought an icebox into the bedroom, where the contractors wouldn't enter,
and spent my time in a sort of solo camping state.
There was a mountain of things to do, but since it was my first time, it was interesting.

However, the pain in my right hip only increased, never decreased.
I remember limping along as I went to take out the trash.

Along the way, my son came back from university to help.
In the final week before leaving the house, my daughter took time off from her job in Japan and flew to Dallas.

I was very grateful to have her young energy help me organize the various sentimental items
that I couldn't bring myself to throw away on my own.

I was working with the real estate agent with the promise of vacating the house in late September 2015.
I will never forget the day my daughter and I left Dallas at the end of September, saying goodbye to the home we had lived in for 13 years and being seen off by our friends.
The house we worked so hard to improve was sold at a proper price thanks to the real estate agent after we returned to Japan.
I felt relieved that the investment in renovations and such had been worth it.


With Dallas friends and acquaintances saying, "Are you really going back? Why? Why??"
our 23 and a half years of life abroad came to a close.

Loneliness in the mountains of Kyoto: "It was lonelier than Germany"

Then, in late October, I had about a month of hospitalization waiting for me
for rehabilitation following my total right hip replacement surgery.
I barely had any time to live in the house we moved into in the northern part of Kyoto Prefecture.

After being discharged from the hospital, I finally started living in the town where my husband's new workplace was located.
It was a town that neither my husband nor I had visited until the day we moved,
and our life as a couple began.

It was a town I had never visited in my life either.
Unlike my husband, I had absolutely no acquaintances in that town.
The sense of loneliness and alienation was even stronger than when I first lived in Germany.

In a town where I didn't know a single person, even when I went to the local supermarket to shop,
my heart was filled with the sadness of being all alone.
I felt as if I had become an invisible person.

At that time, although I didn't tell anyone, I experienced hyperventilation attacks.
There were also times when my heart would pound before I went to sleep.

During the first year or two after returning to Japan,hospitalization for total hip replacementaside from that,
I now wonder what on earth I was doing.

Combat mode in a foreign land: The accumulation of physical and mental burden

After returning to Japan for good, there is something I felt deeply.

That living abroad was, in a sense, a "battle" for me.
I think various parts of my body were pushing themselves while struggling.
Just deciding to return to Japan made my whole body feel relieved.

Even though I hadn't wanted to return at all until then!
I still remember that feeling.
When I had to get on a plane to go back to America, I would somehow


"Click!"
It felt like I was switching into "combat mode" and thinking, "Alright!" before boarding.
These were days when I realized how easy it is to live in Japan, a safe country.

Living abroad, even if you aren't living in a particularly dangerous place,
is a life where you can't just be absent-minded.

Encounter with hypnotherapy: Time to face myself

When I felt "I am incredibly lonely" in a town in northern Kyoto Prefecture,
I met a wonderful hypnotherapist.
Meeting her was a connection from a friend from my Dallas days.

Until then, I knew nothing about the subconscious or the collective unconscious, and I lived a life unrelated to such things.

I read the blog of this therapist living on Awaji Island and felt that she was a very charming person.
I wanted to meet her and talk to her, so I decided to receive hypnotherapy.
For the first time in my life, I learned about the structure of human consciousness,
and I received hypnotherapy.

It was a time of facing myself very deeply.
For example, I had the feeling of slowly unraveling the causes of various things, such as my relationship with my mother and my shyness during childhood.

My past traumas and habits of thought began to make sense,
and I was able to face myself.
It was a very, very grateful time.

Furthermore, my love for hypnotherapy grew, and I began taking a hypnotherapist training course.

In the early part of that course, there is a spoon-bending practice.

I was told, "Since everything in matter is made of molecules,
you can bend it without using force,"
and I felt like, "Hmm, is that so?"
But then I said, "Oh, it bent!" and my eyes went wide! (laughs)

At first, my husband thought, "My wife is meeting strangers and learning things I don't understand," but "she doesn't seem to be being sold any jars??"
But after seeing the spoon I bent,
he might have thought,
"My wife might be a psychic."

Anyway, thanks to that spoon, it was an interesting development that my husband began to gradually understand the content of what I was learning.

Days spent going back and forth between my parents and my mother-in-law

We originally returned to Japan because we were worried about my mother-in-law, who was living alone.
Every weekend, we would drive for nearly two hours to visit my husband's parents' home.

I would visit my own parents' home on weekdays, and on weekends, I would go to my husband's parents' home.
Both my parents' home and my husband's parents' home were in towns on the Seto Inland Sea side.
Even using the expressway from northern Kyoto Prefecture, it takes an hour and a half to two hours.
It was just far.

Also, the "in-law obligations" that I had almost none of during my 23 and a half years of living abroad
were just as stressful as the loneliness I felt after returning to Japan.

The hypnotherapy I mentioned earlier was what provided a breakthrough during that stressful time of restarting life in Japan.
From there, I further learned channeling and Reiki healing, and acquired ways to use words and consciousness and methods to relax myself.
I still think I was truly lucky for this.

And while deepening various studies, what I would end up facing
was the caregiving for my father, who had developed dementia.

For a while, my mother was struggling alone at home,
but it reached a state where it seemed like my mother would collapse first if things continued this way.

What was I doing at that time?

My father went from day service to a nursing home,
my husband had a cerebral hemorrhage and was hospitalized,
my younger sister's pancreatic cancer was discovered,
and my daughter gave birth to her first child.

A year as eventful as you could imagine was about to begin.

To be continued
⇓

Thank you for coming to read today as well♡
If there are parts you resonate with, it would be very encouraging if you could leave a comment or press the like button.

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